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Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 08:30 PM
I've recently been involved in a discussion over at the WotC boards about where the line between "person" and "monster" gets drawn.

Multiracial Morality, or What Is a Person? (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1159457)

One tangent in the discussion led me to thinking about just how moral adventuring really is as a profession. I mean, going by the paradigm set by webcomics like Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes, and even Order of the Stick itself, the "monsters" are people too. People with personalities, hopes and needs, who have been screwed over by the world that views them only as sources of experience points and treasure.

Naturally, this makes adventurers look like freakin' *******s at best, and sadistic, bigoted murderers and robbers at worst.

I don't know how popular this paradigm is in campaigns these days, but from what I've seen of it it seems to be gaining prominence. It seems the way to make it ethically acceptable is for the "monsters" to be mindless horrors who exist solely to rape, kill, rob and cannibalize. Even Tolkien had problems with this concept, wanting to alter the characterization of the orcs in Lord of the Rings from being a purely evil race to being mislead by Morgoth and later Sauron, even going so far as to say "We were all orcs in the Great War." He died before he could implement this.

Furthermore, adventurers seem to be a problem even for the civilized people. Sure they deal with "monsters" and other threats to their communities, but they also don't contribute to society in a meaningful way in between adventures. They're just drifters ungratefully leeching off of society until they need to save society's butt. Not to mention the ammount of gold they pump into economies with the gold and other assorted treasures they steal from ruins and stuff likely throws said economies way off balance, and many of the things they steal would probably be better served in a museum or something.

With all these issues, it's a wonder adventurers in D&D aren't treated like superheroes were in Watchmen, despised by the general populace and treated with suspicion. How can such a profession, which condones and even encourages all sorts of immoral behavior, especially murder, robbery and racism, be allowed to exist by any sane society?!

Ent
2009-03-11, 08:43 PM
I blame bards.

I think of and try to portray the common belief of the hero in games I run. Myths, fairy tales and legends let adventurers act the way they often do; when it gets written down and retold it comes off entirely in idolization.

Emperor Tippy
2009-03-11, 08:46 PM
You fail to take into account the base postulate from which all laws and societies derive, "Might Makes Right".

A single group of high level adventurers (if not a single individual) has, in D&D 3.5, the personal power to go toe to toe with armies and win. If society really pisses them off then society will loose. And there are lots of adventurers, supporting and opposing pretty much every thing.

Now throw in the very real threat that a dragon (or something similar) will come along and depopulate your city and it's easy to see why the Adventures are seen as heroes.

Ovaltine Patrol
2009-03-11, 08:47 PM
Some groups are content to be reactionary: responding to acts of villainy on the part of the monsters. You can hardly be accused of being greedy, genocidal reavers if you're chasing the goblins into the dungeon to rescue their hostages. Also, evil outsiders and undead are almost always fair game.

As for being leeches in regards to society, most classes have access to a skill that allows a character to be productive in other ways: Craft, Perform, or Profession are obvious. Perhaps the Wizard moonlights as a sage for hire using his knowledge skills, and the rogue entertains crowds with acrobatic feats using Balance and Tumble. Divine characters have a fairly obvious "in," towards ingratiating themselves with the community and being useful.

On the other hand, you could always just take the amoral adventurers angle and run with it, even with good characters. They could be wanderers in the tradition of Conan the Barbarian: sparing (and sometimes protecting) the meek and accepting fair surrender from honorable opponents, but taking any opportunity to enrich themselves or satisfy their desires.

Moff Chumley
2009-03-11, 08:47 PM
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of campaigns in which adventurers are mistrusted at the least; I know most of the games I've played in were like that.

Jack_Simth
2009-03-11, 09:27 PM
The ethics of adventuring are very similar to the ethics of defending your kin when there isn't really a higher authority to appeal to beyond your own strength. Frontier justice (or murder), essentially.

There's a pack of goblins raiding herds at night, and the town is looking at starvation if it doesn't stop soon? Stopping the goblins isn't particularly unethical, even if it does mean you kill them and take their stuff to do so (although you can change this pretty easily based on the why of the goblins raids...). If you're looking to get rich quick and hear there's a tribe of goblins in a nearby cave complex? Not so ethical when you kill them and take their stuff.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 09:34 PM
You fail to take into account the base postulate from which all laws and societies derive, "Might Makes Right".

A single group of high level adventurers (if not a single individual) has, in D&D 3.5, the personal power to go toe to toe with armies and win. If society really pisses them off then society will loose. And there are lots of adventurers, supporting and opposing pretty much every thing.

Now throw in the very real threat that a dragon (or something similar) will come along and depopulate your city and it's easy to see why the Adventures are seen as heroes.

I thought Might Makes Right was the primary tenet of gods like Bane. What about the goodly gods like Pelor and Bahamut? Surely they would not condone the slaughter of innocents.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 09:41 PM
The ethics of adventuring are very similar to the ethics of defending your kin when there isn't really a higher authority to appeal to beyond your own strength. Frontier justice (or murder), essentially.

There's a pack of goblins raiding herds at night, and the town is looking at starvation if it doesn't stop soon? Stopping the goblins isn't particularly unethical, even if it does mean you kill them and take their stuff to do so (although you can change this pretty easily based on the why of the goblins raids...). If you're looking to get rich quick and hear there's a tribe of goblins in a nearby cave complex? Not so ethical when you kill them and take their stuff.
It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?

monty
2009-03-11, 09:43 PM
A single group of high level adventurers (if not a single individual) has, in D&D 3.5, the personal power to go toe to toe with armies and win. If society really pisses them off then society will loose. And there are lots of adventurers, supporting and opposing pretty much every thing.

Seems to be a bit of an underestimate. I imagine a single high-level caster could probably take on the entire planet, with the exception of other casters.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-11, 09:43 PM
Adventurers are mercenaries - they are paid by people to engage in dangerous activities (usually involving killing) that their customers could not or would not do on their own.

Adventurers are grave robbers - they seek out ancient tombs and ruins in order to wrest fabulous treasures from their depths while desecrating whatever values the interred possessed in life.

But, most of all, adventurers are useful. They exist in worlds where local authority cannot possibly have the force necessary to safeguard the people under their protection. Abominations of magic aside, there are whole races which not only compete for the same resources but do so with a ruthlessness and brutality that makes strong men flee in terror. Adventurers are warriors who have armed and trained themselves to a degree far greater than many minor lords could afford, and are willing to risk their lives not for a steady wage, but for the possibility of reward if they succeed.

Does this mean they are liked? Heavens no! At best an adventuring party is a freelance special forces squad that is sudden death to anyone the desire. At worst an adventuring party may decide to cash in on their skills and begin harassing locals - getting free food, booze, and tail through intimidation, with the local lords being unable to do a thing about it. Your average peasant should be terrified to see such heavily armed folks walking into their stores and drinking at their bars; not that they can do a thing about it.

As for the "meaningful contribution" issue, you're looking at it wrong. It is fairly difficult to "leech" off of a medieval state's largess; in general they provided little more than security. Adventurers have to pay for everything, just like traders and commoners; if they don't pay for a room they can sleep in the street like the other bums. Adventurers are only a problem if they act up or if they attract BBEGs to torch the village - vagrancy isn't really that big a deal.

Finally, the money issue. Why in the world would any government mind if someone suddenly introduces a large amount of hard currency into the economy? Sure it might up prices in the short run, but it is very hard to have long-term inflation with a currency which is pure specie; eventually the money is spent on goods imported from other areas and the supply of money gets down to whatever it was. Heck, the local lord is going to be more than happy to tax the shopkeepers that deal with adventurers a bit heavier than usual so that more of that gold ends up in his own coffer.

So no, adventuring is not inherently unethical; it is a valuable service in a dark and uncertain world. But adventurers do posses a great deal of power in comparison to most other authorities - how they use it is their greatest ethical concern.

EDIT:

It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?

Halflings are Good - they care about the well-being of other people.

Goblins are Evil - they place their own well-being above that of other people.

In general, farming is hard. It takes a long time to grow a crop, it can only be done under certain conditions, and even if everything else goes right, a chance storm or cold day can ruin an entire season's work. Halflings farm because they think it is wrong to get their sustenance by stealing from other people. Goblins have no problem with stealing from others; in fact, with their natural bonus to stealth it may be easier for them to send out a raiding party to steal some Halfling corn instead of trying to grow enough food for everyone.

As a related case, a Neutral society would try to grow its own food first, but would be willing to raid neighboring communities for food if there was no other option. A Good society is more likely to starve - though individuals may steal and kill as they always do.

monty
2009-03-11, 09:47 PM
It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?

Blame the media for that one. Most goblins don't actually raid, but the ones that do get blown out of proportion.

Accersitus
2009-03-11, 09:49 PM
In our group, the very first campaign in our most used setting was centered around the party uniting all the intelligent humanoid races on a continent.
In this setting even elves are in general feared, dwarves are tolerated at best, and most people just think halflings are children. The main evil in the
setting as a whole are the Chaos Gods from the Warhammer Universe, but they are not well known. This setting is quite large (4x4 +1 sheets of A4 for the Map and still growing),
and in our most recent campaign we were back to a country where anything non human and arcane casters are pretty much killed on sight. Until recently I played a Paladin (of Freedom, variant from UA) who was from the more enlightened part of the setting. It was quite fun trying to find what was actually "the right thing to do", and getting the rest of the party to go along with that. It started getting interesting when we learned there was a group in the country who focused on hunting down and killing most non humans, arcane casters (who they think are tainted by chaos), and those tainted by chaos. This group even got their own prestige class.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 09:49 PM
But what happens when you get people like Kore and the Goblin Slayer from Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes? Sadistic brutes who kill "monsters" because they are "evil." Those orcs could have had families. And dragons have parents too, as Rich Burlew has just showed us.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-11, 09:55 PM
But what happens when you get people like Kore and the Goblin Slayer from Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes? Sadistic brutes who kill "monsters" because they are "evil." Those orcs could have had families. And dragons have parents too, as Rich Burlew has just showed us.

Kore is LN - I seriously doubt he is actually still a Paladin. Goblinslayer is probably LE; he tortures prisoners for his own glee while stoking a culture of fear to cement his own power.

You can find that many people can do Good for bad reasons. Killing a Black Dragon that is ravaging the countryside is Good, but you can seek out that same dragon just to get at its hoard; you will do Good, but not for a Good reason.

And "having families" does not make you Good, and killing people that have families does not make you Evil. Sometimes force is the only answer that people will understand, and (in D&D at least) you can have Just Wars. "Protecting innocents" is a tenet of the Good alignment; even if the goblin warchief has a dozen kids, you are still right to kill him if he's about to slaughter an orphan. Or a woman, or a militiaman defending his town.

Emperor Tippy
2009-03-11, 10:03 PM
I thought Might Makes Right was the primary tenet of gods like Bane. What about the goodly gods like Pelor and Bahamut? Surely they would not condone the slaughter of innocents.

What innocents? In D&D there are races that are quantifiable evil. Divine Command theory is perfectly valid in the D&D world. Things are moral/ethical because the gods say that they are or are not and good and evil are universal forces.

rampaging-poet
2009-03-11, 10:03 PM
It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?

As already pointed out, farming requires holding a fair amount of land for a fair amount of time. Given that the typical goblin is weaker than the typical halfling, as judged by their challenge ratings, the goblins will likely lose should the halflings come in and decide that they want to grow some corn there. The goblins may be good at sneak attacks (as are the halflings, actually), but that doesn't help too much when you're trying to hold territory.
Presumably, after a few generations of fighting over and continuously losing ground to halflings, dwarves, humans, elves, etc., they decided to stop farming and just take what they needed from the people who can farm.

Weezer
2009-03-11, 10:06 PM
It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?

I've played in a campaign with some pretty vicious halflings in it, but to answer your question maybe the goblins haven't developed effective agriculture yet while halflings have it.

The Minx
2009-03-11, 10:07 PM
I think that Alan Moore's comment on what costumed superheroes would be like in a "realistic" world is pretty apt.


Seems to be a bit of an underestimate. I imagine a single high-level caster could probably take on the entire planet, with the exception of other casters.

Um, what? Bit of an exaggeration, there, unless you're utilizing design failures which allow infinite loops... :smallconfused:

krossbow
2009-03-11, 10:08 PM
It all depends on the methods in which you adventure.


If you play it like a bunch of murderous hobos who slaughter anything that crosses their path, yeah, it'll seem a bit unethical.

However, if your characters play things more defensively, only acting to counter evil characters (in which case, those working for them would be enemy combatants and generally fair game), allow enemies to surrender, and try to find the best solution, not neccecarily the quickest one, then your characters are highly justified in their actions.

Jack_Simth
2009-03-11, 10:10 PM
It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?
That's for the DM to decide. There are so many "reasons" someone might decide to take another's stuff without permission it's not funny.

The only proper "answer" to as general a question as the OP posed is "insufficient data" (unless the person answering makes a largish set of assumptions first - do note that *some* assumptions are utterly unavoidable).

monty
2009-03-11, 10:15 PM
What innocents? In D&D there are races that are quantifiable evil. Divine Command theory is perfectly valid in the D&D world. Things are moral/ethical because the gods say that they are or are not and good and evil are universal forces.

True, but most of the "monster" races are not Evil®. In the majority of cases, you aren't fighting devils for the entire campaign.


Um, what? Bit of an exaggeration, there, unless you're utilizing design failures which allow infinite loops... :smallconfused:

Hardly. A core wizard with well-chosen spells could probably take out an arbitrary number of non-casters, and it just gets easier the more books you add.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-11, 10:15 PM
Um, what? Bit of an exaggeration, there, unless you're utilizing design failures which allow infinite loops... :smallconfused:

Well... Tippy is already on this thread, so maybe he can provide a link to one of his many world-destroying builds. I believe one of them was a little girl...

The Minx
2009-03-11, 10:19 PM
Hardly. A core wizard with well-chosen spells could probably take out an arbitrary number of non-casters, and it just gets easier the more books you add.

If you use multiple books, then you are using design failures, since most of them were intended to work with the Core set and not each other.


EDIT: anyway, this is a pretty moot point, since it's not just a matter of a wizard at 20th level and everyone else at 1st level or whatever. Presumably, there will be a continuous spectrum of characters for the entire range, and taking in multiple classes. Any given individual getting out of line could be dealt with by a group of his near-peers, and these in turn by a group of their near-peers and so on down the pecking order.

monty
2009-03-11, 10:23 PM
If you use multiple books, then you are using design failures, since most of them were intended to work with the Core set and not each other.

I'm not talking about combinations; I'm talking about individual spells (for example, the Orb spells, which are perfectly viable for damage on their own). And, as I said, a core wizard would already have a good shot at doing it.

The Minx
2009-03-11, 10:27 PM
I'm not talking about combinations; I'm talking about individual spells (for example, the Orb spells, which are perfectly viable for damage on their own). And, as I said, a core wizard would already have a good shot at doing it.

Whoops, sorry. I added a point to the post you're responding to while you were posting that. See above.

Jack_Simth
2009-03-11, 10:31 PM
Hardly. A core wizard with well-chosen spells could probably take out an arbitrary number of non-casters, and it just gets easier the more books you add.Non-casters? Eventually, yes.

Consider the city generation tables for D&D, though - if you're out to conquer the world, you'll need to figure out how to deal with the significant percentage of Full Casters in your local Metropolis....

monty
2009-03-11, 10:34 PM
EDIT: anyway, this is a pretty moot point, since it's not just a matter of a wizard at 20th level and everyone else at 1st level or whatever. Presumably, there will be a continuous spectrum of characters for the entire range, and taking in multiple classes. Any given individual getting out of line could be dealt with by a group of his near-peers, and these in turn by a group of their near-peers and so on down the pecking order.

Well, I did say non-casters. I don't care how many high-level fighters you have; my money's still on the wizard.

Hell, even if there are casters, it'll probably come out a draw, since by that point everybody's defensive ability far outstrips their offensive.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 10:35 PM
Halflings are Good - they care about the well-being of other people.

Goblins are Evil - they place their own well-being above that of other people.

In general, farming is hard. It takes a long time to grow a crop, it can only be done under certain conditions, and even if everything else goes right, a chance storm or cold day can ruin an entire season's work. Halflings farm because they think it is wrong to get their sustenance by stealing from other people. Goblins have no problem with stealing from others; in fact, with their natural bonus to stealth it may be easier for them to send out a raiding party to steal some Halfling corn instead of trying to grow enough food for everyone.

As a related case, a Neutral society would try to grow its own food first, but would be willing to raid neighboring communities for food if there was no other option. A Good society is more likely to starve - though individuals may steal and kill as they always do.

But what makes the Goblins evil? Why do they get the evil label slapped on them when they're just as capable of doing good as halflings are, and why do halflings get the good label when they can do evil just like goblins can. I'm discussing this same issue on another board that I'm part of a roleplay on, and our DM had this to say.


The real question isn't 'why are we killing these goblins?', but 'why is it the goblins doing the killing?' 'why is it always monstrous races doing the attacking'?

Why DO the monstrous races do evil stuff when they could find less violent and wicked means.

Also, what about those adventurers in the first battle in Goblins? While they weren't evil, they sure weren't merciful to the tribe. What was it that one drow said? "You were put on this earth for only one purpose. To provide XP and gold for us adventurers."

monty
2009-03-11, 10:40 PM
But what makes the Goblins evil? Why do they get the evil label slapped on them when they're just as capable of doing good as halflings are, and why do halflings get the good label when they can do evil just like goblins can. I'm discussing this same issue on another board that I'm part of a roleplay on, and our DM had this to say.

Again, I say blame the media equivalent. They take the few goblins/orcs/whatever who actually do that sort of thing and portray their actions as "normal" for their race. Since most people never actually see one of the "monsters," and when they do, it is usually one of the raiders anyway (I imagine the farmers and whatnot tend to keep to themselves), the illusion spread, and eventually it became so accepted that people never question it even when proof to the contrary is staring them in the face.

Collin152
2009-03-11, 10:44 PM
If you use multiple books, then you are using design failures, since most of them were intended to work with the Core set and not each other.

That's the most valid bit of nonsense I've ever heard, and am conflicted on how to respond to it.
I think I'll do it by saying "Wizards win anyway, unless you're a druid."

Druids, of course, being able to wipe out entire civilizations with one or two spells.


As for ethics, this is the reason I prefer playing heroic Evil characters; no need to worry about whether or not you're justified in killing impedements to your goal.

The Minx
2009-03-11, 10:46 PM
Well, I did say non-casters. I don't care how many high-level fighters you have; my money's still on the wizard.

Hell, even if there are casters, it'll probably come out a draw, since by that point everybody's defensive ability far outstrips their offensive.

Non-casters can still use items, even though the items are made by casters, they still work on them (even though they are less versatile). :smallsmile:

Regardless, the point stands: a society is not simply just low-level peons, and a 20th level caster playing around, the population has a pecking order with each increased level having a lower population than the one preceding it, and so can still keep itself in check.

If the result of a contest is a draw, they'll at least keep each other occupied. :smallwink:

monty
2009-03-11, 10:48 PM
As for ethics, this is the reason I prefer playing heroic Evil characters; no need to worry about whether or not you're justified in killing impedements to your goal.

I've noticed most of the characters I play are either decidedly non-heroic or act like they should be one of the Watchmen.

Saph
2009-03-11, 10:54 PM
As Jack already pointed out, Zousha's original post is so muddled it's a bit difficult to answer.


One tangent in the discussion led me to thinking about just how moral adventuring really is as a profession. I mean, going by the paradigm set by webcomics like Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes, and even Order of the Stick itself

Goblins is pretty much explicitly designed as a "the good guys are the bad guys" comic. It doesn't try to be fair. OotS is a much better example. Are you really saying that Roy, Durkon, Haley, etc. are evil? They don't seem that way to me.


Naturally, this makes adventurers look like freakin' *******s at best, and sadistic, bigoted murderers and robbers at worst.

Which adventurers? Human adventurers, monster adventurers, Good adventurers, Evil adventurers, state adventurers, mercenary adventurers, or one of the other twenty varieties? There are so many groups that generalising in the way you do is hopeless. Be more specific.


Why DO the monstrous races do evil stuff when they could find less violent and wicked means.

First you're saying that the adventurers are evil for trying to kill the innocent monsters, then you're asking why the monsters are acting evil? Make up your mind.

- Saph

RebelRogue
2009-03-11, 11:00 PM
But what makes the Goblins evil? Why do they get the evil label slapped on them when they're just as capable of doing good as halflings are, and why do halflings get the good label when they can do evil just like goblins can.
Because we're playing D&D, not taking a class in Introduction to Social Realism or Moral Philosophy 101 :smalltongue:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 11:04 PM
They've killed countless goblins, who only want a fair place in the world instead of being sword fodder, and a dragon's child. If my people were being hunted for sport, or my child was killed I would view the perpetrators as evil, if that's what you're asking.

The problem I guess is the issue is so muddled that I don't know what to think.

On the one hand, you have monsters being just that, monsters. Wholly evil beings that exist solely to kill, eat, hump, sh*t innocent people.

But then you try to set these monsters up in some sort of social heirarchy, and give them civilizations of their own. If they form societies of their own, and are smarter than the average animal, why do they antagonize other civilized races instead of forming alliances. So you introduce exceptions, and then the waters get murky.

Are the drow all spider-loving dominatrixes? No, because we have characters like Drizzt Do'Urden.

Are goblins all rapacious murderers? No, because we have characters like Big Ears.

I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!

Tiki Snakes
2009-03-11, 11:05 PM
It really leads to the issue of why goblins raid in the first place. They're more than perfectly capable of farming. Why do goblins raid, but halflings don't?

'Goblins' raid and 'Halflings' don't, because Halflings have a better Disguise check.... :wink:

Stephen_E
2009-03-11, 11:07 PM
Adventurers
Finally, the money issue. Why in the world would any government mind if someone suddenly introduces a large amount of hard currency into the economy? Sure it might up prices in the short run, but it is very hard to have long-term inflation with a currency which is pure specie; eventually the money is spent on goods imported from other areas and the supply of money gets down to whatever it was. Heck, the local lord is going to be more than happy to tax the shopkeepers that deal with adventurers a bit heavier than usual so that more of that gold ends up in his own coffer.


Yes, any Govt who knew anything about economics would object to lots of gold ecetre coming into the economy withjout an equivalent increase in producyivity. Adventurers are the economic equivalent of the conquistadoers of historical Spain. They caused massive inflation that was enourmously destructive of Spains economy and society.

Gold has no inherent value in non-modern societies (it is useful for electronics and some other modern apllications) thus suddenly introducing lots of gold which as an assigned value without an actual increase of real wealth in the economy causes huge distortions and rapid inflation in prices of the "real" items (food, housing ecetre).

The theory of hard currency been "good" is based on the concept that there is a set amount existing. Thus the only changes in wealth occuring are due to actual increases in products and productivity. Minor ichanges in species are managable, but major increases in the respective "hard currency" throws this completely out of whack, much like print paper currency without anything backing it up.

Stephen E

The Minx
2009-03-11, 11:11 PM
I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!

You can't. :smallsmile:

As I see it, you have at least three options.

One, go the chessboard route, and simply view the exercise as a game. The enemy creatures are gaming pieces, and you are playing a game.

Two, go the Tolkien route: there the goblins were not truly creatures with free will, they were doomed to follow the path of Evil on account of being created by Morgoth, and whenever a Dark Lord of any sort appeared on the scene they would be fated to flock to them like so many moths to a proverbial flame. There was a reason the "good guys" there were called "the free peoples". Of course, there were also human societies ruled by Sauron, but these were never wantonly slaughtered (in fact at the end of the Return of the King there were a few paragraphs how Aragorn went about dealing with the now-freed human societies ruled by Sauron).

Three, play a morally ambiguous character.


There may be more than these, but I suspect that they'll be permutations of the above. :smallwink:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 11:13 PM
Yes, any Govt who knew anything about economics would object to lots of gold ecetre coming into the economy withjout an equivalent increase in producyivity. Adventurers are the economic equivalent of the conquistadoers of historical Spain. They caused massive inflation that was enourmously destructive of Spains economy and society.

Gold has no inherent value in non-modern societies (it is useful for electronics and some other modern apllications) thus suddenly introducing lots of gold which as an assigned value without an actual increase of real wealth in the economy causes huge distortions and rapid inflation in prices of the "real" items (food, housing ecetre).

The theory of hard currency been "good" is based on the concept that there is a set amount existing. Thus the only changes in wealth occuring are due to actual increases in products and productivity. Minor ichanges in species are managable, but major increases in the respective "hard currency" throws this completely out of whack, much like print paper currency without anything backing it up.

Stephen E

Which is what I was trying to say but didn't have the economic know-how to explain.

Trizap
2009-03-11, 11:14 PM
this thread has given me great ideas for a deconstruction of DnD.......

Saph
2009-03-11, 11:19 PM
I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!

First, most adventurers don't slaughter indiscriminately. The ones that do are pretty much never Good.

But the real answer to your question is: welcome to the world of survival ethics. When over 50% of monsters view humans as a food supplement, human societies that aren't willing and able to fight don't last long.

- Saph

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 11:20 PM
Two, go the Tolkien route: there the goblins were not truly creatures with free will, they were doomed to follow the path of Evil on account of being created by Morgoth, and whenever a Dark Lord of any sort appeared on the scene they would be fated to flock to them like so many moths to a proverbial flame. There was a reason the "good guys" there were called "the free peoples". Of course, there were also human societies ruled by Sauron, but these were never wantonly slaughtered (in fact at the end of the Return of the King there were a few paragraphs how Aragorn went about dealing with the now-freed human societies ruled by Sauron).

The thing is, as I said in my original post, Tolkien later regretted the decisions he'd made when he characterized the orcs. As a Catholic, he figured the orcs couldn't truly be evil unless they were soulless or were created evil, which is something he believed Morgoth, his version of the Devil, didn't have the power to do. So even Tolkien's orcs had some measure of free will, but he didn't get the chance to write about it.

Lappy9000
2009-03-11, 11:21 PM
I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!A world where Good and Evil are definitely objective?

Good races with occasionally Evil members and Evil races with occasionally Good members.

Humans, of course, being neutral.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 11:27 PM
First, most adventurers don't slaughter indiscriminately. The ones that do are pretty much never Good.

But the real answer to your question is: welcome to the world of survival ethics. When over 50% of monsters view humans as a food supplement, human societies that aren't willing and able to fight don't last long.

- Saph

What about the less than 50% of monsters that don't view humans as a food supplement. In 4e, even chromatic dragons are no longer evil across the board.

Saph
2009-03-11, 11:31 PM
What about the less than 50% of monsters that don't view humans as a food supplement. In 4e, even chromatic dragons are no longer evil across the board.

What about them for who? You are way too vague. Do you mean what one of my characters would do? If so, which character?

- Saph

The Minx
2009-03-11, 11:37 PM
The thing is, as I said in my original post, Tolkien later regretted the decisions he'd made when he characterized the orcs. As a Catholic, he figured the orcs couldn't truly be evil unless they were soulless or were created evil, which is something he believed Morgoth, his version of the Devil, didn't have the power to do. So even Tolkien's orcs had some measure of free will, but he didn't get the chance to write about it.

I totally missed that. Well, now I have egg on my face. :smallredface:

In that case, you only have options #1 and #3 remaining, then (unless you figure the evil gods in your setting to be more powerful than Morgoth).


PS: Where did you find that passage by Tolkien, incidentally?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 11:50 PM
What about them for who? You are way too vague. Do you mean what one of my characters would do? If so, which character?

- Saph

I don't know what I'm trying to say anymore! I'm so confused. Why are there comics like Goblins that introduce moral ambiguity in a game where good and evil are black and white and make me worry when I'm fighting a bunch of goblins that cut the throat of a little girl they were holding hostage because our Unaligned warforged fighter rushed them instead of trying to negotiate like my paladin, the sole Good character in a party of either amoral bastards or worshipers of the Raven Queen, was suggesting?!

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-11, 11:51 PM
I totally missed that. Well, now I have egg on my face. :smallredface:

In that case, you only have options #1 and #3 remaining, then (unless you figure the evil gods in your setting to be more powerful than Morgoth).


PS: Where did you find that passage by Tolkien, incidentally?

Um...I don't remember. I think someone on TV Tropes said it in the entry on Tolkien.

FoE
2009-03-11, 11:55 PM
1) OotS paints goblinoids, lizard men, gnolls and their kin as sympathetic, but don't forget that most of the humanoids in the conventional D&D setting are absolutely vicious. Are you going to worry about picking the good gnolls from the bad ones when they're burning down a halfling village? Yeah, that Ancient Black Dragon lost her only son, but he was also a brutal monster who attacked the Order of the Stick as soon as they entered his cave; they had no way of knowing it was occupied.

2) Never forget that for all the creatures that might be good in the D&D world, there are dozens of races that are pure evil. Demons, devils, hags, most forms of undead, mind flayers, aboleths, quicklings, formorians, lamia, kuo-toa, sahuagin, oni, banshrae, yuan ti, etc. And many other monsters serve these villains unwittingly, like golems.

3) Despite their "murderous hobo" reputation, adventurers still do a lot of good in the world. They save countless lives and defeat numerous evils. Depending on their campaign, they might save the world. The good should never outweigh the evil that adventurers might do, but at least it should be considered.

All this means, Zousha, is that you should consider whether or not you're really in the right when you get hired to clear out the local kobold caves. But keep this in mind: for every good goblin, there are about ten other really bad ones.

If the group of goblins you fought held hostage and then slit the throat of a young girl, then I would suggest they were not good goblins, and you should have killed every last one of the bastards. Your problem is not with ethics, but with party discipline; your warforged fighter should not attacked if your Paladin was trying to bargain for her life.

Deepblue706
2009-03-11, 11:55 PM
Since adventuring only requires people to be seeking fortune in some bold manner, I don't see how one can determine it to be inherently good or bad. That is, unless you use the version of the word that is supposed to be taken as "a person who seeks power, wealth, or social rank by unscrupulous means".

Are there really that many DMs that expect players not to ask questions about their actions that this is really an issue?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-12, 12:29 AM
I don't know what I'm trying to say anymore! I'm so confused. Why are there comics like Goblins that introduce moral ambiguity in a game where good and evil are black and white and make me worry when I'm fighting a bunch of goblins that cut the throat of a little girl they were holding hostage because our Unaligned warforged fighter rushed them instead of trying to negotiate like my paladin, the sole Good character in a party of either amoral bastards or worshipers of the Raven Queen, was suggesting?!

Ah. There are comics like Goblins because they are unusual. The goblins in Goblins are not MM goblins; not a one of them is Evil - why Big Ears is a Paladin for goodness sake!

In D&D, monsters are given always/usually alignments that depict their societies. Society is not automatically Good or Neutral; Evil societies have been depicted in many works of fiction. Intelligence does not make you Good or Neutral either; Intelligent Evil people are likewise common.

You can, by the way, depict non-Evil forms of traditionally Evil races - Drizzit being the classic example. However, they are rare at best and you are certainly not likely to run into them in a random goblin den.

But your problem seems to stem from a "what if" scenario. Goblins are usually Evil, but "what if" these particular goblins are not? Like life, you must judge people by their actions - if the goblin just slit a little girl's throat, he is probably Evil. Likewise, everyone acts in accordance to their alignments - while you may be Good, you must accept that the rest of your party is Neutral and does not place as high a value on Good concerns (protection of the innocent, sanctity of life) as you do. The most you can do is to convince them to act more morally than they normally would and refuse to assist them when they are doing something beyond the pale. That's D&D :smallsmile:

Waspinator
2009-03-12, 12:59 AM
As someone who has read the Pathfinder "Burnt Offerings" adventure, I can totally believe there to be goblin (or whatever other monster) populations that are best dealt with through killing them all. That doesn't mean that every setting or population is like that, though.

Turcano
2009-03-12, 01:55 AM
Also, what about those adventurers in the first battle in Goblins? While they weren't evil, they sure weren't merciful to the tribe. What was it that one drow said? "You were put on this earth for only one purpose. To provide XP and gold for us adventurers."

Well, that may not be a "misapplied objective morality" issue so much as an "only four-to-eight people in the multiverse actually matter and the rest can go hang" issue.

Anyway, the average adventurer is part mercenary, part bounty hunter, and part tomb raider. Real-life people in such professions develop reputations fairly quickly, and such reputations will tightly govern one's future career.

BlueWizard
2009-03-12, 01:56 AM
I love to play up the realness of my monsters personalities. Though at times a hoard of goblins has to be a hoard of goblins for playing purposes.

Fhaolan
2009-03-12, 02:47 AM
You have several scenarios, all of which exist in my personal campaign world.

1) The race in question is, in fact, pure evil. This covers the devils and whatnot in my campaign which are treated as 'elemental evil'. They aren't alive, or mortal, in the exact same way air elementals, earth elementals, etc. aren't alive or mortal. They are solidified evil, and for one of them to change alignments they would need to change the fundamental stuff they are constructed from.

2) The race in question is completely alien, and does not have any understanding of morality in the terms we use. This covers the Mind Flayers and Beholders, which in my campaign come from the Outer Beyond. They don't recognize anything other themselves as being sentient, anymore than the average human cares about the welfare of cockroaches. They may have alignments, but they don't express them in ways we would understand.

3) The race in question has been modified by magic, divine will, or some other factor so that they have to actively resist taking actions that others would define as evil. This covers the Kreen (a collection of psionic insectile races based on Thi-kreen and others), who were modified by the gods to experiment with the concept of pure intelligence in a mortal race. All emotional and moral basis was deliberately removed, to the point that despite their high intelligence they act more like machines than people. Also there are the Sahaghin, which the gods modified to experiment with the exact opposite, creatures of pure emotion and ravenous hatred of all other life. It is technically possible for an individual of these races to be 'good', but it's extremely unlikely.

3) The race in question has a particularly brutal culture, probably a left-over from the particularly brutal regions where they 'thrive'. This covers Orcs (which in my campaign world is a blend of Orcs and Bugbears, as I don't have 'goblinoids' as such), who live in regions so mountainous that nobody else could survive there. They do trade with other cultures, but have a serious 'Might makes Right' attitude which means those other cultures have to make sure they give the impression of being able to defend themselves when they make those trades.

Because I don't have traditional goblins or kobolds, I don't have any cannonfodder races which the adventurers can slaughter without moral issue. My world just isn't set up that way.

FatR
2009-03-12, 03:16 AM
With all these issues, it's a wonder adventurers in D&D aren't treated like superheroes were in Watchmen, despised by the general populace and treated with suspicion. How can such a profession, which condones and even encourages all sorts of immoral behavior, especially murder, robbery and racism, be allowed to exist by any sane society?!
Three reasons. 1)They kill superhumanly-powerful things that eat people. 2)Also, they kill superhumanly-powerful things that eat people. 3)And finally, they kill superhumanly-powerful things that eat people. As about viewing their actions being "murder" and "racism" - screw that noise. Humanoids will only be able to allow themselves such niceties towards "always Evil" (and even "usually Evil") and "Neutral hungry" things when said things are completely and utterly crushed as an actual threat, which is not the case in typical DnD setting. Therefore, it is not a society that does or does not allow adventurers to exist, it is adventurers who allow a society to exist in the world, chock-full of hungry dragons and rampaging orc hordes.

Also, they can just kick society's ass, because they are, by definition, the toughest bunch around. They are medieval nobility with superpowers, not some measly robbers. Note, that even in official settings all positions of real power are crewed by adventurers (even if they do not identify themselves as such to distinguish themselves from adventurers as antisocial vagabonds).

Satyr
2009-03-12, 03:31 AM
The problem of D&D ethics is the ridiculously stupid assumption that there are something like objective morals and that it uses extremely infanitile yet loaded terms like "good" and "evil".

The alignment system has three - rather extreme - shortcomings. The first one is the idea of objective morals. The second is the idea that whole societies - instead of individuals - can be categorized along these very general terms. And the third one is the idea that a person's morality is static and more or less only changes under stress or through major traumas. These asumptions are utterly and completely wrong - apart from the fact, that a simple black and white world view is a good sign of a simplified narrative.

The first folly is the most obvious one - when there is anything proven in dozens of alignment discussions and flame wars, than that morals are highly dependable on the involved party's point of view, cultural background and conventions. There is no such thing as a superordained, obective morals, only some points so general that everyone can agree on under the right circumstances - it is easy to come to an agreement about "Killing is wrong" in general. Taken out of the abstract and put in a direct context - is it wrong to kill the man who is going to rape your sister, to take a rather blunt example - the agreement is going to melt away. So, if you discuss the ethics of adventuring, on which base do you do it? Do you discuss it on the ethics of the players? The ingame conventions and ideas? The crappy metalevel alignment rules?

The second utterly wrong premise is the idea of a general, usual moral behavior which can be projected to be the usual moral behavior among a certain group of people. Basing this on their ethnic background is an additional problem, but the relevant fact is: Even with an identical cultural background, the idea of a moral life differ widely among people and will always do.
I am not talking about actual behaviour yet, only about the perception and concept of a "good" behaviour. Morals are a result of many, many factors, from sociocultural upbringing to personality and current conventions. Due to this multitude of influences, a generalisation of them will always fall short.
The most relevant or even only relevant object of discussion about morals is the indiviual person, not without the social and societal environment, but not on a broadly generalised level. Let's face it: the claim that goblins are "usually evil" moves the same intellectual level and uses the same properties as the many racial stereotypes we know and love from the real world.

The third problem is the assumption that people are static or consequent in their regards of moral behaviour or practices; they aren't. I am not talking about "take away their food and security and see how the world's nicest family turns into the Lord of the Flies", which is also true, but a more extreme situation. What I am talking about are double standards (which everyone has), different moods, different behavior within and outside of close social contacts and so on.
People are so easy manipulable on a lower level, because in many non-essential questions, situational "moral" decisions are highly variable and often depending on almost arbitrary minimal influences.
So, generalising moral claims always come too short, and are not able to grasp the actual problem.

FatR
2009-03-12, 03:41 AM
But what makes the Goblins evil? Why do they get the evil label slapped on them when they're just as capable of doing good as halflings are, and why do halflings get the good label when they can do evil just like goblins can. I'm discussing this same issue on another board that I'm part of a roleplay on, and our DM had this to say.
Guess what? People in DnD world don't care about all that. Well, except for philosophers, probably. Whether goblins are infused with elemental Evil or born sociopathic or victimized by circumstances does not matter. What does matter is the fact that they are far, far more likely to kill you without provocation and take your stuff than halflings. They are a threat to you, and a threat to your race, because they are agressive and fast-breeding. Books state this very directly from edition to edition. And don't bring up completely irrelevant examples (like from webcomics) to disprove this. You can change what the goblins are for your own setting - but in vanilla DnD they are not beings you can coexist peacefully, period. Either at all or until you crush them in battle and force them to adopt your values (which presumably include "peace=good, trade=good, raiding=bad", if you're nice enough to try correcting their ways instead of wiping them out when you can).

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-12, 03:43 AM
I agree with Zousha here (I tend to ignore listed alignments in my games while using whichever creatures I feel are appropriate as villians; for instance, 1 Goblin tribe in the first game I DMed were xenophobic sociopaths who believed that anyone who went through their forest deserved to die, but NPCs in a nearby town made it clear that they were atypical and other Goblins who featured in the game weren't violent or evil). I agree with all of Satyr's points on this issue as well.

FatR
2009-03-12, 04:00 AM
They've killed countless goblins, who only want a fair place in the world instead of being sword fodder, and a dragon's child.
This is... untruth. There is no non-evil goblins in OotS proper that "only want a fair place in the world". Not a single one. All of them without exceptions are portrayed as warlike thugs at best. Because Xykon and Redcloak took care to exterminate/brainwash everyone who thought otherwise, of course. But this hardly matters to PCs. The dragon likewise attacked first and without provocation.


I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!
If you have so much pity for these poor, poor killing machines, how about... not slaughtering them indiscriminately? Because good adventurers sure don't do that. Like, ever. Or can you show me one freaking example of this from any TSR or WotC book?

FatR
2009-03-12, 04:10 AM
I don't know what I'm trying to say anymore! I'm so confused. Why are there comics like Goblins that introduce moral ambiguity in a game where good and evil are black and white and make me worry when I'm fighting a bunch of goblins that cut the throat of a little girl they were holding hostage because our Unaligned warforged fighter rushed them instead of trying to negotiate like my paladin, the sole Good character in a party of either amoral bastards or worshipers of the Raven Queen, was suggesting?!
There is no moral ambiguity in "Goblins". Well, except where Duv is concerned... maybe. As about the main storyline (from the moment there was one) just reskin goblin characters with human faces and human characters with goblin faces in your imagination. Ta-dam! There is yours vanilla DnD.

Zen Master
2009-03-12, 04:11 AM
Ethics ... hm

Goblins raid because they are stupid (as in uneducated), prolific and lazy. They do produce some food, and they are also likely to have slaves to the things they can't be arsed to do themselves.

But they live in caves, and have neither the planning skills or the enginering to expand. Also, they are too lazy.

So given ten or twenty years, any goblin settlement will overpopulate, and they will starve. Being fearful but aggressive, they will look for an easy target with lots of food. Being none too picky, many things rate as food, including the inhabitants of nearby farms and settlements.

Goblins raid - and those raided respond, culling the population of goblins. Until next time.

Are goblins evil? Hm - it says so on the page, but their evil isn't the reason for their raids. You could say their stupidity is the reason for the raids. But what if they were smarter?

Hobgoblins are larger, smarter and better organised than the regular or garden-variety goblins.

Hobgoblins have societies and culture somewhat reminiscent of ancient Egypt. They have a massive slave economy, with as much as 5-10 slaves for every hobgoblin. The majority of these slaves are very much menial - and are smaller and weaker races than the hobgoblins themselves, in order to prevent an uprising.

Hobgoblin society is very productive indeed. It may well be that a market economy performs better still - but this is meaningless to the hobgoblins, who get to do the stuff they like (go to war) while also having all the products of the stuff they don't like (like labor).

Hobgoblins societies are likely to be ordered much like human slave economies have been in the past. Personally I imagine an emperor advised by a senate - with the emperor being the mightiest warlord around, and the senate composed of all the lesser warlords. A balance would exist - the emperor would need some given number of senators to back him, in order to rule effectively. Without backing, he would topple, and be replaced.

Hobgoblin society wouldn't raid. They would conquer. With the ability to plan ahead, and less of a tendency to uncontrolled breeding, they would march on human cities - not to steal and plunder, but for the greater glory of Hobgoblingdom.

It this regard, they can very well be likened to the human kingdoms they attack.

Whenever this sort of thing comes up, it leads to the invariable reversal.

Are we good? If we do all the things the evil guys do - what is it that makes us the good guys?

(here of course I'm speaking of human society in ancient history - ancient Egypt of Rome were hardly rolemodels of morals and ethics by todays standards)

Myou
2009-03-12, 04:14 AM
I just send my players against evil opponents and tell them that in the D&D world killing evil beings is a good act. It seems to clear most of the problems up.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-12, 04:19 AM
This is... untruth. There is no non-evil goblins in OotS proper that "only want a fair place in the world". Not a single one. All of them without exceptions are portrayed as warlike thugs at best. Because Xykon and Redcloak took care to exterminate/brainwash everyone who thought otherwise, of course. But this hardly matters to PCs. The dragon likewise attacked first and without provocation.

You should check out Start of Darkness; ironically, the goal of all goblins is to "want a fair place in the world." That alone is not a spoiler - a spoiler would be to describe their plan to achieve this end :smallamused:

But a few points about alignment generally:
- Satyr's first point is a matter of taste, the second is a denial of D&D assumptions (in D&D you can model entire civilizations off the alignment system) and the third one may consider the alignment system too narrowly.
The alignment system paints things with a very broad brush - check out this quote from the SRD

Alignment is a tool for developing your character’s identity. It is not a straitjacket for restricting your character. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent.
What this means is that it can be used to broadly describe things. For example, to call a nation "Lawful Good" implies that the rules and mores are set up to reinforce LG behavior; laws are written with benevolence in mind, and the protection of the innocent and sanctity of life is highly regarded. Does this mean everyone is LG? No, but it means that folks with beliefs compatible with LG get along best in that society. This is why you see more friendly shopkeepers than cutthroat gangsters in such societies.

A odd quirk of Evil societies is that they don't tolerate folks who don't go along with the program very well. Chaotic individuals in LE societies tend to be executed of course, but the poor LG shopkeeper is going to quickly find himself on the bottom rung of society while the less ethical members of society clamber over him in the hierarchy. This is why Evil societies have a much narrower range of moralities than Good ones - when your neighbor is more likely to stab you than hug you, being a "love thy neighbor" type won't get you very far.

This runs into the "static morality" point. As noted above, alignment doesn't assume you'll always be consistent; it merely notes the big signposts in your life. Whether you're in a good mood or a bad mood, a LG person isn't going to kill an innocent person out of hand. Even in a good mood, a CN person isn't going to join a monastery and stick with it for years at a time. As Satyr correctly notes, people are easily manipulated when it comes to small matters - that's because there isn't a clear moral answer (or even much guidance) for the "small stuff."

- Using alignments does not turn your world into a cardboard setting. Goblins can have as much culture and personality as you want to give them, whether you call 'em Evil or not. As I've said before, alignment is a very helpful shorthand for conveying general roleplaying tips for a wide variety of entities, from individuals to nations; use it as a guideline, not a straight-jacket.

lord_khaine
2009-03-12, 04:21 AM
I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!


there is a simple trick to it, its called slaughter people based on what they do instead of what they are.

FatR
2009-03-12, 04:34 AM
You should check out Start of Darkness; ironically, the goal of all goblins is to "want a fair place in the world."
I checked it. I think, this is obvious BS used by the Dark One to justify waging war on other races. As well as things, like killing those goblins who actually got a fair place in the world by, you know, living in peace with humans instead of attacking them on sight; or cooperating with a lich who kills/sacrifices/animates goblinoids for giggles; or - potentially - erasing from existence every last goblin who ever lived.

Kish
2009-03-12, 04:39 AM
lord_khaine has it right.

But then, with your group, it sounds like that might be a problem. Maybe the answer for you should be either "play a different, either Unaligned or outright evil, character who fits in better with the rest of the group" or "find a different gaming group," depending on which of those you can live with.

Ellye
2009-03-12, 04:45 AM
"Hey, that dragon totally attacked me first. That's completely evil and he obviously deserved to die. The fact that I was invading his home to steal his possessions is completely irrelevant."
That's how most adventures are.

kamikasei
2009-03-12, 06:06 AM
What innocents? In D&D there are races that are quantifiable evil. Divine Command theory is perfectly valid in the D&D world. Things are moral/ethical because the gods say that they are or are not and good and evil are universal forces.

That doesn't make any sense. Divine command morality would have it that whatever the gods command is good. That can't coexist with an objective good and evil such as you have in D&D, where it's possible for a god to be objectively evil.

The closest you can come to "divine command" morality is "well, Pelor is a good god, so we can be pretty confident that his commands are good". If you can judge something to be evil on its own merits (and you can) it doesn't become good because your god tells you to do it.


But what makes the Goblins evil? Why do they get the evil label slapped on them when they're just as capable of doing good as halflings are, and why do halflings get the good label when they can do evil just like goblins can. I'm discussing this same issue on another board that I'm part of a roleplay on, and our DM had this to say.

I think you have two problems here. First, you're assuming that others here consider it good and moral behaviour for adventurers to kill monsters and monstrous-race NPCs who aren't actually doing anyone any harm, simply because of their race. This is incorrect. Secondly, I think you're filtering this too much through your acknowledged paladin-fanboyism - the pinnacle of goodness is not the standard of morality you have to measure up to to be simply "good-not-neutral".

There are all kinds of things adventurers can do - fighting off the raiders harrassing a community, uprooting evil cultists, slaying an evil dragon, banishing a malign spirit from a crypt - that are good acts and something only they can readily do. In any given case there may be a more good solution than "kick the door down and kick evil ass", but not doing the most good thing doesn't make the adventurers evil. On the other hand, there are other things - jumping straight to lethal force when encountering someone on their own territory, killing non-combatants or prisoners, etc. - that would make adventurers evil. You seem to be assuming that all adventurers behave a certain (bad) way, and this is condoned by all who say you can be an ethical adventurer. A lot depends on the behaviour of the group, and the assumptions of the setting.

Eliminate the racial question entirely. Imagine a setting where there are only humans - and, okay, demons and actual monsters. Ask yourself if you could see adventuring as (at least possibly) ethical in such a setting. Why does adding in other races change that, if you think it does, assuming the adventurers don't suddenly become genocidal racists?

Tempest Fennac
2009-03-12, 06:14 AM
I agree with kamikasei. Adding to what I was saying earlier, I'd argue that, when I'm DMing, I have the final say on whether any creatures are evil or not rather then being bound by what WotC say. I think the sole reason they had some creatures listed as "good" or "evil" is for the convenience of DMs who prefer thins to be highly structured.

Greymane
2009-03-12, 06:44 AM
I liked how Oracle_Hunter put it.

That said, when it comes to evil creatures with cultures in our games, we figure their patron deity has a lot to do with it as well.

Take Gruumsh for example. He teaches his people to make unceasing war upon enemies of orcs (going off of the Faerun Dogma for him in Faiths and Pantheons), and that anyone too cowardly or weak to fight and take lands, should be put to the spear.

Conclusion? Sleep in past the weekly raid and High Priest Gruk will break you.

horseboy
2009-03-12, 06:48 AM
But what makes the Goblins evil? Why do they get the evil label slapped on them when they're just as capable of doing good as halflings are, and why do halflings get the good label when they can do evil just like goblins can. I'm discussing this same issue on another board that I'm part of a roleplay on, and our DM had this to say.
Why DO the monstrous races do evil stuff when they could find less violent and wicked means.
Because you're thinking of them as humans in rubber suits. They aren't necessarily so. They can just as easily be non-cursorial ambush predators with a genetic drive to establish dominance. Ultimately you'd have two choices, either kill the buggers or submit to their rule. It's not ambiguous, it's a race to apex predator.

kamikasei
2009-03-12, 06:50 AM
I don't know what I'm trying to say anymore! I'm so confused. Why are there comics like Goblins that introduce moral ambiguity in a game where good and evil are black and white...

It's a mistake to try to reconcile Goblins, OOTS, the default assumptions of the game, and any particular table's assumptions. Firstly and most obviously, Goblins and OOTS are both parody and commentary; they are not how you're supposed to imagine characters in a game actually thinking and behaving. Both, for example, have characters in combats fighting for their lives cracking jokes and bantering as if they were players gathered around a table rolling dice. Your average table - unless playing pure hack-and-slash, in which case who cares about ethics? - have more OOC/IC separation than that.

The "moral ambiguity" in Goblins comes from taking a traditional sword-fodder race, taking the most blameless and inoffensive possible example of them, and pitting them against adventurers who are parodies of the worst stereotypes of sociopathic kill-and-steal behaviour. This ambiguity does not apply in a game where the adventurers are brave individuals who are risking their lives to battle a legitimate threat to innocent bystanders from ruthless marauders (or whatever).

Now, there are valid criticisms to be made of the way many groups can get out of touch with what, in character, they're actually doing and fall in to a "look, an enemy, it's a goblin, kill it!" without thinking to try negotiation or peaceful overtures where they might work. But that's not something inherent to adventuring, just a group dynamic.


Three pages in, and still no mention of the Dungeonomicon (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547) and the Heroic Age 'we raid them, they raid us back' morality of D&D? :smallconfused:

The Dungeonomicon makes basic assumptions about morality and ethics (to start with, pretty much throwing out the idea of objective good and evil) which thoroughly contradict the OP's views as stated here and elsewhere. It would only serve to convince him that adventuring is evil, but condoned by society.

bosssmiley
2009-03-12, 06:53 AM
Three pages in, and still no mention of the Dungeonomicon (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547) and the Heroic Age 'we raid them, they raid us back' morality of D&D? :smallconfused:

edit: Ok, so the OP wants to talk about the ethics of a bunch of tomb robbers and hired killers operating in what is essentially a barbaric Hobbesian world. I'm sure there's lots that can be said about the comparative ethics of such things. Whether the conclusions to be drawn are any more palatable to the OP's sensibilities than the practices of the Wild West, or of ancient slave-holding cultures, is another matter entirely...

Like it or not, the D&D world is a nastily Darwinian place where power is right. The game mechanics illustrate this all the way back to 0E, and about 30 years of commentary and background writing supports what the mechanics say.

Fixer
2009-03-12, 07:02 AM
Also, what about those adventurers in the first battle in Goblins? While they weren't evil, they sure weren't merciful to the tribe. What was it that one drow said? "You were put on this earth for only one purpose. To provide XP and gold for us adventurers."
Let me see if I get this straight, you are trying to use comics to discuss realistic moral and ethical issues related to adventuring and wondering why your arguments are going nowhere?


I'm confused! If there are good people amongst monsters, then how can you justify the indiscriminate slaughter of them simply because of what they are?!No one is advocating the indiscriminate slaughter of entire races. Where are you coming up with that conclusion?


What about the less than 50% of monsters that don't view humans as a food supplement. In 4e, even chromatic dragons are no longer evil across the board.Are we discussing 3.5 or 4e? In 4e alignments are optional. Do us all a favor and narrow your focus to something that can be discussed, instead of smokescreening with data from so many different sources that you cannot be argued with.



Ethics ... hm

Goblins raid because they are stupid (as in uneducated), prolific and lazy. They do produce some food, and they are also likely to have slaves to the things they can't be arsed to do themselves.

But they live in caves, and have neither the planning skills or the enginering to expand. Also, they are too lazy.

So given ten or twenty years, any goblin settlement will overpopulate, and they will starve. Being fearful but aggressive, they will look for an easy target with lots of food. Being none too picky, many things rate as food, including the inhabitants of nearby farms and settlements.

Goblins raid - and those raided respond, culling the population of goblins. Until next time.

Are goblins evil? Hm - it says so on the page, but their evil isn't the reason for their raids. You could say their stupidity is the reason for the raids. But what if they were smarter?

Hobgoblins are larger, smarter and better organised than the regular or garden-variety goblins.

Hobgoblins have societies and culture somewhat reminiscent of ancient Egypt. They have a massive slave economy, with as much as 5-10 slaves for every hobgoblin. The majority of these slaves are very much menial - and are smaller and weaker races than the hobgoblins themselves, in order to prevent an uprising.

Hobgoblin society is very productive indeed. It may well be that a market economy performs better still - but this is meaningless to the hobgoblins, who get to do the stuff they like (go to war) while also having all the products of the stuff they don't like (like labor).

Hobgoblins societies are likely to be ordered much like human slave economies have been in the past. Personally I imagine an emperor advised by a senate - with the emperor being the mightiest warlord around, and the senate composed of all the lesser warlords. A balance would exist - the emperor would need some given number of senators to back him, in order to rule effectively. Without backing, he would topple, and be replaced.

Hobgoblin society wouldn't raid. They would conquer. With the ability to plan ahead, and less of a tendency to uncontrolled breeding, they would march on human cities - not to steal and plunder, but for the greater glory of Hobgoblingdom.

It this regard, they can very well be likened to the human kingdoms they attack.

Whenever this sort of thing comes up, it leads to the invariable reversal.

Are we good? If we do all the things the evil guys do - what is it that makes us the good guys?

(here of course I'm speaking of human society in ancient history - ancient Egypt of Rome were hardly rolemodels of morals and ethics by todays standards)THIS is a great post that one can reply to that (I believe) asks the questions you are trying to ask.

Any society's moral standards are based on how they treat those weaker than themselves. If they treat those weaker than themselves with derision, scorn, brutality, or bullying, they are considered evil. If they treat those weaker than themselves with kindness, compassion, assistance and training, they are considered good. If they leave them largely to their own troubles and behave in a mildly opportunistic fashion (not doing harm intentionally) they are considered neutral.



"Hey, that dragon totally attacked me first. That's completely evil and he obviously deserved to die. The fact that I was invading his home to steal his possessions is completely irrelevant."
That's how most irresponsible adventures are.Editted for correction. Anyone who fails to be held accountable for their own actions is irresponsible.

If you break into someone's house and then get shot at, that doesn't make your shooting back unjustified. In the dragon's home example, first you get the heck out, then you try to find out what went wrong (if you didn't know it was a dragon's house). If you went into the house of a dragon for the sole purpose of stealing from them, the dragon would be justified in attacking you and you in defending yourself, but neither side would be behaving evil or good in that example. Both are acting in their survival mode.

Tengu_temp
2009-03-12, 07:04 AM
Gah, should've noticed this thread sooner - I won't say anything new now. Ah well, here it goes anyway.

Most good- and neutral-aligned adventurers don't just go around killing everything they meet. They accept jobs such as "save us from the orc raiders" or "take the hostage back from the bandits". If orc raiders kill and plunder for a living, they are evil and it's perfectly reasonable to kill them in defense. Yeah, sometimes adventurers enter territories of various creatures that attack them just because of that, but guess what? If someone enters your turf and your first reaction is not to try to communicate, but to try to rip their guts out, you're either a wild beast or pretty evil.

Also, kamikasei and FatR make very good points here. You should probably read their posts, not mine.

kamuishirou
2009-03-12, 07:32 AM
Gah, should've noticed this thread sooner - I won't say anything new now. Ah well, here it goes anyway.

Most good- and neutral-aligned adventurers don't just go around killing everything they meet. They accept jobs such as "save us from the orc raiders" or "take the hostage back from the bandits". If orc raiders kill and plunder for a living, they are evil and it's perfectly reasonable to kill them in defense. Yeah, sometimes adventurers enter territories of various creatures that attack them just because of that, but guess what? If someone enters your turf and your first reaction is not to try to communicate, but to try to rip their guts out, you're either a wild beast or pretty evil.

Also, kamikasei and FatR make very good points here. You should probably read their posts, not mine.


Ditto.

I've walked away from a dungeon because the elves told us to leave and what we were trying to do was wrong. They weren't attacking or initiating any action. So we turned and left, figuring there has to be another way to cure the disease.

Three cheers for the DM anti-railroad! (He just had to spend a few minutes to think of something else :).)

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 07:53 AM
Let me see if I get this straight, you are trying to use comics to discuss realistic moral and ethical issues related to adventuring and wondering why your arguments are going nowhere?
They're the only examples I can think of. C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain doesn't cover issues like this, and I have only taken two philosophy courses so far.

No one is advocating the indiscriminate slaughter of entire races. Where are you coming up with that conclusion?
I was under the impression that the system encourages it.

Are we discussing 3.5 or 4e? In 4e alignments are optional. Do us all a favor and narrow your focus to something that can be discussed, instead of smokescreening with data from so many different sources that you cannot be argued with.
I thought this issue was something that could be discussed irregardless of edition. I'm playing 4e right now, if that helps any.

THIS is a great post that one can reply to that (I believe) asks the questions you are trying to ask.

Any society's moral standards are based on how they treat those weaker than themselves. If they treat those weaker than themselves with derision, scorn, brutality, or bullying, they are considered evil. If they treat those weaker than themselves with kindness, compassion, assistance and training, they are considered good. If they leave them largely to their own troubles and behave in a mildly opportunistic fashion (not doing harm intentionally) they are considered neutral.
But why don't all of them follow a moral standard of behavior, instead of a few? I don't mean to Godwin the thread, but the Nuremberg trials happened for a reason, and that's because what the Nazis did was completely and inarguably wrong. Alignment or no, there's a standard of behavior that everyone in the world should try and aspire to if we hope to survive as a species.

Editted for correction. Anyone who fails to be held accountable for their own actions is irresponsible.

If you break into someone's house and then get shot at, that doesn't make your shooting back unjustified. In the dragon's home example, first you get the heck out, then you try to find out what went wrong (if you didn't know it was a dragon's house). If you went into the house of a dragon for the sole purpose of stealing from them, the dragon would be justified in attacking you and you in defending yourself, but neither side would be behaving evil or good in that example. Both are acting in their survival mode.
That doesn't make the stealing or killing right.

FatR
2009-03-12, 07:57 AM
Three pages in, and still no mention of the Dungeonomicon (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547) and the Heroic Age 'we raid them, they raid us back' morality of D&D? :smallconfused:
Dungeonomicon operates on basic assumptions that have nothing in common with basic assumptions of D&D as represented in official books. This is true even if you think that Dungeonomicon's assumptions make more sense.

kamikasei
2009-03-12, 07:58 AM
But why don't all of them follow a moral standard of behavior, instead of a few?

Why doesn't every society in the modern world and throughout history agree on a common standard of good and evil?

I mean, we could get in to that question, but it seems pretty tenuously related to "is adventuring unethical?".

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 08:05 AM
I think you have two problems here. First, you're assuming that others here consider it good and moral behaviour for adventurers to kill monsters and monstrous-race NPCs who aren't actually doing anyone any harm, simply because of their race. This is incorrect. Secondly, I think you're filtering this too much through your acknowledged paladin-fanboyism - the pinnacle of goodness is not the standard of morality you have to measure up to to be simply "good-not-neutral".
I try to measure up to the pinnacle of goodness in the game because I'm too weak and selfish to do so in real life.

There are all kinds of things adventurers can do - fighting off the raiders harrassing a community, uprooting evil cultists, slaying an evil dragon, banishing a malign spirit from a crypt - that are good acts and something only they can readily do. In any given case there may be a more good solution than "kick the door down and kick evil ass", but not doing the most good thing doesn't make the adventurers evil. On the other hand, there are other things - jumping straight to lethal force when encountering someone on their own territory, killing non-combatants or prisoners, etc. - that would make adventurers evil. You seem to be assuming that all adventurers behave a certain (bad) way, and this is condoned by all who say you can be an ethical adventurer. A lot depends on the behaviour of the group, and the assumptions of the setting.
And that comes from media I've seen other than the game itself.

Eliminate the racial question entirely. Imagine a setting where there are only humans - and, okay, demons and actual monsters. Ask yourself if you could see adventuring as (at least possibly) ethical in such a setting. Why does adding in other races change that, if you think it does, assuming the adventurers don't suddenly become genocidal racists?
Well, when you put it that way, it makes it seem more ethical, yes. But when you introduce races who may or may not be evil, you can't get a clear read on them. Paladins in 3.5 had it easy, you could just detect and know if someone could be reasoned with or not. 4e doesn't have that, so I have to be careful to make sure that the kindly inkeeper doesn't mean to stab me in the back, or that there might be a chance that the goblins might let the girl go.

When those goblins cut that little girl's throat, I was as repusled with the players as my character was with the other characters. A little girl, who might have had parents huddled up in the church wondering if she was okay, and the party just charged in with no thought to her safety. They let her die, and then when I (both me and the character) got angry, they brushed it off saying either there was nothing we could have done to get the goblins to let her go (the warforged and the Raven Queen worshipers), or that I wasn't thinking things through and should shut up (the traumatized rogue and the antisocial wizard).

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 08:12 AM
Why doesn't every society in the modern world and throughout history agree on a common standard of good and evil?

I mean, we could get in to that question, but it seems pretty tenuously related to "is adventuring unethical?".

If there's a universal standard of morality, then all should adhere to it. Even adventurers. Even orcs. And I thought every society in the modern world and throughout history agreed on a common standard of good and evil. Killing for no reason is wrong. Stealing for any reason is wrong. Lying is wrong. Respect your parents, stuff like that. Don't all societies have rules enforcing that sort of thing?

Narmoth
2009-03-12, 08:40 AM
there is a simple trick to it, its called slaughter people based on what they do instead of what they are.

I like that one very much.
I've also run by a retaliation policy, where I never attack first, but try to negotiate in stead. This have led to a few stupid situations, like when we charge into a room with a vashar sorceres and her undead servant and I try to talk us out of the situation after the group paladin killed their table.

Of course it ends with a fight, but at least I put an effort in not killing them

MeklorIlavator
2009-03-12, 08:44 AM
If there's a universal standard of morality, then all should adhere to it. Even adventurers. Even orcs. And I thought every society in the modern world and throughout history agreed on a common standard of good and evil. Killing for no reason is wrong. Stealing for any reason is wrong. Lying is wrong. Respect your parents, stuff like that. Don't all societies have rules enforcing that sort of thing?

Kinda. The problem is that those are vague: what constitutes a valid reason to kill? Modern Society is strict in this respect, but go back 2 centuries and the practice of Dueling was alive in the USA. And what do you mean by honoring you parents? Must to do everything they say, or is it more abstract? Go to 10 different cultures throughout time, and you'll likely get 10 different answers. You could probably get different answers from the same culture at different times as well(after all, dueling isn't legal in the USA anymore). The truth is, moral truths change as the culture that developed them changes .

Roderick_BR
2009-03-12, 08:50 AM
Some interesting points. In fact, the aforementioned Gobling and OotS helped me to flesh more complex characters in my games, with more than mindless adventurers killing stuff for gold. I've seen some games that treat any inteligent race as they treat humans in general, as in, if you suddenly pull out a weapon, and cut off an orc's head with no real reason, you'll be arrested as a common criminal.
In my games, inteligent creatures are usually only attacked if either the attacker is evil (usually the villain, or the villain's henchmen, or simply thugs), or if the targeted creature is being hunted down (the villain, the henchmen, the common criminal...)
Yes, invading a dragon's cave to murder him and steal his treasure would be considered an evil act, unless the people dragon got his earnings through stealing and/or killing, then it's fair game, and the people doing it would be the classic "head hunters".
Attacking non-inteligent monsters would qualify as "hunt", using a term from a game I played once. Hunting down a deer, a bear, or a bullete, is pretty much the same thing, ethically speaking. You may need it's hide, meat, or whatever for personal use, you may be driving back an uncontroled breeding that has been taking over a florest, or simply doing it to sell and earn money (and thus advancing into evil territory if you don't control how much you hunt, thus making it become extintic).
Yeah, it all quickly become a gray area, dangerously pending to the sides. But then I think those are the cooler stories, with people actually having to decide if what they do is correct or not. I actually had a blaster wizard once, that didn't want to exterminate a whole goblin tribe, because he didn't see them as threat. The small goblin group they hunted down was already an outcast in that tribe (trouble makers, attract adventureres...), and he wanted to leave the rest as it is. And he was neutral, not good aligned. Yet the rest of the group decided to just kill everything, non-combatants, children, females, elderlys. "Just in case."

@kamuishirou: If your DM allowed your group to change plans, he's definitively a good DM.

The Neoclassic
2009-03-12, 09:00 AM
If there's a universal standard of morality, then all should adhere to it. Even adventurers. Even orcs. And I thought every society in the modern world and throughout history agreed on a common standard of good and evil. Killing for no reason is wrong. Stealing for any reason is wrong. Lying is wrong. Respect your parents, stuff like that. Don't all societies have rules enforcing that sort of thing?


Kinda. The problem is that those are vague: what constitutes a valid reason to kill? Modern Society is strict in this respect, but go back 2 centuries and the practice of Dueling was alive in the USA. And what do you mean by honoring you parents? Must to do everything they say, or is it more abstract? Go to 10 different cultures throughout time, and you'll likely get 10 different answers. You could probably get different answers from the same culture at different times as well(after all, dueling isn't legal in the USA anymore). The truth is, moral truths change as the culture that developed them changes .

Precisely. Also, I'd like to point out that if all societies had the same standards, there would be no evil societies, only deviant (evil) individuals.

Sorry, some of this has probably been covered earlier, but I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'm just going to throw in my main points:

There is some universal standard of good and evil. It is not determined in any way by mortals, but rather is a matter of certain cosmological forces in the universe. Many actions line up clearly with good or evil (donating to the poor is good, rape is evil). Yes, you can make up ridiculously far-fetched examples where we could try to justify them, but in D&D's morality, some things are just evil. Period. Some people argue that everything can be lined up on the good/evil axis, others say that some things are irrelevent. I'm of the opinion that most things have at least a tiny good/evil impact, but often situations are so complicated and moral understanding of the intricacies of these cosmological forces imperfect that there isn't a clearly good option vs. a clearly evil option. What one society views as right may be considered wrong to another society; what one views as acceptable may be unacceptable to another. This practical moral relativism in some matters doesn't mean that the cosmological good/evil forces don't have a "correct" answer, and what is acceptable or right to one group of people may not be in line with what is actually, by the powers that be, good (in the alignment sense).

It depends entirely on how you run your game whether adventuring is acceptable or not. Some people view goblins as inherently evil and so slaughtering them, even the children, is OK, even if 20% of goblins turn out to be good or neutral. Others say that even just being of an evil alignment is not a justifiable reason to kill an individual, much less a society. Where goblins are directly burning crops or killing farmers, there's less of a moral dilemma- though what happens to the children then is still a concern for many DMs and players.

In my games, evil societies do have many laws and standards which are good (stealing is viewed as wrong and punishable by law, for example), but other things which are viewed as unacceptable by other cultures (executing thieves) or even evil as defined by the cosmological forces (human sacrifice) are normal and allowed in their society. With humanoids, they are also (at least in theory) potentially reformable, never born with a set alignment. They may start with tendencies, for example having great empathy, being skilled at deception, or prone to rage, but these tendencies can be overcome or channeled towards more (or less) good/evil ways.

Ethdred
2009-03-12, 09:33 AM
If there's a universal standard of morality, then all should adhere to it. Even adventurers. Even orcs. And I thought every society in the modern world and throughout history agreed on a common standard of good and evil. Killing for no reason is wrong. Stealing for any reason is wrong. Lying is wrong. Respect your parents, stuff like that. Don't all societies have rules enforcing that sort of thing?


Since you Godwined the thread, allow me to continue. Yes, people have generally believed that killing for no reason is wrong. However the Nazis thought that being Jewish was a good enough reason to be killed. Plenty of people (notably the Mongols) thought that living in a city that didn't immediately surrender to your army was a good enough reason to be killed. Stealing for any reason is wrong - though raiding the neighbouring tribe when they have more food than you is perfectly acceptable. Stealing another country's land is also fine, especially if it brings glory to your ruler. As for lying - may I introduce you to the Jesuits?

You seem to be suffering from a common condition of people who are part-way through a philosophy course - thinking too much. (A flat mate a university had a nervous breakdown and tried to kill himself, but he was doing Maths and Philosophy, which is even worse.) I wouldn't worry too much about it - it will pass, especially after a couple of drinks and a few more years of cynicism. Though if you want to know more about why societies can be so different and why 'might is right' is NOT the basis for all societies, then I recommend Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. And if you want to have a better idea of how adventurers may be seen in society, then I heartily recommend Kipling's poem Tommy http://http://faxmentis.org/html/kipling.html

hewhosaysfish
2009-03-12, 09:35 AM
Most of what I think has already been said: killing people (including goblin-people, dragon-people and pseudonatural-paragon-troll-were-badger-people) because you want their stuff and you think you can get away with it == Evil; killing people because they're killing other people because they want their stuff and think (obvously wrongly) that they can get away with it =/= Evil.

However, I do have to put on my pedantic hat and say:

The second is the idea that whole societies - instead of individuals - can be categorized along these very general terms.

... the second is a denial of D&D assumptions (in D&D you can model entire civilizations off the alignment system)...


Both wrong! :smalltongue:

The alignment section of the PHB only discusses the alignment of individuals.

The town creation rules in the DMG only discuss the alignment on the power centres within a community i.e. the king is Evil, this influential Wizard is Good, the heads of the Guilds are Neutral, etc. These alignments are not extended to the whole community, not least of all because a single community can have multiple power centres of conflicting morality.

We can say "(almost) all of the people in this settlement/group/race are Evil" or "the majority of people in this settlement/group/race are Evil" and indeed the MM does make a large number of statements along these lines.
But the idea that you can point at a settlemet/group/race and say "this settlement/group/race itself is Evil" seems to be something that we the fans have invented in our own heads.
We use it interchangeably as a shorthand for:
A) "(almost) all of the people in this settlement/group/race are Evil"
B) "the majority of people in this settlement/group/race are Evil"
C) "the people in charge of this settlement/group/race are Evil"
D) "this settlement/group/race behaves towards other settlements/groups/races the same way that an Evil person behaves towards other people thus implying that A, B, C or some combination thereof may also be true"

Now, for most purposes during a game of DnD these four different meanings are sufficiently close that we can be told "these beings are Evil" and know how to react (i.e. jump on your horse and gallop off to rescue the children before they get sacrificed to dark gods and/or eaten) but during one of these many, many debates of alignment and morality then this abbreviation stops being useful.
Usually someone uses it to mean A or D and concludes that it's ok to kill the goblins. Then someone else assumes that they meant B or C and concludes form the first persons conclusion that the first person plays as a heartless butcher in their DnD game.

Hilarity ensues.

Morty
2009-03-12, 09:47 AM
Heh. The justification of wholesale slaughter of "greenskins" has already been given. They make perfect sense within the context of the standard D&D setting, but they're all ultimately a load of crap made up so that people who are in essence mercenaries and tomb-robbers can be shown as superheroes without lifting a finger and doing anything actually heroic. And ultimately, they are heroes - but only because the world has been tailored so that they are heroes no matter what.
I, myself, have no problem with playing a very powerful thug when I play D&D. As soon as I relize that I'm not playing a hero, but merely someone stronger than most people around who uses his/her abilities for personal gain, all moral problems disappear. Not to mention that I don't assume PCs are the only powerful people around - it makes sense for a king to have high-level bodyguards. Because I think that the power of the PCs, both casters and noncasters has been underestimated by the designers anyway.

kamikasei
2009-03-12, 10:00 AM
I try to measure up to the pinnacle of goodness in the game because I'm too weak and selfish to do so in real life.

You misunderstand me - the threshold to be good in a game is lower than the threshold to be a paladin. Adventurers can be comfortably good while not straining themselves to always take the absolutely most good possible course of action in every situation, as a paladin might be obliged to.


And that comes from media I've seen other than the game itself.

I'm not sure what you're referring to (as in: what "comes from media..."?).


Well, when you put it that way, it makes it seem more ethical, yes. But when you introduce races who may or may not be evil, you can't get a clear read on them.

I don't understand.

Leave the notion that a person's race tells you if they're evil or not aside. Think about what their actions, their society, its relationship to yours, etc. tell you about what they are or are likely to do to you and what you're justified in doing in response.

You really seem hung up on this notion that it's about indiscriminately slaughtering greenskins, but what about the cabal of necromancers in the ruins, or the settlement of Banite humans? Race doesn't have to enter in to it.


Paladins in 3.5 had it easy, you could just detect and know if someone could be reasoned with or not. 4e doesn't have that, so I have to be careful to make sure that the kindly inkeeper doesn't mean to stab me in the back, or that there might be a chance that the goblins might let the girl go.

Very, very false. "Evil" does not mean "can't be reasoned with". Just because the goblins are evil doesn't mean they might not let the girl go if you negotiate well. For that matter, the kindly inkeeper might be good-aligned but try to stab you anyway if coerced in to it... and frankly, boo hoo, now in 4e you have to suffer through judging people on their behaviour and your own reasoning, like the rest of us have always had to do, rather than using your magical evil-dar? Suck it up, paladin boy! :smalltongue:


When those goblins cut that little girl's throat, I was as repusled with the players as my character was with the other characters. A little girl, who might have had parents huddled up in the church wondering if she was okay, and the party just charged in with no thought to her safety. They let her die, and then when I (both me and the character) got angry, they brushed it off saying either there was nothing we could have done to get the goblins to let her go (the warforged and the Raven Queen worshipers), or that I wasn't thinking things through and should shut up (the traumatized rogue and the antisocial wizard).

Your players (or maybe just their characters) are jerks. Recklessly charging at a group with an innocent hostage is throwing away that hostage's life, and either borderline or outright evil. But what does that have to do with the ethics of adventuring?


If there's a universal standard of morality, then all should adhere to it. Even adventurers. Even orcs. And I thought every society in the modern world and throughout history agreed on a common standard of good and evil. Killing for no reason is wrong. Stealing for any reason is wrong. Lying is wrong. Respect your parents, stuff like that. Don't all societies have rules enforcing that sort of thing?

Uh... all should adhere to it, as in they're morally obliged to and it's evil for them not to, or you can reasonably expect that they will? Because the latter is pretty naive. People will disagree with you on what is or is not right, even if there does exist a universal standard. Example: worshippers of Pelor and Grummsh may both agree on who pings how on a detect evil/good, but disagree as to whether being "good" or "evil" is a virtue or vice.

And no, societies throughout the world and history do not agree on morality. Some things will be agreed near-universally because societies that lack them don't function very well. Many, many things will be regarded as good and proper in one society and abhorred in another (e.g.: slavery, womens' rights, free speech etc. You can have one society appalled at the idea of punishing someone for speech, and another appalled at the idea of letting someone escape punishment for, say, blasphemy or obscenity. And those can be different places in the world at the same time, or the same place at different times.)

Most of the evil (by my or your standards) in human history was not committed by Nazis or anyone like Nazis. It was perpetrated by fine, upstanding citizens whose actions were fully condoned by their societies.

Zen Master
2009-03-12, 10:03 AM
Don't all societies have rules enforcing that sort of thing?

Maybe so. But such rules may wary - in degrees of fairnes, or even sanity. Such rules may not be equal for all. Such rules may bend for the powerful.

In Denmark - back when we had vikings and conquered stuff - we had a practice called jernbyrd. It likely had similar names elsewhere, it translates directly to ironload.

Here's what it does: It tells the truth. In any case where two different parties disagree on something, one may be called to prove his or her truthfulness by jernbyrd.

So - a servant girl is pregnant, and she wants the father, who is a noble, to own up and accept the child as his. It's the word of a servant vs. that of a lord - so basically, he is right. However, his honor has been slighted, and he has been accused of lying.

He demands that his name be cleansed - the girl must submit to jernbyrd.

Dunno if anyone knows what that means. You take a number of iron rods, heat them till they glow a nice, hot red - then the girl must carry them 20 paces. Naturally - if the girls speaks truth, God will protect her from the heat.

Now the point here isn't that vikings were insane - the evidence is overwhelming in favor of that. The point is that they weren't insane enough to belive in this sort of thing - it wasn't EVER the lord who carried the jernbyrd.

Now ... it may well be argued that the vikings had much in common with goblin raiders. The inhabitants of the british isles of the time can attest to that. But were vikings evil?

Narmoth
2009-03-12, 10:12 AM
The idea of a city or country alignment is from 2nd ed. In the rules there (DMG) it was written that a city, barony, country, religion (and so on) could be viewed as having an alignment. The alignment of the entity was the alignment of the biggest fraction of the people it consisted of, and told how most people usually would react.
So if you had a LG kingdom, the majority of the inhabitants would be LG, the law structures would be enforcing LG laws and so on



Now ... it may well be argued that the vikings had much in common with goblin raiders. The inhabitants of the british isles of the time can attest to that. But were vikings evil?

In one word: yes
On more words:
Plundering and killing: - check (raiding other countries and plundering them)
Killing of defenseless people: - check (killing priests, women and children)
Enslaving people: - check (yes, and a big part of being able to go on raids were the fact that they had slaves (tralls) to work on the farm at home)

Now, would it be right to exterminate:
- A viking village, that is a Dane or Norse village, with warriors, peasants, tralls, women, children, old people?
- A viking raiding party, coming in their longboats to your village?
- A viking raiding party, that you have searched out and that you have had no previous encounters with?
- A viking raiding party, that you have no reports of having raided, but that displays the dragon head (warship only thing) and shields on its sides?
- A viking longship with it's crew that come to trade to a city?

Tengu_temp
2009-03-12, 11:55 AM
Now, would it be right to exterminate:
- A viking village, that is a Dane or Norse village, with warriors, peasants, tralls, women, children, old people?
- A viking raiding party, coming in their longboats to your village?
- A viking raiding party, that you have searched out and that you have had no previous encounters with?
- A viking raiding party, that you have no reports of having raided, but that displays the dragon head (warship only thing) and shields on its sides?
- A viking longship with it's crew that come to trade to a city?

1. No, but if they attack me when I come close, it's alright to kill everyone who wants to kill me.
2. Yes.
3. Am I absolutely sure they're a raiding party? If so then yes - they are going to raid some innocent village.
4. Ditto.
5. Usually no, but if I recognize the crew as members of a raiding party that destroyed a village (maybe even mine), then yes.

Kish
2009-03-12, 12:57 PM
Three pages in, and still no mention of the Dungeonomicon (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547) and the Heroic Age 'we raid them, they raid us back' morality of D&D? :smallconfused:
It's important (to people like me who think that site babbles nonsense and directly contradicts the morality presented in the actual D&D books) to note that that's only a fansite, not something in some way official.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 01:03 PM
You misunderstand me - the threshold to be good in a game is lower than the threshold to be a paladin. Adventurers can be comfortably good while not straining themselves to always take the absolutely most good possible course of action in every situation, as a paladin might be obliged to.
Yes, but I'm playing a paladin of Pelor, so I have to adhere to the highest standards of the Good alignment. I mean, I'm trying to play my character as a messiah figure in a world where everyone is a cynic and cowers in fear of the malicious thorns that infest the entire area.

My other party members include:

A human rogue (who is my paladin's half-sister) who was abandoned by her parents, grew up on the streets, suffering through gang violence, crime and even rape. She's a broken woman who says that blood is beautiful, hope is for fools and her dagger is her only friend in the world. She also wants to get into our rogue/warlock's pants.

A warforged fighter who has spent most of its life trapped with the other warforged in the massive undead infested underground city underneath the campaign setting. It was picked up by the party when they were down there. It doesn't have much in the way of emotions, and seems to be tagging along. It's insightful but bewildered by the dysfunctions in the group.

A human rogue/warlock who is also an ordained priestess of the Raven Queen. She is a former member of a group of assassins who are the police in the campaign setting's most prominent city. She claims that she wishes she could do something besides kill, but killing is all she knows how to do. She was also formerly in a lesbian relationship with our group's cleric. She cries a lot and never seems to be happy. Her player (our DM) has already decided that he's going to have her killed later, and have her corpse possessed by one of the BBEG's in our campaign.

A doppleganger cleric of the Raven Queen, who was formerly the lesbian lover of our rogue/warlock. All I really know about "her" is that she wants her true nature to be kept secret and she smokes.

All of them are Unaligned.

I'm not sure what you're referring to (as in: what "comes from media..."?).
I don't even know anymore.

I don't understand.

Leave the notion that a person's race tells you if they're evil or not aside. Think about what their actions, their society, its relationship to yours, etc. tell you about what they are or are likely to do to you and what you're justified in doing in response.

You really seem hung up on this notion that it's about indiscriminately slaughtering greenskins, but what about the cabal of necromancers in the ruins, or the settlement of Banite humans? Race doesn't have to enter in to it.
Well, necromancers desecrate the sanctity of life, and Banites want to take over the world. What if the goblins are just raiding for food?

Very, very false. "Evil" does not mean "can't be reasoned with". Just because the goblins are evil doesn't mean they might not let the girl go if you negotiate well. For that matter, the kindly inkeeper might be good-aligned but try to stab you anyway if coerced in to it... and frankly, boo hoo, now in 4e you have to suffer through judging people on their behaviour and your own reasoning, like the rest of us have always had to do, rather than using your magical evil-dar? Suck it up, paladin boy! :smalltongue:
And if that's true, I'm going to end up knifed before our next battle, since my character is supposed to be a naive country boy now trapped in a world that is hostile to him (Pelor's faith isn't popular because most people in the place think that hope is for the naive and no one is truly selfless.)

Your players (or maybe just their characters) are jerks. Recklessly charging at a group with an innocent hostage is throwing away that hostage's life, and either borderline or outright evil. But what does that have to do with the ethics of adventuring?
The players are aware of the nature of the act, but they did it anyway to emphasize the gritty, amoral nature of the campaign setting.

Uh... all should adhere to it, as in they're morally obliged to and it's evil for them not to, or you can reasonably expect that they will? Because the latter is pretty naive. People will disagree with you on what is or is not right, even if there does exist a universal standard. Example: worshippers of Pelor and Grummsh may both agree on who pings how on a detect evil/good, but disagree as to whether being "good" or "evil" is a virtue or vice.
I mean that they're morally obliged to adhere to it and it's evil for them not to. Things like genocide and rape are evil no matter how you slice it or whether your god condones it or not.

And no, societies throughout the world and history do not agree on morality. Some things will be agreed near-universally because societies that lack them don't function very well. Many, many things will be regarded as good and proper in one society and abhorred in another (e.g.: slavery, womens' rights, free speech etc. You can have one society appalled at the idea of punishing someone for speech, and another appalled at the idea of letting someone escape punishment for, say, blasphemy or obscenity. And those can be different places in the world at the same time, or the same place at different times.)

Most of the evil (by my or your standards) in human history was not committed by Nazis or anyone like Nazis. It was perpetrated by fine, upstanding citizens whose actions were fully condoned by their societies.
How could something like slavery have been acceptable? Or women's rights unacceptable? The fact that the wrong thing is part of the system doesn't make it right. I like to think that things are a helluva lot better than they were before, when we had evil things like slavery and opression of women and no free speech.

lord_khaine
2009-03-12, 01:15 PM
How could something like slavery have been acceptable?

this at least is a very easy question, first it require you to learn that slaves isnt real people, like you and me, and second it require you to only ask the slave owners if its an acceptable practice.

kamikasei
2009-03-12, 01:34 PM
Yes, but I'm playing a paladin of Pelor, so I have to adhere to the highest standards of the Good alignment. I mean, I'm trying to play my character as a messiah figure in a world where everyone is a cynic and cowers in fear of the malicious thorns that infest the entire area.

I was under the impression you were questioning the ethics of adventuring in general, not how it applies to your character specifically. Obviously, it may not be possible for a strongly good-aligned character to ethically adventure with the group you describe. This is a problem for your group.


Well, necromancers desecrate the sanctity of life, and Banites want to take over the world. What if the goblins are just raiding for food?

What if the humans are just raiding for food? That's my point! If the bandits in the wild are raiding a village, killing the inhabitants and stealing their produce, will you treat those bandits differently because they're human that you would treat the goblins?

If you're worried the bad guys might have good reasons for what they're doing and could be talked down rather than killed, then try talking first. If they would rather kill you than talk, the hell with them.


And if that's true, I'm going to end up knifed before our next battle, since my character is supposed to be a naive country boy now trapped in a world that is hostile to him (Pelor's faith isn't popular because most people in the place think that hope is for the naive and no one is truly selfless.)

Honestly, it sounds like your character is simply a bad fit for the party and setting. If you want to play a resolutely idealistic character in a setting that's hostile to idealism itself, then at the very least you probably don't want him to be naive.


The players are aware of the nature of the act, but they did it anyway to emphasize the gritty, amoral nature of the campaign setting.

:smallannoyed:

Your problem is with your group, not with adventuring.


I mean that they're morally obliged to adhere to it and it's evil for them not to. Things like genocide and rape are evil no matter how you slice it or whether your god condones it or not.
...
How could something like slavery have been acceptable? Or women's rights unacceptable? The fact that the wrong thing is part of the system doesn't make it right. I like to think that things are a helluva lot better than they were before, when we had evil things like slavery and opression of women and no free speech.

I don't understand what you think you're disagreeing with. I'm not really sure what you were trying to say in the first place, actually.

In a fantasy setting, just as in the real modern world and in real-world history, there will be many societies which are structured so that people will do evil to one another and it will be condoned by their people. They will be raised to think it is the right thing to do, will not feel bad for doing it, and will in fact have trouble not doing it (facing ridicule or ostracism for nonconformity). In the real world, we say "things have gotten better" and "isn't it terrible how things are over there". In the fantasy setting, we say "that is an evil society, probably consisting mostly of evil people, maybe just consisting of mostly neutral people whose mores are distorted in this one area". Chances are they will have evil gods who will tell them that these evil things are the right thing to do. That does not make them good. It just means they see no reason to think they're wrong.

So why is that a problem? And since we seem to be getting into fairly fundamental and general subjects: why does it affect the ethics of adventuring?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-12, 01:39 PM
Yes, but I'm playing a paladin of Pelor, so I have to adhere to the highest standards of the Good alignment. I mean, I'm trying to play my character as a messiah figure in a world where everyone is a cynic and cowers in fear of the malicious thorns that infest the entire area.

Hoo boy, that's a group all right :smalleek:

Basically what you described is 3 lesbians (!) of varying degrees of bloodthirstiness and a Warforged that was Raised by Wolves (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RaisedByWolves); not a one of them cares a whit about morality. There is no way in hell that you're going to convince any of them to do something Good, except by coincidence.

Trust me when I say most adventuring groups aren't like this. Honest.

Cubey
2009-03-12, 01:41 PM
Yes, but I'm playing a paladin of Pelor, so I have to adhere to the highest standards of the Good alignment. I mean, I'm trying to play my character as a messiah figure in a world where everyone is a cynic and cowers in fear of the malicious thorns that infest the entire area.

My other party members include:
<Long description>


Ahah. There's nothing wrong with the system, but with the group you are playing with. Again.

You seem to have bad luck when it gets to finding matching people, as you want to play an idealistic, heroic character and they're cynical anti-heroes, emo kids, downright evil, or any combinations of the above. Which is especially bad when it includes the Game Master. It seems it does here.

So, why not find a group with people who won't try to cut their wrists while listening to Fallout Boy and/or sneer at non-dark characters as Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is For Kids?

EDIT: Also, I usually use the term "lesbian half-demon vampire" as an insult towards people who tend to RP poorly, with focusing on being a drama queen, wangsting and hogging the spotlight (no offense to lesbians intended. Half-demons and vampires, maybe some). Funny how many of your other party members seem to fit the description.

Weezer
2009-03-12, 01:51 PM
How could something like slavery have been acceptable? Or women's rights unacceptable? The fact that the wrong thing is part of the system doesn't make it right. I like to think that things are a helluva lot better than they were before, when we had evil things like slavery and opression of women and no free speech.


The thing is that the people who supported slavery and opposed women's rights took the same moral high ground as you are taking by denouncing those views. The idea that just because one society believes something to be moral doesn't make it moral works both ways. The slaveholders thought that slavery was moral just as you and our modern society think that slavery is immoral. How can we know who is truly right? Whatever your personal beliefs are that make you question the validity of killing goblins for being goblins doesn't truly matter to adventurers because since cultures and societies form their own highly specific and individual moral codes. If a society has accepted adventurers as people who have the right to kill goblins for being goblins then any adventurers that are products of that society has the same moral high ground as your paladin. You can believe your morality is more valid than another but it isn't intrinsically better.

Tengu_temp
2009-03-12, 01:51 PM
Basically what you described is 3 lesbians (!)

That's nothing, I'm currently GMing a game where at least 4, and possibly all of, the female characters are lesbian - the only (probably) straight PC is the sole guy, but he gets often mistaken for a girl due to his appearance.

It's a very fun game.

Kylarra
2009-03-12, 02:04 PM
That's nothing, I'm currently GMing a game where at least 4, and possibly all of, the female characters are lesbian - the only (probably) straight PC is the sole guy, but he gets often mistaken for a girl due to his appearance.

It's a very fun game.That sounds hilarious.


~~~~~~~~

On topic-

I agree with the majority of the recent posters that it seems like your issue is with your current playgroup and you are projecting that image onto all so-called "adventurers". You're also scrambling several different uni/multi-verses together and trying to come up with a solid standard to work with. I suggest not trying to do that as different races are portrayed in different ways across different "worlds", see: creation of the world in OotS for a small example of the way the same names are used to describe completely different things.

Is it possible to be a xenophobic "good" adventurer who slays people simply because they register as evil on the radar. Yes-- see Miko.

Should we judge all groups by using Miko as a guide? I'd say no personally. :smallconfused:

kamikasei
2009-03-12, 02:25 PM
How can we know who is truly right? Whatever your personal beliefs are that make you question the validity of killing goblins for being goblins doesn't truly matter to adventurers because since cultures and societies form their own highly specific and individual moral codes. If a society has accepted adventurers as people who have the right to kill goblins for being goblins then any adventurers that are products of that society has the same moral high ground as your paladin. You can believe your morality is more valid than another but it isn't intrinsically better.

I disagree - after all, in D&D, there is objective good and evil. You can say that certain acts and people are Good, or that they are Evil, and while someone may be able to claim that he is right about slavery and the paladin is wrong, he can't claim that he is Good and the paladin Evil. (Of course, he might not care.)

More to the point, you're falling in to the same trap as the OP of saying that "adventuring = indiscriminate slaughter of other races based solely on their race". In D&D, that's evil. It's also not what adventuring is, or has to be.

Dervag
2009-03-12, 02:32 PM
One tangent in the discussion led me to thinking about just how moral adventuring really is as a profession. I mean, going by the paradigm set by webcomics like Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes, and even Order of the Stick itself, the "monsters" are people too. People with personalities, hopes and needs, who have been screwed over by the world that views them only as sources of experience points and treasure.

Naturally, this makes adventurers look like freakin' *******s at best, and sadistic, bigoted murderers and robbers at worst.It depends heavily on exactly what the monsters are doing. If "monster" societies are precisely parallel to the societies the human adventurers leave behind, then obviously humans who raid monsters are no better (and no worse) than monsters who raid humans. Stands to reason.

You can write good campaigns this way. The key is that there are many morally neutral ways for an "adventurer" to gain wealth, and that their goodness or evilness depends heavily on what they do with the wealth and on whose behalf they are willing to operate.

Stealing sheep from peasant families, be they goblins or humans, is probably quite Evil. But raiding an ancient tomb built a thousand years ago by a powerful king, be he goblin or human, is probably Neutral. The treasure in that tomb isn't doing anyone much good just lying there in the ground, and tomb robbery in a D&D setting can arguably be viewed as an exotic form of mining.


Furthermore, adventurers seem to be a problem even for the civilized people. Sure they deal with "monsters" and other threats to their communities, but they also don't contribute to society in a meaningful way in between adventures. They're just drifters ungratefully leeching off of society until they need to save society's butt. Not to mention the ammount of gold they pump into economies with the gold and other assorted treasures they steal from ruins and stuff likely throws said economies way off balance, and many of the things they steal would probably be better served in a museum or something.Your mention of "museum" crosses the line between the kinds of things we can make a good case for being objectively right/wrong and what is pretty much a cultural trait. I'm going to tackle this as an honest example of how a society could have a very different attitude on something that seems obvious to us without being evil or wrong or stupid.

Today, we tend to assume that information and relics from the ancient past are valuable in and of themselves, regardless of whether or not they are useful. But there are reasons for that that weren't true in our own past, let alone a fantasy world resembling that past.

For instance, today, most of the wealth in the world does not exist in the form of ancient artifacts. We can afford to put the great jeweled idol of Naruba in a museum because the Narubans don't need those jewels for some other purpose. We can leave ancient Roman ruins standing because we are quite capable of pouring our own concrete and building our own houses.

But in ancient times, that wasn't always true. If an ancient king taxed the people for twenty years to buy the furnishings for his tomb, then the furnishings don't just represent a bunch of valuable cultural artifacts. They represent a large fraction of his entire country's GDP, crated up and stuffed into a hole in the ground. If you choose to keep those artifacts "preserved for eternity" in the tomb, you are choosing not to do other things. Things like paying off the national debt, or building a canal that will bring water to lands that were once a barren desert, or setting up fortresses that will defend your people from enemy invasions.

Likewise, if you choose not to tear down that ancient imperial ruin for building stone, that means something else will not get built. Something that would probably do you a hell of a lot more good than the ruin does. Or it means that you must have large numbers of people work at back-breaking labor for years to quarry and shape new building stones using hammers and chisels.

Suddenly, the decision to respect your ancestor's cultural heritage becomes a bit more of a grey/grey than a black/white thing.

Check your assumptions at the door; the ancients often had reasons for doing the things they did. That doesn't mean I'm not glad we don't have to make the same choices they did. I am glad we don't have to tear down old buildings to get the materials for old ones if we don't want to, or melt down old statues to fund new war efforts. But at the same time, I don't despise people who did those things back when wealth was harder to come by.

Museums are a luxury item. I'm more than happy to have them, but I never forget that they are luxuries.
__________


With all these issues, it's a wonder adventurers in D&D aren't treated like superheroes were in Watchmen, despised by the general populace and treated with suspicion. How can such a profession, which condones and even encourages all sorts of immoral behavior, especially murder, robbery and racism, be allowed to exist by any sane society?!Well, that society's enemies might have very similar practices. If goblin "raiders" routinely attack human villages, the humans are likely to start sending "adventurers" to attack goblin villages. If someone steals your cattle or loots your city and carts away the gold and gems, it stands to reason that you'll feel entitled to steal the goods back.

Also, it's important to notice the difference between people "inside" and "outside" a given society. Societies need rules to govern actions between "insiders" or they fall apart. Those rules punish people who do things against the interests of the society (or the rulemakers). But if you do things in places outside the society's sphere of influence, like the goblin caves in the hills or the Elemental Plane of Fire, the rules don't have a lot to say about you. Especially if your actions indirectly benefit your society by bringing back treasure or eliminating threats.

Of course, that doesn't mean people will like you if you aren't directly involved in saving their neck. But they won't think of you as an outcast unless you start making trouble inside their jurisdiction.

==============


Though if you want to know more about why societies can be so different and why 'might is right' is NOT the basis for all societies, then I recommend Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.I recommend taking Hobbes with a grain of salt. There are some gaping holes in his basic argument, including "the formation of small scale primitive societies doesn't work that way!"
_______


Maybe so. But such rules may wary - in degrees of fairnes, or even sanity. Such rules may not be equal for all. Such rules may bend for the powerful... In any case where two different parties disagree on something, one may be called to prove his or her truthfulness by jernbyrd...

Now the point here isn't that vikings were insane - the evidence is overwhelming in favor of that. The point is that they weren't insane enough to belive in this sort of thing - it wasn't EVER the lord who carried the jernbyrd.Exactly. Trials by ordeal tend to serve two social roles:

-They deter people from challenging the elite by forcing them to suffer terribly in order to make charges stick to the elite.
-They provide a social safety valve if someone in the elite does something really horrible, because then their victim just might be willing to go through the ordeal in order to make sure the noble gets punished. In which case the elite may very well throw that particular noble to the wolves rather than let them become a source of ongoing resentment against their entire class.

Safety valves are important in places with a strong class structure. Societies like that aren't stable if the people on the bottom have absolutely no way to break the power monopoly except a revolution.
______


Now ... it may well be argued that the vikings had much in common with goblin raiders. The inhabitants of the british isles of the time can attest to that. But were vikings evil?Hell yes Vikings were evil, more or less without exception. But were the Norse evil, or any more evil than average? I doubt it.

[To the non-history buffs out there, "viking" was something you did, involving much raiding and pillaging. "Norse" was your ethnicity. By definition, a "Viking" was probably doing something evil to someone. If they weren't, then they were probably not very good at "going a-viking."]
__________


It's important (to people like me who think that site babbles nonsense and directly contradicts the morality presented in the actual D&D books) to note that that's only a fansite, not something in some way official.It has the tremendous virtue of being internally consistent in a way that the actual D&D books are not. The Dungeonomicon guys have figured out a way for the Good-aligned and Evil-aligned societies to coexist peacefully- one that can explain how the world has been around for a thousand years without one or the other of those kingdoms being destroyed by the other.
__________


The thing is that the people who supported slavery and opposed women's rights took the same moral high ground as you are taking by denouncing those views. The idea that just because one society believes something to be moral doesn't make it moral works both ways. The slaveholders thought that slavery was moral just as you and our modern society think that slavery is immoral. How can we know who is truly right?Well, I can do it by arguing the pro-slavery faction into the ground, but I like debate too much for my own mental health. For instance, I can use disproof by counterexample to show that their ideas of why slavery was necessary are totally bogus, thus making the (freely conceded) evils of slavery unnecessary ones.


Whatever your personal beliefs are that make you question the validity of killing goblins for being goblins doesn't truly matter to adventurers because since cultures and societies form their own highly specific and individual moral codes. If a society has accepted adventurers as people who have the right to kill goblins for being goblins then any adventurers that are products of that society has the same moral high ground as your paladin. You can believe your morality is more valid than another but it isn't intrinsically better.In D&D, this isn't necessarily true. You are appealing to moral relativism, but in most D&D settings moral absolutism is one of the basic features of the universe. I can construct a hypothetical world in which there is a right way to do things, written down in letters of holy fire in a 50-foot book on the Seventh Heaven of Awesomeness. Or where there exist slavering demons whose behavior is such that, if you want to know what to do, you can nearly always know by looking at what the demon would do and then doing the opposite. Or both.

D&D mostly lives in that moral space, not the world of relative morality you believe in.

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 02:38 PM
problem is, there are very few acts called out by the Rulebooks as Objectively evil- and often, those rulebooks will be claimed to be "invalid becuse not core"

So far, the most consensus I've seen, ruleswise, is Torture: described as "always evil" in several places in BoED, and in Fiendish Codex 2, a scale of How evil various acts are, lists it, from 1 pt "intimidating torture" that does not hit point damage, to 7 points "indescribable torture" that does 2d20+5 damage, as of a 1 hour session.

But most of the other Evil (corrupt) acts are more subjective-

"humiliating an underling"
"stealing from the needy"
"betraying a friend for personal gain"
"causing gratuitous injury to a creature"
"perverting justice for personal gain"
"murder"
"cold-blooded murder"

Its not too hard to imagine arguments over what "the needy" "personal gain" "gratuitous" and "cold-blooded" actually mean.

"Casting an evil spell" is one of the few unambiguous ones- and the least evil.

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 02:49 PM
the paladin Order of Samular in Elaine Cunningham's Thornhold.

"The orcs cannot hunt the hills without running afoul of paladin patrols. The paladins hunt the orcs with great fervour, for this provides practice for young knights who wish to learn to fight and kill"

"what choice do the displaced orcs have when their hunting grounds are taken from them? They must raid towns and farms to survive, and so they do"

The speaker is an elf whose village was hit by an orc raid.

horseboy
2009-03-12, 02:55 PM
What if the goblins are just raiding for food?That still doesn't make it right, especially since they never seem to even bother just asking someone who has extra for help.


I mean that they're morally obliged to adhere to it and it's evil for them not to. Things like genocide and rape are evil no matter how you slice it or whether your god condones it or not.Well, if, say orc culture defines rape as "a crime against an alpha male for violating his society protected exclusive mating privileges by mating with his female(s) before defeating him in ritual combat". When he kills the farmer and then proceeds to have his way with his daughter he isn't in his heart of hearts evil because he's not, as far as he defines it, committing rape. He saw her and was moved by her beauty. Then he killed her alpha, so he's "courted" her and now they're married. So far as he knows she just likes it rough, what with the slapping and clawing and all. Yet, from her perspective she's being raped. If she defines rape as we in the modern era of western society. When dealing with this sort of irreconcilable societal differences who's social mores take precedence? D&D's alignment system says the girls. Because somehow orcs never bother observing the surrounding world and realizing that they're "evil" when it's objectifiable.
More of interest to me, why can't I spell today?

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 03:14 PM
Probably the harshest assessment I've seen was in the Zogonia: Slice of Death comic book:

"Zogonia depicts RPG adventurers not as their players imagine them to be- valorous, virtuous heroes saving the world one dungeon at a time, but as they actually are: brutal, greedy tomb robbers as suspicious of each other as they are of the monsters they murder with impunity.

When you strip away the table chatter, the thin veneer of characterisation, and the unspoken agreement that in order to keep having fun, the guy playing the paladin can't simply attack his comrades every round for numerous crimes against humanity, you're left with a pretty depressing image: unstable mass murderers covered from head to toe in blood and guts, their rucksacks straining with the load of treasure and coin.

There is a very thin line between a criminal and an adventurer, and it takes a genius like Tony Moseley to not only recognize it and find it funny, but to make it funny to us too."

Kish
2009-03-12, 03:31 PM
It has the tremendous virtue of being internally consistent in a way that the actual D&D books are not.

Granted, but...

The Dungeonomicon guys have figured out a way for the Good-aligned and Evil-aligned societies to coexist peacefully- one that can explain how the world has been around for a thousand years without one or the other of those kingdoms being destroyed by the other.

...at the price of making them effectively all evil-aligned societies, in different colors. I don't think it was worth it, personally. And even if it was, people tend to cite it as though it was official in a way it isn't.

krossbow
2009-03-12, 03:47 PM
That's nothing, I'm currently GMing a game where at least 4, and possibly all of, the female characters are lesbian - the only (probably) straight PC is the sole guy, but he gets often mistaken for a girl due to his appearance.

It's a very fun game.


"What is this picture? is this a man or a woman?" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W95z1DqOIUg) basically. Ah, whatever happened to the big hulking heroes? now you have nothing but varsuvius's.



Probably the harshest assessment I've seen was in the Zogonia: Slice of Death comic book:

"Zogonia depicts RPG adventurers not as their players imagine them to be- valorous, virtuous heroes saving the world one dungeon at a time, but as they actually are: brutal, greedy tomb robbers as suspicious of each other as they are of the monsters they murder with impunity.

When you strip away the table chatter, the thin veneer of characterisation, and the unspoken agreement that in order to keep having fun, the guy playing the paladin can't simply attack his comrades every round for numerous crimes against humanity, you're left with a pretty depressing image: unstable mass murderers covered from head to toe in blood and guts, their rucksacks straining with the load of treasure and coin.

There is a very thin line between a criminal and an adventurer, and it takes a genius like Tony Moseley to not only recognize it and find it funny, but to make it funny to us too."


Not to sound too contrary, but i find zogonia to be a horrible view of heroes; the characters in the story are self admitted amoral individuals, who outright steal liquor and beat up paladins; paladins who would have lost their paladinship for stealing money and spending it on whores.

yes, if your characters outright decided to be chaotic neutral jerks (nothing against it, its great fun--just you have to admit that you are, in no way shape or form, a hero, and a good DM will treat you differently than when your chaotic good or lawful good); they are a far cry from say the party of noble adventurers seeking to protect the land and insure the safety of their peoples.

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 03:51 PM
Munchkin tends to portray "typical" D&D adventurers the same way.

The comment in Darths and Droids:

Player: "What's my character's alignment again?"
GM: "Lawful Good. In theory."
Player: "Right. So if we rob anyone, we should make sure they're gangsters first"

also fits this.

While both exaggerate the stereotype hugely, the point to be made is, its worryingly common.

krossbow
2009-03-12, 04:04 PM
if a DM lets such characters get away with that, its their own fault, not the systems.

Anytime a player goes about their adventure like that, it is the DM's responsibility to, first warn the player that they've started down a slippery slope, and if their characters proceed, tell them that their alignment is indeed neutral or even evil. Normally, this is just calling attention to this fact, so they shouldn't feel suprised when half the town dislikes them and the king refuses aid. On the other hand, if they have a class with alignment requirements, they should feel the penalties of such actions.





characters in my campaigns know the effects of alignment all too well; they became painfully aware very quickly that, while they would be showered with praise and the aid of several contacts in the good temples if they were of a good alignment, they found themselves having to play a constant game of defense against enemies they made while being chaotic neutral and going for the gold.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 04:04 PM
I was under the impression you were questioning the ethics of adventuring in general, not how it applies to your character specifically. Obviously, it may not be possible for a strongly good-aligned character to ethically adventure with the group you describe. This is a problem for your group.
I was originally intending to discuss whether adventuring was ethical or not. The sources I was citing to prove my point, however, have been riddled with holes now, so I've given up.

What if the humans are just raiding for food? That's my point! If the bandits in the wild are raiding a village, killing the inhabitants and stealing their produce, will you treat those bandits differently because they're human that you would treat the goblins?

If you're worried the bad guys might have good reasons for what they're doing and could be talked down rather than killed, then try talking first. If they would rather kill you than talk, the hell with them.
I suppose that's the best litmus test I can hope for isn't it? It's not like Neverwinter Nights 2 or KOTOR where you have to beat the tar out of a baddie before they're willing to negotiate, and you have the opportunity to spare their life and let them limp away for good points or finish the job and get evil points.

Honestly, it sounds like your character is simply a bad fit for the party and setting. If you want to play a resolutely idealistic character in a setting that's hostile to idealism itself, then at the very least you probably don't want him to be naive.
My plan was for him to become less naive as he sees more of the world and its realities. So far, I think I'm doing a poor job of it (breaking down crying at the girl's death and beating on the warforged with my fists in impotent remorseful anger.)

:smallannoyed:

Your problem is with your group, not with adventuring.
I've worked well with them in other roleplays. The warforged's player likes to play big, tough warrior types, the rogue/warlock's player likes to play characters with some kind of trauma in their past (and he writes plays in his spare time), the rogue likes to play "emo" types, but also played a motherly cleric based on the character of Flonne in Disgaea, and the cleric's player has a penchant for playing weird characters, including half-dragons raised by undead or some bizzare homebrew character who runs a terrorist organization.

I like to play the idealistic farmboy types, usually paladins. The furthest I think I've deviated from it was an idealistic farmboy who found out his mom used to be an infamous thief and went on to become Sharn's version of Batman.

I don't understand what you think you're disagreeing with. I'm not really sure what you were trying to say in the first place, actually.
I don't think I was either. I got upset during that other thread and wanted to vent about how I thought characters like Goblinslayer and Kore are horrible and how much I hate them.

In a fantasy setting, just as in the real modern world and in real-world history, there will be many societies which are structured so that people will do evil to one another and it will be condoned by their people. They will be raised to think it is the right thing to do, will not feel bad for doing it, and will in fact have trouble not doing it (facing ridicule or ostracism for nonconformity). In the real world, we say "things have gotten better" and "isn't it terrible how things are over there". In the fantasy setting, we say "that is an evil society, probably consisting mostly of evil people, maybe just consisting of mostly neutral people whose mores are distorted in this one area". Chances are they will have evil gods who will tell them that these evil things are the right thing to do. That does not make them good. It just means they see no reason to think they're wrong.
So there could be a society where rape is legal and not seen as evil? That's disgusting!

So why is that a problem? And since we seem to be getting into fairly fundamental and general subjects: why does it affect the ethics of adventuring?
I'm beginning to wonder if it's a problem because I still carry infantile delusions of black and white morality carried over from Tolkien, and my either/or mindset only exacerbates the problem instead of seeing the potential for compromises.

Kylarra
2009-03-12, 04:10 PM
Munchkin tends to portray "typical" D&D adventurers the same way.

The comment in Darths and Droids:

Player: "What's my character's alignment again?"
GM: "Lawful Good. In theory."
Player: "Right. So if we rob anyone, we should make sure they're gangsters first"

also fits this.

While both exaggerate the stereotype hugely, the point to be made is, its worryingly common.I think it has to do with the easy trap of metagaming. When you see everything as just a means to an end, you don't have to worry about the morality of killing that gobbo, he's just exp + loots.

Many videogames do it the same way, giving you clear indications of who is hostile ("evil", presuming your character is good; alternatively good presuming your character is evil or has pissed them off) vs neutral/non-hostile. Alternatively you can just play things like diablo 2 where every non-npc is by default evil or scenery. :smalltongue:

Fhaolan
2009-03-12, 04:19 PM
How could something like slavery have been acceptable?

Oh, this one's easy. Let me run a few scenarios past you:

Scenario 1: You go to a very expensive restaurant, and after finishing your meal you discover you forgot to bring your credit cards or cash. The restaurateur gets very upset, and forces you to wash dishes for the rest of the evening to pay off your bill.

This is slavery. Debt bondage is a specific type of slavery, where you are forced to work to pay your debt. The American South slavery was usually the Debt Bondage type, as it was technically possible for a slave to buy their freedom, but the system was rigged so that it was extremely unlikely for the slave to gain enough money to do so. Is debt bondage itself evil, or is it the fact that the system was rigged that was evil?

Scenario 2: You committed a reasonably serious crime, such as arson, and were sentenced to hard labour. In this specific case, you run the machines that stamp out license plates.

This is slavery. Penal servitude is a specific type of slavery, where you are forced to work as additional punishment to being imprisoned. The penal colony of Australia was of this type. Is penal servitude evil, or was the fact the system was manipulated by rich merchants to provide free labour that was evil?

Scenario 3: Your country is attempting to invade another, and you are a soldier in the army. You are captured by the people you are trying to conquer, and put into military prison. In order to keep you tired and unfit to escape and sabotage their defensive effort, you are put to work building walls around one of their cities.

This is slavery. Captive servitude is the broader category that prisoners of war belongs to, and is possibly the most common form of slavery ever. This includes conquered peoples, victims of raids, kidnap victims, etc. Is captive servitude evil, or is the fact that it is the aggressors that are the ones that usually take the captives that is evil?

These three scenarios are watered-down versions of slavery, but they are still slavery. There are other types, but these are the main ones that people think about when the term 'slavery' is bandied about.

So, is it evil to force people to pay their debts? Or their debt to society? Or to prevent them from doing things against you? Or is it really a matter of degree or the intent?

Which is all irrelevant to D&D, because its morality is imposed from without. It doesn't matter the degree or intent of the slavery, slavery is evil. So forcing a person to work off his bar bill is just as evil as forcing them to harvest crops under the threat of death or dismemberment.

FatR
2009-03-12, 04:20 PM
It has the tremendous virtue of being internally consistent in a way that the actual D&D books are not.
However, actual D&D books have the tremendous virtue of containing actual more-or-less playable game world, as opposed to a bunch of ideas, slapped together. Yeah, some of these ideas are cool. But their overall framework is incompatible with the official version of DnD, as portrayed by the settings. Without providing enough material to be their own version.


The Dungeonomicon guys have figured out a way for the Good-aligned and Evil-aligned societies to coexist peacefully- one that can explain how the world has been around for a thousand years without one or the other of those kingdoms being destroyed by the other.
No, they didn't. They just demonstrated how societies, based on their ideas about how a world based on DnD 3.X rules should work and on their rather cynical view of morality, coexist.

Morty
2009-03-12, 04:21 PM
Really, Zousha Omenohu, you're taking this way, way too seriously. Yes, there are people who play supposedly Good characters in a way that has nothing to do with real goodness or nobility. Yes, both 3ed and 4ed encourage the "it's green and has fangs, let's kill it". Such things tend to happen in settings with clear-cut Good Guys and Bad Guys, which is why I don't like them. But there's absolutely no reason it should infuence your game. If your group plays that way, it's their problem, and if you're not having fun there's no reason you shouldn't point it out. No matter what though, it's. Just. A. Game.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 04:24 PM
Incidentally, this is what our DM (the rogue/warlock's player) had to say about goblins:


So quick to jump to conclusions. For all we know the villagers started it. Or the goblins could be being forced into it all (maybe by the Thorns themselves). And even if they are just plain wicked, not all goblins in the Vale are like that. The ones in Ugluk, for example, are a lot more civilised. I dare say there are goblins nobles out there, who enjoy fine wine, intellectual debate and classical architecture.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 04:33 PM
Really, Zousha Omenohu, you're taking this way, way too seriously. Yes, there are people who play supposedly Good characters in a way that has nothing to do with real goodness or nobility. Yes, both 3ed and 4ed encourage the "it's green and has fangs, let's kill it". Such things tend to happen in settings with clear-cut Good Guys and Bad Guys, which is why I don't like them. But there's absolutely no reason it should infuence your game. If your group plays that way, it's their problem, and if you're not having fun there's no reason you shouldn't point it out. No matter what though, it's. Just. A. Game.
You have NO idea how much I get told that by the other players.

"You worry too much, we'll do fine without a controller."

"Dude, relax it's just a roleplay."

And other such things.

They don't see things the way I do. In the game, I have control. I can weigh my choices, and they'll have definite consequences, as opposed to the real world, where one action can have an infinite number of consequences and you can't possibly prepared for them all. And it gives me an opportunity to think that I can actually make up an original fantasy story as opposed to the cliched dreck I've written before.

FatR
2009-03-12, 04:40 PM
Also, I, personally, have encountered few examples of amoral PC behavior. In about half of such cases players were *******s too. PCs in my current game, where the party was explicitly created as an old-style bunch of daredevils who crawl dungeons for loot and fame, are rather greedy, but, if anything, excessively merciful and unwilling to attack first.

Narmoth
2009-03-12, 04:40 PM
1. No, but if they attack me when I come close, it's alright to kill everyone who wants to kill me.
2. Yes.
3. Am I absolutely sure they're a raiding party? If so then yes - they are going to raid some innocent village.
4. Ditto.
5. Usually no, but if I recognize the crew as members of a raiding party that destroyed a village (maybe even mine), then yes.

Now, substitute vikings with monster of your choice.
Be mindful of that #5 is only valid in a society with poor law enforcement, like the clan-based viking society. In most medieval lands you would have to prove (before or afterward is another matter) that they had participated in raiding and harmed subjects of the legal entity you are in

Tengu_temp
2009-03-12, 04:45 PM
"What is this picture? is this a man or a woman?" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W95z1DqOIUg) basically. Ah, whatever happened to the big hulking heroes? now you have nothing but varsuvius's.


Big hulking heroes would be out of character in the setting my game takes place in. :tongue:


Incidentally, this is what our DM (the rogue/warlock's player) had to say about goblins:

"Jump to conclusions"? Of course not all goblins are evil, unless it's a really black and white game. But if goblins are raiding peaceful villagers, then there's no way "the villagers have started it" and these goblins might not be pure evil, but they're evil enough to kill to defend the villagers.

Also, the DM has a pet mysterious DMNPC in the game, whom he treats as an equal party member? Another reason to ditch the group, if you ask me - that's almost impossible to pull off right.


Now, substitute vikings with monster of your choice.


Nothing has changed. My options are still the same.

Morty
2009-03-12, 04:45 PM
You have NO idea how much I get told that by the other players.

"You worry too much, we'll do fine without a controller."

"Dude, relax it's just a roleplay."

And other such things.

They don't see things the way I do. In the game, I have control. I can weigh my choices, and they'll have definite consequences, as opposed to the real world, where one action can have an infinite number of consequences and you can't possibly prepared for them all. And it gives me an opportunity to think that I can actually make up an original fantasy story as opposed to the cliched dreck I've written before.

That's not what I meant. What I meant was that you shouldn't get worked up because a lot of people, including your players play the game differently, not that you shouldn't roleplay your character seriously.



Also, the DM has a pet mysterious DMNPC in the game, whom he treats as an equal party member? Another reason to ditch the group, if you ask me - that's almost impossible to pull off right.

The problem with ditching the group is that it might be hard to find another one.

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 04:49 PM
Thornhold example was Raiding to survive, after your settlement was destroyed and your lands invaded.

Yes, protecting the villagers will require violence, but sometimes, its not as black and white as "the villagers cannot have started it"

Tengu_temp
2009-03-12, 04:58 PM
Thornhold example was Raiding to survive, after your settlement was destroyed and your lands invaded.

Yes, protecting the villagers will require violence, but sometimes, its not as black and white as "the villagers cannot have started it"

Then investigate the case. But if there are no clues that prove otherwise, and after you are done the DM says "well done, the villagers have started it and the goblins were only fighting back - aren't you little heroes, nyeh nyeh" then he's just being a colossal d*ck.



The problem with ditching the group is that it might be hard to find another one.

That's what PbP is for.

Jack_Simth
2009-03-12, 05:16 PM
So there could be a society where rape is legal and not seen as evil? That's disgusting!

Potentially, yes (and yes).

See, all morality ultimately lies on a set of fundamental assumptions. If you ask "why?" long enough, you'll run into the brick wall of an untestable assumption - past which, there can be no arguing; it's completely ineffective unless you can show how that untestable assumption leads to internal inconsistencies ... and even then, you have to find someone who's susceptible to that particular line of reasoning (Note: you'll also occasionally run into something circular - but once the circle is established, the entire circle can be considered a fundamental assumption). The modern idea of slavery, for instance, is generally considered to be the forced servitude of one person to another. Almost nobody considers a horse a slave, because a horse isn't considered a person - the horse is merely a working animal. Catch: How is "person" defined (note: it's a little easier in D&D, what with a clear defining line for "intelligent creature" ... but Murder is the a {person} {killing} a {person} without {sufficient cause for the act in question} - even if you've got {person} clearly defined, {killing} gets a bit gray in a world with a confirmed afterlife, and {sufficient cause for the act in question} is very often hard to pin down)? Ultimately, everyone is either taking their definitions for it from some source (in which case, the fundamental assumption is that the source in question is correct on the issue), or "feels right" definitions (which ultimately can't be properly defended - even the "pure reason" Kant ended up defending his definition of person with something that amounted to "what else could it be?" - a question, not something he could definitively demonstrated or proven). Going back to the example of "legal rape", it's pretty simple to see how it such a scenario could occur - if the victim isn't considered a person, it's not rape (as the victim has no rights to dictate what happens to their own body). There's alternate ways it could occur, but that's one of the easiest to see.

That's a bit on the rambling side... am I making sense?

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 05:16 PM
Probably the best example of "How to handle goblin raiding problem in an Exalted-good fashion" comes in Champions of Valor.

page 15: Character against character
Example: A good moon elf and his dwarf and human companions have just dealt with the warriors of a small tribe of Stonelands goblins raiding Cormyr farms. The dwarves and humans want to kill the females and young because they feel the goblins are incurably evil, and if left alive they'll just want revenge on the Cormyreans for their dead husbands and fathers.

The moon elf points out that killing them just means that some other evil group is going to take over their territory and be a problem for the farmers later. He suggests leaving them alive with some of their treasure and weapons, arranging to have a team of Chauntean priests teach them rudimentary agriculture for the area, and hoping that they change their ways in the future, perhaps the raiding goblins were evil out of starvation of the worship of evil gods.

If his allies accept this proposal (perhaps after suggesting that the treasure left behind comes out of the elf's share), the elf can later explain why he feels that killing defenseless creatures, even evil ones, is wrong, because killing an evil creature just sends another soul to an evil deity, while giving it a chance to redeem itself not only steals a soul from the evil gods, it sends it to the good gods.

Note that the goblin warriors, it appears, were killed off in stopping the raids. Though CoV does suggest that Good characters are expected to accept surrenders, as well.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-12, 05:20 PM
So quick to jump to conclusions. For all we know the villagers started it. Or the goblins could be being forced into it all (maybe by the Thorns themselves). And even if they are just plain wicked, not all goblins in the Vale are like that. The ones in Ugluk, for example, are a lot more civilised. I dare say there are goblins nobles out there, who enjoy fine wine, intellectual debate and classical architecture.

Fair enough. If you truly care to be Paragon of Virtue you should try to get a member of whatever force you're assaulting to surrender (or capture one) and interrogate to see what's actually going on.

Of course, goblins that slit little girl's throats are just Evil.

Also: "civilized" does not mean "not Evil." [insert Godwin here]

FoE
2009-03-12, 05:29 PM
A human rogue/warlock who is also an ordained priestess of the Raven Queen. She is a former member of a group of assassins who are the police in the campaign setting's most prominent city. She claims that she wishes she could do something besides kill, but killing is all she knows how to do. She was also formerly in a lesbian relationship with our group's cleric. She cries a lot and never seems to be happy. Her player (our DM) has already decided that he's going to have her killed later, and have her corpse possessed by one of the BBEG's in our campaign.

Ugh. You have much bigger problems than ethics if a DMPC like this is in your campaign, Zousha. :smallyuk:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 05:29 PM
"Jump to conclusions"? Of course not all goblins are evil, unless it's a really black and white game. But if goblins are raiding peaceful villagers, then there's no way "the villagers have started it" and these goblins might not be pure evil, but they're evil enough to kill to defend the villagers.
I wouldn't know, we've only just met the villagers. My character is trying to explain the girl's death to her parents.

Also, the DM has a pet mysterious DMNPC in the game, whom he treats as an equal party member? Another reason to ditch the group, if you ask me - that's almost impossible to pull off right.
Firstly, he hasn't stolen the spotlight as far as I can tell. Secondly, if his character is a problem then so is mine, as I am co-authoring the campaign setting with him.

And the game I'm playing IS PbP.[/QUOTE]

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 05:31 PM
Ugh. You have much bigger problems than ethics if a DMPC like this is in your campaign, Zousha. :smallyuk:

What? What's the problem?!

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-12, 05:35 PM
What? What's the problem?!

Oh FoE is probably just twigged by the really awful backstory. It basically bleeds teh emos - the lesbianism is just the cherry on top of a sundae of bad fanfic. :smalltongue:

I assume your DM does not make these sort of characters very often? You mentioned that he likes having trauma in the background, but is it always of the "trauma = teh emos" school? :smallconfused:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 05:59 PM
Oh FoE is probably just twigged by the really awful backstory. It basically bleeds teh emos - the lesbianism is just the cherry on top of a sundae of bad fanfic. :smalltongue:

I assume your DM does not make these sort of characters very often? You mentioned that he likes having trauma in the background, but is it always of the "trauma = teh emos" school? :smallconfused:

His main character in our regular roleplay (Eloise, by name) was some sort of planar traveller who arrived in Eberron seeking the nobles who murdered her abusive parents. When she got information regarding someone who could help her, she went alone, and said she'd be willing to do anything to find her parents' murderers. The guy with the info (some sort of evil wizard who liked to mutate things) took her up on her generous offer and raped her with the help of his betentacled concubine. She was mentally broken from the incident, and the only person she could stand to be around was Gauntlet, a warforged paladin (played by the player of our warforged fighter.) Eloise had suicidal tendencies following the rape, only exacerbated by another character (a half-dragon lizardwoman who couldn't stand seeing weakness in others), but Gauntlet stopped her from killing herself, and helped her heal, eventually killing the man who raped her himself. Through his relationship with Eloise, Gauntlet learned about emotions, and the two of them fell in love. With the help of some uber powerful magic, Gauntlet was made human, and now the two of them are preparing for marriage, though a mystical freak accident has now rapidly accellerated Eloise's pregnancy.

And also, he has a play he's written called "The Mortician's Daughter."

FoE
2009-03-12, 06:00 PM
From the Diary of Mary Ebony Dementia Darkness Raven Shadow Claw Moon Blood Angst Mourning Nightside Way

I'm starting to run out of places on my arms and legs to cut myself but I know of no other way to relieve the pain I feel from all the killing I must do! Oh sure, my victims cry out "PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" But do they have any idea how it makes me feel? I must have cried fr like two hours the last time I slit that guards throat I felt so sorry for his family that I tracked them down and killed them. And then I cried some more. And then made out with my girlfriend and then we took off our clothes and she put her fingie in my you-know-what. But her love will never relieve the pain I feel. I guess I'll have to start cutting on my stomach now Oh, the, anguish!

P.S. I think the rogue in my party likes me. I don't love her back it's so hard bein hot


His main character in our regular roleplay (Eloise, by name) was some sort of planar traveller who arrived in Eberron seeking the nobles who murdered her abusive parents. When she got information regarding someone who could help her, she went alone, and said she'd be willing to do anything to find her parents' murderers. The guy with the info (some sort of evil wizard who liked to mutate things) took her up on her generous offer and raped her with the help of his betentacled concubine. She was mentally broken from the incident, and the only person she could stand to be around was Gauntlet, a warforged paladin (played by the player of our warforged fighter.) Eloise had suicidal tendencies following the rape, only exacerbated by another character (a half-dragon lizardwoman who couldn't stand seeing weakness in others), but Gauntlet stopped her from killing herself, and helped her heal, eventually killing the man who raped her himself. Through his relationship with Eloise, Gauntlet learned about emotions, and the two of them fell in love. With the help of some uber powerful magic, Gauntlet was made human, and now the two of them are preparing for marriage, though a mystical freak accident has now rapidly accellerated Eloise's pregnancy.

And also, he has a play he's written called "The Mortician's Daughter."

Oh gods. It's worse than I thought.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 06:10 PM
Yeah, now that I read it again, I realize just what the problem is...

Incidentally, he holds up Angela Carter, author of The Bloody Chamber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloody_Chamber), as a better author than Tolkien.

FoE
2009-03-12, 06:24 PM
I just can't get over it. Abusive dead parents AND tentacle rape AND a mystical pregnancy! All she needs is a fursuit fetish and she'd hit the bad fanfic superfecta! :smallbiggrin:

chiasaur11
2009-03-12, 06:25 PM
Fair enough. If you truly care to be Paragon of Virtue you should try to get a member of whatever force you're assaulting to surrender (or capture one) and interrogate to see what's actually going on.

Of course, goblins that slit little girl's throats are just Evil.

Also: "civilized" does not mean "not Evil." [insert Godwin here]

Hey, all I thought of was that one scene in Gremlins 2.

Quincunx
2009-03-12, 06:27 PM
Zousha Omenohu: When we say that you're taking things too seriously, we mean it, but we also imply that your worldview is so Lawful that you are confusing people without your sense of Law as Evil. It's a common. . .rather common. . .painfully common mistake. I may PM you a Lawful Evil society's laws, later.

Face of Evil: Needs a sarcasm tag if you didn't lift that directly from Livejournal. Probably needs a sarcasm tag even if you did. . .

Jack_Simth: I could follow, but that would've benefited from being broken into more paragraphs. Fhaolan had anecdotes instead of the general case, but it was easier to follow the anecdotes.

horseboy: The demons of misspelling are swarming today. Hopefully, by tomorrow they'll mostly have died, after gorging themselves on typoes and laying eggs in the cracks between the keys.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 06:35 PM
Zousha Omenohu: When we say that you're taking things too seriously, we mean it, but we also imply that your worldview is so Lawful that you are confusing people without your sense of Law as Evil. It's a common. . .rather common. . .painfully common mistake. I may PM you a Lawful Evil society's laws, later.
I see. I'm no better than the system I'm condemning in that sense, then?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 06:41 PM
I just can't get over it. Abusive dead parents AND tentacle rape AND a mystical pregnancy! All she needs is a fursuit fetish and she'd hit the bad fanfic superfecta! :smallbiggrin:

I suppose this would be a bad time to tell you she also spent some time hallucinating about a talking wolf who emotionally abused her but she thought "protected" her, leading to her seeking therapy?

Trizap
2009-03-12, 06:46 PM
I agree with Zousha here, you are all promoting the same black and white DnD morality, while Zousha is the one to speak out against what he sees as wrong, and I agree, just because they are goblins doesn't mean they are evil, for all we know, the goblins could be a tribe forced out of their home by humans from another land who were expanding, adventurers could act good but not really be good, only doing it for fame, and there is definitely fantastic racism here against orcs, goblins and all that. reminds me of European colonialism

that and the whole tomb raiding and stealing stuff part about adventuring, plus the murder, really DOES make me wonder why people choose to call adventurers heroes rather than criminals, I mean sure they wipe out threats but
sometimes its not the best way to solve things, as Celia from OOTS points out, the only people who seem to think that they can solve every problem they come across with violence are adventurers, really if you solve every problem with violence that doesn't place you high on the scale of morality, people who solve everything like that shouldn't even be LG, at best solving all your problems with violence, looting stuff and tomb raiding makes you an anti-hero at best.

at worst it makes you a hypocrite.

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 06:49 PM
Fiendish Codex 2 had a list of traits that LE societies tend to display.

Unquestioning deference to authority: rulers are loved and obeyed because they are rulers.

Worship of strength: benevolence is considered undesirable and a sign of weakness, in leads and neighbours- people grow up hoping to prove their strength and their ability to dominate others.

Strict rules: Conformity to a single identity is harshly enforced. Citizens strive to prove they belong to a mass whose collectve wisdom is greater than individual will. Foreigners and minorities are oppressed when weak and seen as threats when strong. All endeavors, however innocuous, must express the prevailing idealogy.

Intrusive Control: Authorities monitor all pursuits and activities, ensuring that strict rules are followed to the letter. Ordinary people are expected to be strong, pure, militant, and self-denying.

Harsh Punishments: tough punishments are routinely meted out for even minor infractions. the common person enthusiastically supports public humiliation, flogging, torture, etc. Ordinary folk view such measures as essential to the maintenance of social discipline.

Bureaucratic precision: all transactions, especially those of enforcement authorities, are tracked and recorded with obsessive attention to detail. No act is too sadistic or gruesome to engender shame- all must be recorded for posterity's sake.

Exemptions for rulers: The rules are meanst for everyone except figures of high authority, who by definition are so important that the actions cannot be contained in a rules set- they deserve all the comfort, pleasure, and aggrandizement they can get. Anyone who says this attitude represents a contradiction in terms is imprisoned, arrested, and tortured.

Expansionist aims: Believing fervently in their manifest superiority, citizens of this culture cannot bear the thought of other societies that are organized differently or adhering to other values. Such decadent cultures must be conquered, subjugated, and turned into reflections (though inevitably inferior ones) of the lawful evil society.

so, thats one WOTC version of Lawful Evil.

FoE
2009-03-12, 06:52 PM
Face of Evil: Needs a sarcasm tag if you didn't lift that directly from Livejournal. Probably needs a sarcasm tag even if you did. . .

Well, I cribbed a bit from "My Immortal." Hopefully people get the joke.


I suppose this would be a bad time to tell you she also spent some time hallucinating about a talking wolf who emotionally abused her but she thought "protected" her, leading to her seeking therapy?

Lol wut

At least I applaud the "going to therapy" part, though it seems a bit out of place in a fantasy campaign.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-12, 07:04 PM
I agree with Zousha here, you are all promoting the same black and white DnD morality, while Zousha is the one to speak out against what he sees as wrong, and I agree, just because they are goblins doesn't mean they are evil, for all we know, the goblins could be a tribe forced out of their home by humans from another land who were expanding, adventurers could act good but not really be good, only doing it for fame, and there is definitely fantastic racism here against orcs, goblins and all that. reminds me of European colonialism

Well, the difference here is that
(1) Goblins are "usually Evil" by RAW - it's like saying the typical Norwegian has blue eyes.
(2) It is true that Bad people can do Good things for Bad reasons but it is also true that Bad people can do Bad things for Good reasons. Maybe the goblins are only raiding 'cause their ancestral farmlands were stolen by wicked humans - but butchering women and children on those raids still makes them Evil.

You can object to Objective Morality (plenty do) but it is a feature of the D&D universe; that is pretty much what folks here have been pointing out.

hamishspence
2009-03-12, 07:08 PM
agreed on that much- Champions of Ruin is a good source for Different forms of evil, from "Driven to Evil" to "Mad, I tell you."

How sympathetic you want to make the goblins (and how much room for redemption) can vary depending on the setting.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 07:34 PM
Lol wut

At least I applaud the "going to therapy" part, though it seems a bit out of place in a fantasy campaign.
As I think I said, it's an Eberron campaign. Though lately that has seemed to mean "modern conveniences are permitted aside from guns."

Dacia Brabant
2009-03-12, 09:24 PM
Out of curiosity Zousha was this that same group where the other players kept preventing you from being effective by having their Strikers charge ahead of their Defender (you) before he could draw the monsters' attention? If so, yeah I'll reiterate that it's the group that's your real problem.


Oh and for anyone who naysays the existence of categorically evil species in D&D I have two words for you: Mind Flayers.

Xuincherguixe
2009-03-12, 09:35 PM
However, actual D&D books have the tremendous virtue of containing actual more-or-less playable game world, as opposed to a bunch of ideas, slapped together.

I thought that was D&D to a large extent.


That being said, playing a paragon of virtue in a bleak world is probably the best place to put them in. Sure, they'll liable to get killed when run over by a bus, but it'd somehow end up totally badass. It's also not wrong to have someone like that in a group of grim anti heroes.


As for all the stuff that seems out of a bad fanfic... everyone needs to start somewhere. Handling the range of human emotion badly is at least a start. Next time, hopefully the characters won't be so unintentionally hilarious.


That being said, it might be interesting to see how a campaign would go where all the PCs are shining pillars of light.
"Ooo Goblins, I'm going to convert them to good."
"No, I am!"
"You always convert the goblins, I want to for a change."
"Look, it doesn't matter, we get experience as a group."
"Yeah, 0 split 4 ways. 5 sessions in and we're still level 1. I don't think the DM really thought this one through."
"I'm getting kind of sick of this. Let's go to plan B, the Berserk Game."
"Yeah, about that, I think we need to do some discussion. Not everyone can be a psychotic wandering mass murderer with a giant sword. At the very least, some us really should be using smaller swords."
"Causality says that eventually, four grim anti heroes that slaughter the country side had to happen."
"No it didn't! It doesn't work that way!"

...And there goes my point. If I had one.

Kylarra
2009-03-12, 09:38 PM
Handling the range of human emotion badly is at least a start. Next time, hopefully the characters won't be so unintentionally hilarious.


That being said, it might be interesting to see how a campaign would go where all the PCs are shining pillars of light.
"Ooo Goblins, I'm going to convert them to good."
"No, I am!"
"You always convert the goblins, I want to for a change."
"Look, it doesn't matter, we get experience as a group."
"Yeah, 0 split 4 ways. 5 sessions in and we're still level 1. I don't think the DM really thought this one through."
"I'm getting kind of sick of this. Let's go to plan B, the Berserk Game."
"Yeah, about that, I think we need to do some discussion. Not everyone can be a psychotic wandering mass murderer with a giant sword. At the very least, some us really should be using smaller swords."
"Causality says that eventually, four grim anti heroes that slaughter the country side had to happen."
"No it didn't! It doesn't work that way!"

...And there goes my point. If I had one.To be fair, I'd award exp for "defeating" the goblins if the PCs somehow managed to convert them. :smallwink:

The Neoclassic
2009-03-12, 09:43 PM
Oh and for anyone who naysays the existence of categorically evil species in D&D I have two words for you: Mind Flayers.

And devils and demons, certainly. However, this doesn't mean that goblins, for example, must always be or are categorically evil. :smallsmile:

Thajocoth
2009-03-12, 09:55 PM
This is why, in my campaign, I don't have any race as evil (or good). Below are explanations and examples from my campaign's perspective... Relevant, but unimportant, so feel free to skip it if you wish.

There are pairs that hate one another, but none that are evil. None that are particularly good, either. And I let the party pick whatever races they want of what has stats so far in 4e (including the monster manual races at the end). The races serving evil gods have had their ties to those gods severed. (Actually, everyone in the campaign's ties to gods have been severed, they just don't realize it because there's a forced peace.)

An example (I hope no one in my campaign reads this, as they haven't seen this info yet):
"The Gnolls of the Ash Plain were the last to agree to Greenhaven's alliances. Followers of Yeenoghu, they continued vicious attacks on the other races to instill fear and chaos until they were finally marched on by the combined armies of Greenhaven, Pell, Zipdar, Quilthrin, Segirth, Keegora, Marzanu, Pagwar and Steelhammer. Completely surrounded, their pack leader, Gnoryc, shouted a prayer to Yeenoghu, asking to give his people the power to overcome these odds. In the ensuing battle, Gnoryc led the charge and was the first to fall. The rest of the pack took this as a sign that Yeenoghu had forsaken them, and, with their tails between their legs, gave in to the demands of the other races. Humiliated, they wandered the northeast plain, scavenging on easy prey. Over time, they noticed their land turning to ash. Plants became scarcer, so the animals that ate those plants became scarcer, which meant less food. They decided that, since Yeenoghu was certainly not going to help them, and they now have alliances with the other races, they'd ask the other races for their aid. They sent a trio of Gnolls as ambassadors to Quilthrin to ask their powerful magi if there was anything they could do about their food problem. They were scowled as beggars and asked to leave. This incited anger amongst the pack, but they still know the price of reprisal. Their agreements, however, say only that they cannot kill or attack the other races, not that they can't eat them. Without any other real source of food, they've been reduced from great warriors of chaos, to grave robbing scavengers."

So, they still act like Gnolls, but not for evil reasons... And if any players decided to play as a Gnoll, they'd start the campaign knowing this. I systematically did this with any playable race that had to be good or evil, this way, they can all easily be both.

The setting has a big arcane portal-dome coving an area about 1/4 the size of Ohio. The only way in or out (and thuslt the only way to trade) is through the Human City of Greenhaven. I'd love to go into more detail, but I don't want to bore you too much.

Interestingly enough, the Dome is well represented in the party. There's an Minotaur, Orc, Dwarf, Elf, Drow & Genasi.

From Kobolds to Gods, no creature able to make a decision is forced to be good or evil in my campaigns due to race, but instead is what they are because of their own personal motivations.

So, while neutralizing alliances, I also allow the PCs to become a better good, or a worse evil than they otherwise could based on their own decisions. The party's Elf Cleric, for example, is an inquisitor type who believes everyone has evil, he just needs to find it. He considers himself True Neutral, and really does run the whole way between good & evil, law & chaos.

Xuincherguixe
2009-03-12, 09:55 PM
To be fair, I'd award exp for "defeating" the goblins if the PCs somehow managed to convert them. :smallwink:

I would too really. But, effective gameplay doesn't make for as entertaining of quotes.

"I search for traps 17!"
"You find that on the ceiling are a set of poisoned arrows, set to go off when one steps on a certain panel."
"Okay everyone? Don't step on that panel."
"I hate playing a functional character. I want to step on that panel now!"

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 10:22 PM
Out of curiosity Zousha was this that same group where the other players kept preventing you from being effective by having their Strikers charge ahead of their Defender (you) before he could draw the monsters' attention? If so, yeah I'll reiterate that it's the group that's your real problem.

It's the same group, yes, but that problem got better in the last fight, since I remembered to use Divine Challenge, and we organized our tactics more efficiently.

We sort of paired each striker with a defender, and instead of being IN FRONT of me, the striker would be NEXT to me, so we could concentrate attacks on a single goblin.

We're learning.

And I'd like to take this moment to note that the player who plays our warforged fighter is a great roleplayer. His character in this roleplay is a bit more one-dimensional though. Battle seems to be the only thing he really knows anything about. We're talking to the villagers holed up in the church right now. While I'm grappling with emotional issues while talking to the girl's parents, he's talking with the village leader about fortifying the church against attack if there are more goblins in the village. He knows tactics and stuff, but has no people skills, and no real concern for them, at least for now. When he charged the goblins that killed the girl, it wasn't that he didn't care whether she lived or died, but because it was a tactically sound thing to do, and casualties happen in battle (at least from the character's perspective)

And for the record, the warforged in our setting are not Raised By Wolves. Judging by how the setting's history, they were some sort of soldier-bot for the genasi who used to rule the massive city beneath the entire area. When it sunk beneath the earth, and the Thorns began to grow, the warforged who survived were trapped down there, while most of the surviving genasi were captured by the Thorns and twisted into the other player races and monster races. There are still a few genasi in the place, descended from those that escaped the Thorns capture, but they are a firm minority, and not a unified community.

Kris Strife
2009-03-12, 10:43 PM
Zousha, are you certain the rest of the party isnt playing WoD characters?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 10:47 PM
What do you mean? I can explain our setting's history and setup if that might give a clearer picture.

monty
2009-03-12, 10:54 PM
I think he was joking.

Kris Strife
2009-03-12, 10:56 PM
Just the characters themselves. Traumatized thief who likes to bleed: Ghoul. Shapeshifter who pretends to be human: Changling. Angsty Warlock: Mage. Artificial made being: Promethean.

Ask your DM if your character can secretly be the son of Pelor or become a lycanthrope.

Edit: Ask for both!

And I'm mostly (93.286%) joking.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-12, 11:20 PM
Well...I AM planning on my character taking the Demigod ED.:smalltongue:

Maybe he can become a werelion or something. After all, the DM's angsty warlock is going to be killed in some way, and then her corpse will be possessed by a fallen servant of the Raven Queen who used human sacrifices to try and win immortality, and then crumble into dust when the evil soul is superpowered by a cult of evil druids into an entity that can possess all the thorns in the entire area and make them into a Godzilla-esque-city-crushing wicker-man-the-size-of-Poland!

Zen Master
2009-03-13, 04:26 AM
In one word: yes
On more words:
Plundering and killing: - check (raiding other countries and plundering them)
Killing of defenseless people: - check (killing priests, women and children)
Enslaving people: - check (yes, and a big part of being able to go on raids were the fact that they had slaves (tralls) to work on the farm at home)

Now, would it be right to exterminate:
- A viking village, that is a Dane or Norse village, with warriors, peasants, tralls, women, children, old people?
- A viking raiding party, coming in their longboats to your village?
- A viking raiding party, that you have searched out and that you have had no previous encounters with?
- A viking raiding party, that you have no reports of having raided, but that displays the dragon head (warship only thing) and shields on its sides?
- A viking longship with it's crew that come to trade to a city?

Traitor! =D

No - seriouslty, it's funny. Because while we agree on the facts of the viking culture, to me they are a kind of heroes. Surely I romanticise them somewhat, but still I see many aspects of their lives as ideal. The whole plunder and pillage part may be optional - but I'm not strongly opposed to it, within the context.

The point here is - I do not consider the vikings evil. Maybe I should - maybe it's just national pride in our ancient past that's messing with me. But generally the vikings were raiders at a time when most people were - they were just better at it than most.

And that brings us back to the goblins and hobgoblins. Why are they any more evil than humans and elves? Because humans and elves do most of the same things.

So are fantasy races judged, not on their actions, but on their color? Green = evil? Or what?

kamikasei
2009-03-13, 04:56 AM
So, I'm thinking your issues in game (e.g. "I'm a naive idealist surrounded by amoral jerks", "my party mates recklessly endanger the people we're supposed to be helping") probably deserve their own thread.

Without those, what's left of this conversation?

I took a look at the thread on WotC, and it looks like your main problem is threefold. Firstly: you seem to be assuming that non-human races should be easier to make sweeping statements about than humans. Secondly: you seem hung up on the idea that good and evil are different for a paladin than for others; rather, a paladin just has to be more careful to avoid honest mistakes. Thirdly, you seem to have a real block on the idea that other people consider different things good or evil than you, and that, e.g., villains may consider themselves entirely in the right while committing atrocities. ...I don't get the last part.

Pretend everyone in your game world is human - instead of racial differences, have some marker or tribal or cultural affiliation that could let you tell at a glance "why is there a member of the Bloodfeathers among these Jadewings?" instead of "what's that hobgoblin doing with these orcs?". Do you have trouble accepting that some of those groups are going to do evil things, thinking they're in the right? They'll raid, pillage, kill and enslave others because they're not really people in their eyes, or because having the strength to do so gives them the right to do so in their ethics. They'll worship evil gods who reinforce this behaviour.

Other groups - the majority, probably - will not be working to make the world a better place or to dominate or destroy others; they'll just be trying to get by. Often they'll be pretty good to one another, but not extend that benevolence very far outside their group - or extend it to strangers and wanderers, but not to neighbours and competitors. (Others will be bastards to their own kind as well as to outsiders, of course.) Some of those groups will be better off than others, as they compete for land and resources; all will be more focused on their own survival than on the greater good. The ones ones who have it good won't give much thought to the historical and economic basis for the others' outcast status. The ones living on the fringe may do evil to survive, or may make evil acts a basic part of their way of life.

It's not up to an adventurer to heal the world. When one group are doing evil to another group, it's good to intervene and use your great personal power to aid the group having evil done to them. It's better to root out and do away with the reasons that the first group are resorting to evil in the first place, but it's going above and beyond the call of duty, which a paladin should do, but your average adventurer need not.

And of course, it's all variable depending on the exact situation. If the ancestors of the Greentalons drove the ancestors of the Bloodfeathers out of the lowlands five hundred years ago and the situation is now settled and peaceful Greentalon villages best by savage and parasitical Bloodfeather raiding parties, that's a different moral context than if the Greentalons ten years ago invaded their Bloodfeather neighbours and drove them in to the wild. Keep your eyes open, find out what you're getting in to, ask questions first, and be prepared to change your view of the situation if your assumptions are invalidated. Don't swear oaths to do the bidding of people you don't trust. Put points in diplomacy and sense motive. Don't invade the homes of people who are doing no one any harm just to take the treasure buried there. Learn to live without neatly tied-off endings and solutions. Learn to forgive yourself when you screw up and to make amends rather than falling into self-hating paralysis.

lord_khaine
2009-03-13, 05:11 AM
Maybe he can become a werelion or something. After all, the DM's angsty warlock is going to be killed in some way, and then her corpse will be possessed by a fallen servant of the Raven Queen who used human sacrifices to try and win immortality, and then crumble into dust when the evil soul is superpowered by a cult of evil druids into an entity that can possess all the thorns in the entire area and make them into a Godzilla-esque-city-crushing wicker-man-the-size-of-Poland!


i dont know what you had been smoking, but i wish you would share some of it with my current DM, we have spend the last 2 months chasing lv 4 bandits because we cant find anything else thats more deserving of our wrath.
(party lv 11)


And that brings us back to the goblins and hobgoblins. Why are they any more evil than humans and elves? Because humans and elves do most of the same things.

So are fantasy races judged, not on their actions, but on their color? Green = evil? Or what?

noone said they were more evil, but in most campaigns they spend more time raiding than humans and elves, and so it only makes sense that they will get targetet more often by adventures.

kamikasei
2009-03-13, 05:41 AM
And that brings us back to the goblins and hobgoblins. Why are they any more evil than humans and elves? Because humans and elves do most of the same things.

So are fantasy races judged, not on their actions, but on their color? Green = evil? Or what?

The basic problem is that the core game tends to assume that it's fair to treat entire races as if they have a single culture. Goblins as a race are more evil than elves as a race, because according to the MM, goblins tend to be evil while elves tend to be good. Why is that? Oh, there are bound to be all sorts of reasons. But more importantly, how useful is that as a guide? Well, if all goblins have basically the same culture, or their various cultures share the aspects that make them tend towards evil, and if likewise all elves belong to the same or in this respect similar cultures, it's a reasonably useful guide. If there are a multitude of both goblin and elven cultures with widely varying structures and morals, then it's pretty much useless, because the relevant indicator as to the creature's likely behaviour won't be its race but its culture.

The game makes an assumption that you have this diversity for humans, but not for other races (or mostly for core races only). It's the standard "all planets in Star Wars have one climate, all aliens in Star Trek have one culture" silliness. Depending on the history of the world and the origins of the races, this might make some kind of internal sense. In the core game, it's not justified; no reasoning is given either way. (I wonder what the explanation for the origins and current status of the various races is in Greyhawk?)

So, it's something you should clear up with your DM before a game. Are there assumptions you can justly make about all goblins, or is there a lot of variance? How about elves, dwarves, halflings, hobgoblins, kobolds? Where did these races come from, how did that lead them to where they are today?

I think one major reason why these things break down along racial lines so often is the existence in D&D of racial gods. If Gruumsh made the orcs, or adopted them as his own in the depths of time, that's presumably going to impose some pretty powerful universal influences on their culture, much as Lolth-worship does on drow. And again, you get this one dominant god for each race (Gruumsh, Maglubiyet, Corellon, Moradin) while humans get their pantheon spanning the alignment spectrum.

Manga Shoggoth
2009-03-13, 06:05 AM
So there could be a society where rape is legal and not seen as evil? That's disgusting!

Droit de seigneur?

Zen Master
2009-03-13, 06:41 AM
Generally, I guess it's a flavor question. Do you want easy answers or not?

My adventurers are most often painted in shades of grey - with humans being the most questionable of all races, despite often noble intentions.

But sometimes I do launch a race that is simply evil. Mindflayers are an example. In actual fact, they may not see themselves as evil, but in practice they regard all flesh as a tool - something to be moulded to pleasing and useful shapes, and directed so as to be of the greatest possible usefulness.

There are also minotaurs. In my games, minotaurs are uniformly violent, primitive brutes, willing to work for any master who pays them enough, and gives them lambs to the slaughter.

These are, naturally, just examples. But the point is that almost all races are divergent, and that I very rarely make a good vs. evil scenario.

Heh - come to think of it, here's how my adventures are not:

Guard Captain Garradus entered the Hall of the Conclave, kneeled, and spoke:

Assembled Lords of the Senate. I bring you reports of our latest explorator mission to the far west. In the foothills of the Gavelstone Mountains we came upon another citystate ... and my lords - the inhabitants of this city ... are Evil.

A moment of shocked silence filled the solemn hall, then Speaker Menelaus answered:

Well, clearly that leaves us only one option. As we are Good, we must immediately muster our crusaders, and venture forth with the rightous wrath of our Gods. Redeem or Destroy!

The senators all intoned the sacred wow:

Redeem or Destroy!

Satisfied, Guard Captain Garradus rose, touched his fist the the embossed Holy Flame on his breastplate, and went immediately the ring the bells of war once more.

Narmoth
2009-03-13, 07:02 AM
Nothing has changed. My options are still the same.

Yeah, that's basically the idea. Now you have a realistic justification for killing the greenskins



To be fair, I'd award exp for "defeating" the goblins if the PCs somehow managed to convert them. :smallwink:

Nope, you get full xp for taking them prisoners. Then you could get additional xp for converting the prisoners


Oh and for anyone who naysays the existence of categorically evil species in D&D I have two words for you: Mind Flayers.

Except for the good Illithid in BoED


And devils and demons, certainly. However, this doesn't mean that goblins, for example, must always be or are categorically evil. :smallsmile:

I were planning on converting a vashar (BoVD) to good.
Also, if given a chance, I'll try to convert a devil or demon to good.


Traitor! =D

No - seriouslty, it's funny. Because while we agree on the facts of the viking culture, to me they are a kind of heroes. Surely I romanticise them somewhat, but still I see many aspects of their lives as ideal. The whole plunder and pillage part may be optional - but I'm not strongly opposed to it, within the context.

Actually, there is a difference between vikings and norsemen/danes/swedes
For example, the scandinavian warriors going to Kievan Rus after 900 went there as traders or mercenaries for the local lords, not as thieves and plunderers
They were also called differently: Variags, that I believe come from words like Warrior (eng.) and Voin (rus.)
So, why not differentiate between those that plundered and those who didn't?


On background:
It might be very sad and touching, but in the end, in the sword and sorcery that D&D really is, it's a reason to kill and to get plot-hooks.
Allthough, in my case, it's also something for me to do if I'm bored: I'll get my character drunk, or get in some fights, or hire prostitutes (he's a fallen paladin), or try to insult as many as possible while other characters are more central to the encounter

On what to do with raiding orcs:
In our campaign an orc chieftain had aquired an artifact stolen from our king. In stead of killing of the village, we agreed to perform a service for the orcs, namely assassinating the chief of the competing tribe.
Then the first orc tribe were able to conquer the other tribe and unite them under a common chieftain.
My character then made an agreement with the chieftain for free passage for humans through the orcish land, and for the release of the human prisoners and slaves of the orcs.

We're not playing a good group, but this agreement actually did more good than the slaughtering of the orc village would. Also, there were less bloodshed between the orcish tribe since one of them had lost all their leaders and commanding officers

Tengu_temp
2009-03-13, 07:27 AM
Yeah, that's basically the idea. Now you have a realistic justification for killing the greenskins


Realistic for a good character, at least - killing other creatures out of racism alone is realistic too, although very far from good.

Narmoth
2009-03-13, 07:32 AM
Realistic for a good character, at least - killing other creatures out of racism alone is realistic too, although very far from good.

We were discussing excuses for good characters, weren't we?


Heh - come to think of it, here's how my adventures are not:

Guard Captain Garradus entered the Hall of the Conclave, kneeled, and spoke:

Assembled Lords of the Senate. I bring you reports of our latest explorator mission to the far west. In the foothills of the Gavelstone Mountains we came upon another citystate ... and my lords - the inhabitants of this city ... are Evil.

A moment of shocked silence filled the solemn hall, then Speaker Menelaus answered:

Well, clearly that leaves us only one option. As we are Good, we must immediately muster our crusaders, and venture forth with the rightous wrath of our Gods. Redeem or Destroy!

The senators all intoned the sacred wow:

Redeem or Destroy!

Satisfied, Guard Captain Garradus rose, touched his fist the the embossed Holy Flame on his breastplate, and went immediately the ring the bells of war once more.

And smoke rose over the Gavelstone Mountains from the burned village as steel clad knights, under the banner of the Holy Flame, pulled children out on the streets and beheaded them.
Guard Captain Garradus snatched one of the girls from the guard, and pulled her in in the nearest house.
Soon, screams of pain and fear could be heard from inside.

Tengu_temp
2009-03-13, 07:42 AM
We were discussing excuses for good characters, weren't we?


Yeah, but I felt the need to clarify.

lord_khaine
2009-03-13, 08:07 AM
Except for the good Illithid in BoED

and that mindflayer is an aberation and a abomination against all that are written about the Illithid in Lords of Madness.

Dacia Brabant
2009-03-13, 08:10 AM
Except for the good Illithid in BoED

Haven't seen it, though I would love to hear how a creature who biologically is required to eat the brains of sapient being in order to survive, who in order to reproduce its kind has to plant its larvae in the heads of living humanoids--larvae that go on to eat the head from inside out and warp the body into that of an illithid--could plausibly become good.


I agree with you on the Viking vs. Varangian distinction though, that's an important one to make even if it's still a fine line between a raider and a soldier. I think Acromos is probably more influenced by the legendary aspects than historical however, which I don't blame him for and until recently felt the same way. The sagas are brilliant literature for their time and place, but they were still largely propaganda. Oh well.



and that mindflayer is an aberation and a abomination against all that are written about the Illithid in Lords of Madness.

Okay then nevermind, I figured as much.

Leon
2009-03-13, 08:46 AM
and that mindflayer is an aberation

They all are

Tiki Snakes
2009-03-13, 08:49 AM
Bah, I still say Illithids would make PERFECT anti-hero style adventurers.

Think about it, really. They aren't Immoral in general so much as ammoral? They have no allegences with Evil Gods and largely have nothing to do with Demons and Devils.

They just need to eat delicious brains once in a while. Well, That's a problem that can be solved easily enough! Adventurers basically go around killing sentient creatures for fun and profit, (Even when they are good people, this invariably is the case). A Mindflayer Adventurer just makes sure to subdue his quarry once or twice a week, maybe less, and has a good munch on wrong-doer brain-meats.

As long as the Adventuring life continues, the Mindflayer/s in question are provided with a constant stream of quite morally acceptable lunches, and are able to do their part for society in general.

Hell, if the question of the rest of mindflayer society comes up, the Mindflayer Adventurers could be questing for an alternative source of food and so on. Either they are researching spells and artifacts that can create brains, or investigating alternative food sources in their travels, seeing if there are substances out in the over-world that can feed them without it having to be inside a sentient creature's skull.

I can just imagine the journal;

'Day 165. Saturday. Lunchtime. I ated a Carrots. It taste quit gud aktully, but then I made sick all ovr da roge!"

The Neoclassic
2009-03-13, 09:21 AM
I were planning on converting a vashar (BoVD) to good.
Also, if given a chance, I'll try to convert a devil or demon to good.

Not all DMs would allow that, I think, or else it'd be extremely difficult to do. I guess I'd say that no reasonable DM would consider killing a devil or demon (who isn't clearly the one-in-a-million exception who is nonevil) as an evil act (maybe neutral, but not evil). That said, I think that converting is an interesting idea, and if your campaign works with that, go for it.


Haven't seen it, though I would love to hear how a creature who biologically is required to eat the brains of sapient being in order to survive, who in order to reproduce its kind has to plant its larvae in the heads of living humanoids--larvae that go on to eat the head from inside out and warp the body into that of an illithid--could plausibly become good.

The same way that vampires can be good people... Through cheesy pop fiction romance stories for teens! :smallwink:

More seriously, I too have not heard of that and would be curious to hear a bit of background on the matter, as it does seem a sort of contradiction in terms.

kamikasei
2009-03-13, 09:47 AM
The same way that vampires can be good people... Through cheesy pop fiction romance stories for teens! :smallwink:

I kind of want to see Twilight for illithid, now.


More seriously, I too have not heard of that and would be curious to hear a bit of background on the matter, as it does seem a sort of contradiction in terms.

IIRC it was a flayer who'd been subject to a sanctify the wicked spell (or as I think of it, "Mindrape [Mind-affecting (compulsion), Good]"). So, basically someone took an amoral abberation with a biological need for the living brains of sentient beings, and reprogrammed it with a layer of philanthropy. Kind of a jerk move really.

Kylarra
2009-03-13, 09:58 AM
IIRC it was a flayer who'd been subject to a sanctify the wicked spell (or as I think of it, "Mindrape [Mind-affecting (compulsion), Good]"). So, basically someone took an amoral abberation with a biological need for the living brains of sentient beings, and reprogrammed it with a layer of philanthropy. Kind of a jerk move really.So now not only does it have to do that, it feels bad about? :smalleek: That's gotta suck...

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-13, 10:03 AM
So, I'm thinking your issues in game (e.g. "I'm a naive idealist surrounded by amoral jerks", "my party mates recklessly endanger the people we're supposed to be helping") probably deserve their own thread.

Without those, what's left of this conversation?
I'm not sure.

I took a look at the thread on WotC, and it looks like your main problem is threefold. Firstly: you seem to be assuming that non-human races should be easier to make sweeping statements about than humans. Secondly: you seem hung up on the idea that good and evil are different for a paladin than for others; rather, a paladin just has to be more careful to avoid honest mistakes. Thirdly, you seem to have a real block on the idea that other people consider different things good or evil than you, and that, e.g., villains may consider themselves entirely in the right while committing atrocities. ...I don't get the last part.
First point: Isn't that sort of how WOTC paints the non-human races? All one homogeneous culture centered around a specific thing?

Second point: What do you mean "different for a paladin than for others?" I'm not sure I understand.

Third point: I think that comes from my black and white view of morality, that some acts are always evil and some are always good. I think the alignment system supports that view.

I mean, I've read the Book of Exalted Deeds. It has some great information on how to hold you characters to a higher standard.

Pretend everyone in your game world is human - instead of racial differences, have some marker or tribal or cultural affiliation that could let you tell at a glance "why is there a member of the Bloodfeathers among these Jadewings?" instead of "what's that hobgoblin doing with these orcs?". Do you have trouble accepting that some of those groups are going to do evil things, thinking they're in the right? They'll raid, pillage, kill and enslave others because they're not really people in their eyes, or because having the strength to do so gives them the right to do so in their ethics. They'll worship evil gods who reinforce this behaviour.

Other groups - the majority, probably - will not be working to make the world a better place or to dominate or destroy others; they'll just be trying to get by. Often they'll be pretty good to one another, but not extend that benevolence very far outside their group - or extend it to strangers and wanderers, but not to neighbours and competitors. (Others will be bastards to their own kind as well as to outsiders, of course.) Some of those groups will be better off than others, as they compete for land and resources; all will be more focused on their own survival than on the greater good. The ones ones who have it good won't give much thought to the historical and economic basis for the others' outcast status. The ones living on the fringe may do evil to survive, or may make evil acts a basic part of their way of life.

It's not up to an adventurer to heal the world. When one group are doing evil to another group, it's good to intervene and use your great personal power to aid the group having evil done to them. It's better to root out and do away with the reasons that the first group are resorting to evil in the first place, but it's going above and beyond the call of duty, which a paladin should do, but your average adventurer need not.

And of course, it's all variable depending on the exact situation. If the ancestors of the Greentalons drove the ancestors of the Bloodfeathers out of the lowlands five hundred years ago and the situation is now settled and peaceful Greentalon villages best by savage and parasitical Bloodfeather raiding parties, that's a different moral context than if the Greentalons ten years ago invaded their Bloodfeather neighbours and drove them in to the wild. Keep your eyes open, find out what you're getting in to, ask questions first, and be prepared to change your view of the situation if your assumptions are invalidated. Don't swear oaths to do the bidding of people you don't trust. Put points in diplomacy and sense motive. Don't invade the homes of people who are doing no one any harm just to take the treasure buried there. Learn to live without neatly tied-off endings and solutions. Learn to forgive yourself when you screw up and to make amends rather than falling into self-hating paralysis.
You're right. I didn't want to admit it, but you're right. It feels kind of hard to accept though, but that may be my messed up mind talking.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-13, 10:06 AM
Guard Captain Garradus entered the Hall of the Conclave, kneeled, and spoke:

Assembled Lords of the Senate. I bring you reports of our latest explorator mission to the far west. In the foothills of the Gavelstone Mountains we came upon another citystate ... and my lords - the inhabitants of this city ... are Evil.

A moment of shocked silence filled the solemn hall, then Speaker Menelaus answered:

Well, clearly that leaves us only one option. As we are Good, we must immediately muster our crusaders, and venture forth with the rightous wrath of our Gods. Redeem or Destroy!

The senators all intoned the sacred wow:

Redeem or Destroy!

Satisfied, Guard Captain Garradus rose, touched his fist the the embossed Holy Flame on his breastplate, and went immediately the ring the bells of war once more.

And smoke rose over the Gavelstone Mountains from the burned village as steel clad knights, under the banner of the Holy Flame, pulled children out on the streets and beheaded them.
Guard Captain Garradus snatched one of the girls from the guard, and pulled her in in the nearest house.
Soon, screams of pain and fear could be heard from inside.
:smalleek: I think I'm going to be sick! :smallfrown:

Dacia Brabant
2009-03-13, 10:08 AM
'Day 165. Saturday. Lunchtime. I ated a Carrots. It taste quit gud aktully, but then I made sick all ovr da roge!"

Rofl. That is pretty amusing, but it'd be more like:

"Day 1. Meet some humans who not run from me. We talk, they say they in Underdark to fight Drow, my enemy too, and that if we join forces I can have all evil elf brains I can eat. Think it not bad idea but Elder Brain tell me no, make them thralls, and evil brains give me heartburn anyway so I blast them and take them back to community. Have fighter brains for lunch on way back, taste like roast turkey, mmm."

:smalltongue:


The same way that vampires can be good people... Through cheesy pop fiction romance stories for teens! :smallwink:

Har, well said. Even so, "good" vampires can survive without killing, either by finding a willing emo-goth person or working at a blood bank or, depending on the lore, just drinking from animals. Eating intelligent brains is a wee bit different.


IIRC it was a flayer who'd been subject to a sanctify the wicked spell (or as I think of it, "Mindrape [Mind-affecting (compulsion), Good]"). So, basically someone took an amoral abberation with a biological need for the living brains of sentient beings, and reprogrammed it with a layer of philanthropy. Kind of a jerk move really.

I was wondering if it was something like that. I'm definitely going to say that doesn't count since it's not by choice, and it's still having to do evil even if it's compelled to feel like it shouldn't.

Tiki Snakes
2009-03-13, 10:22 AM
Har, well said. Even so, "good" vampires can survive without killing, either by finding a willing emo-goth person or working at a blood bank or, depending on the lore, just drinking from animals. Eating intelligent brains is a wee bit different.


Does it have to be intelligent brains, though? I mean, really? Does a mindflayer derive mineral nourishment in direct relation to their lunch's Int score?

Maybe they just haven't tried a Carrot. Maybe, just maybe, someone should bake them a pie. >_>

's all I'm sayin.

Tengu_temp
2009-03-13, 10:37 AM
Haven't seen it, though I would love to hear how a creature who biologically is required to eat the brains of sapient being in order to survive, who in order to reproduce its kind has to plant its larvae in the heads of living humanoids--larvae that go on to eat the head from inside out and warp the body into that of an illithid--could plausibly become good.


The feeding part has already been mentioned - eat the brains of animals and evil creatures you defeat. You meet plenty of both if you're an adventurer.

Reproduction is even simpler - just don't do that.

Narmoth
2009-03-13, 10:45 AM
Not all DMs would allow that, I think, or else it'd be extremely difficult to do. I guess I'd say that no reasonable DM would consider killing a devil or demon (who isn't clearly the one-in-a-million exception who is nonevil) as an evil act (maybe neutral, but not evil). That said, I think that converting is an interesting idea, and if your campaign works with that, go for it.

Being a warrior of doubtful moral quality (fallen paladin), I doubt I would succeed, especially since I have a very confusing set of beliefs:

"I want to tell you of the great glory of... ehm, something?
Also, you have to do good. Now, how to do that, I guess... you really should ask someone else.
And don't ask those over there, they're my mindless undead minions"

Still, it will be fun to try. :smallbiggrin:


The feeding part has already been mentioned - eat the brains of animals and evil creatures you defeat. You meet plenty of both if you're an adventurer.

Except for the vow of non-violence the Illithid in BoED has sworn
Yeah, that book is kind of special

kamikasei
2009-03-13, 10:58 AM
First point: Isn't that sort of how WOTC paints the non-human races? All one homogeneous culture centered around a specific thing?

Yes, as I addressed in a later post... but there's no reason to think you have to run them that way.


Second point: What do you mean "different for a paladin than for others?" I'm not sure I understand.

I'm thinking of one specific post (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=18049732&postcount=37) of yours in the other thread.




How does one reconcile seeing goblins humans who are gutless murderers one minute, and then seeing other goblins humans as civilized city dwellers. As a co-author for the campaign setting in question an inhabitant of planet Earth, it's really bugged me.
Fixed it for you, hopefully in a way that answers your question.
...I suppose that's true, but I'm not a mighty paladin of the sun god in real life.

I don't see what being a paladin has to do with it. In D&D and in the real world, individuals may have something in common (race, nationality, class, gender, hair colour) while being very different morally. Is it that you feel you ignore this issue in the real world, but your character's paladinhood forces him to face it? Or that you think paladins should always be sure that they're doing the right thing? (Oh brother, do I disagree with that!)


Third point: I think that comes from my black and white view of morality, that some acts are always evil and some are always good. I think the alignment system supports that view.

I mean, I've read the Book of Exalted Deeds. It has some great information on how to hold you characters to a higher standard.

Personally I think the BoED's advice is pretty terrible... but that's a side issue.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. In D&D, objective good and evil do in fact exist, as laid out via alignment. But different people will think different things are right and wrong, or won't care particularly about the morality of their actions, and so will commit good and evil acts yet either not believe or not care that it may make them evil people.

This does not mean the objective good and evil aren't there.

I'm also wondering if perhaps your "black and white morality" is a different issue to the question of objective good and evil. It is possible to believe that a given act is either good or evil, without having to know which it is. It is also possible for two acts, superficially the same, to be morally different depending on their contexts (basically because nothing is "an act" in itself - every act is actually unique, slightly different from every other, because of the context it's embedded in). I suspect you're looking for simple, clear rules that can be applied universally and assure you that you're always doing The Right Thing - when actually, doing The Right Thing is bloody hard and it takes a lot of work and thought just to not really be sure of anything except that you're trying.

You know what you get at the end, though? An interesting story and a likeable character - maybe.


You're right. I didn't want to admit it, but you're right. It feels kind of hard to accept though, but that may be my messed up mind talking.

Out of curiosity, what specifically do you find hard to accept?


:smalleek: I think I'm going to be sick! :smallfrown:

This is what people are talking about when they say "don't take it so seriously". You're talking about a parody. Yes, the idea of Good vs. Evil as "sides" where the Good guys go out and kill any Evil guys they find, right down to young children, is disgusting. That's because it's meant to illustrate how these things are not supposed to work.


Does it have to be intelligent brains, though? I mean, really? Does a mindflayer derive mineral nourishment in direct relation to their lunch's Int score?

Yes actually, I think so. The nourishment is both physical (for which the brain could be intelligent or animal, alive or dead and preseved) and psychic (for which you need the mental energies of a living or very-recently-killed intelligent being). As far as I can remember, at least.


The feeding part has already been mentioned - eat the brains of animals and evil creatures you defeat. You meet plenty of both if you're an adventurer.

See above re: animals. Also, the danger with feeding off evil creatures is that if you have to kill some quota to survive, you've got one hell of a bias against finding peaceful or redemptive (i.e. more good) solutions.

I think that may have been the BoED's own description of how that flayer operated, though.

hamishspence
2009-03-14, 04:26 AM
BoED was written some time before Lords of Madness, which was the one that said brains of intelligent creatures are needed as well.

Also the Flayer had a Vow of Non-violence, implying its not supposed to kill humanoids and monstrous humanoids. No problem with animals/dragons/outsiders and the like.

Also, it was kept as a slave by duergar, the adventurers chose to kill the duergar, spare and treat the illithid kindly. Its implied this is why it Turned to the Light Side :smallwink: no Sanctify mentioned.

lord_khaine
2009-03-14, 04:56 AM
Also, it was kept as a slave by duergar, the adventurers chose to kill the duergar, spare and treat the illithid kindly. Its implied this is why it Turned to the Light Side no Sanctify mentioned.

yeah, and thats why i think its a abomination against all the lore.
if it had been done though Sanctify the wicked, then it might have made some sort of sense, since as i recall it can even work on devils ?

hamishspence
2009-03-14, 05:01 AM
BoED Diplomacy rules for redemption probably fit the mind flayer case. So, not against all 3.5 lore, just the later published Lords of Madness.

actually, its not the only one. A LN mind flayer who cannot eat brains, thanks to losing three tentacles to a disease, "fostering a change in heart, and a change in diet" is described in Underdark. Also predating Lords of Madness.

Sanctify, by strict reading of the Sanctified Creature template, does not work on Outsiders with the Evil subtype- fiends of any sort. Therefore, a fiend must Want to change, or have some other magical cause for its alignment besides this spell

TheCountAlucard
2009-03-14, 08:03 AM
Bah, I still say Illithids would make PERFECT anti-hero style adventurers.

...Either they are researching spells and artifacts that can create brains, or investigating alternative food sources in their travels, seeing if there are substances out in the over-world that can feed them without it having to be inside a sentient creature's skull.

Not to mention that a mind flayer adventurer could probably get his hands on a Ring of Sustenance fairly quickly.

hewhosaysfish
2009-03-14, 09:17 AM
Not to mention that a mind flayer adventurer could probably get his hands on a Ring of Sustenance fairly quickly.

What about a Murlynd's spoon? The description of the gruel says "it is highly nourishing and contains everything necessary to sustain any herbivorous, omnivorous or carnivorous creature."
Doe ilithid's count as carnivorous or is it in some special "brainivorous" category? And, yes, I know "cerebrovorous" might be a better term (or "neurovorous" if we want to offend the scholarly :smallsmile: ) but "brainivorous" sounds much better.

The create food and water spell does specify food for humans so it would be a generous GM that lets you conjure up a bowlful of brains but hero's feas and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion leave the details of the feasting entirely unspecified.

"I conjure up mighty feast... of brains!!!!"

chiasaur11
2009-03-14, 01:29 PM
What about a Murlynd's spoon? The description of the gruel says "it is highly nourishing and contains everything necessary to sustain any herbivorous, omnivorous or carnivorous creature."
Doe ilithid's count as carnivorous or is it in some special "brainivorous" category? And, yes, I know "cerebrovorous" might be a better term (or "neurovorous" if we want to offend the scholarly :smallsmile: ) but "brainivorous" sounds much better.

The create food and water spell does specify food for humans so it would be a generous GM that lets you conjure up a bowlful of brains but hero's feas and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion leave the details of the feasting entirely unspecified.

"I conjure up mighty feast... of brains!!!!"

Which somehow makes me think of a zombie mindflayer Reg Shoe type who protests for zombie rights and is very offended people think all zombies eat brains. Just because he does...

Dacia Brabant
2009-03-14, 04:36 PM
The feeding part has already been mentioned - eat the brains of animals and evil creatures you defeat. You meet plenty of both if you're an adventurer.

Reproduction is even simpler - just don't do that.

Kamikasei already covered the first half of this but as for reproduction, well we're not talking about something that copulates with something similar to it to make another little something; Illithids are simultaneous, self-fertilizing hermaphrodites who spawn a couple times in their lives. I know I know, too much information, but it's not really something that they can just not do, it's part of their life cycle. Now they could kill off all their spawn but, well, wouldn't that be evil?

(Which reminds me, with respect to the adventurer who only eats evil people's brains idea, isn't that still evil? Even if it's justified to kill them, the act of mind flaying seems like it should be regarded as torturing someone to death.)

Also if the spawn aren't placed in the Elder Brain's pool to eventually be paired with a suitable host, and if they don't die they'll end up having to consume an intelligent creature's brains (required for them to live), which turns them into a Neothelid (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/neothelid.htm) and that's no good either.

As for all the suggestions about magically providing sustenance that doesn't require killing intelligent beings, well all right but that kind of concedes the point about them being biologically mandated as a species to commit evil in order to exist, that it needs an artificial solution to make them not be evil.

Tiki Snakes
2009-03-14, 04:50 PM
Right, first things first, the easy bit; Brain Eating, Innately Evil?

I say thee nay, and my logic is thus. Taking 3.5 as the rules, (Because I forget how it works in 4th for mindflayers right now).

The Mindflayer makes 4 tentacle grabs. All it's doing, with (3?) attatched to your face is hugging your head. Then the fourth hits, doing no real damage either, just grabbing. *bam* you are now dead. Practically instantly. No save. Not even for massive damage, you're just dead. (The way it's written, even the tarrasque better be worried about being tentacle grabbed!).

It's pretty damn instant, really. About as far from torture as you can get. If I could compare it to anything, I'd compare it to the slaughter-house process or slamming a metal bolt into tasty mrs cow's skull. Instant death. Pop!

And we are talking about a Mindflayer Adventurer. You can guarentee that they can manage to stun their food easily as thoroughly as the Slaughterhouse operative stuns Mrs Cow.

You really cannot rephrase that in such a way that it sounds actually evil to me, really. It doesn't hurt the creature's soul, and is as instant and painless as any poor thug could ever hope for.

As for the baby flayers, well, that's not something I know much about, to be quite honest. I'll read up, give it some thought...

[edit] Baby Flayers -
So, Skimming Wiki, it seems that a Neothelid is rather more created by a a colony being abandoned, leaving the larvae to devour each other and basically go feral, rather than simply it not being 'processed' normally. So, well, gray area.

Seriously though, I'd say it's worth baring in mind the Elder Brain's position in all of this. They rule Illithid Society, lie to the Illithid, and are generally very suspiciously evil, even compared to a Mindflayer! I'd not trust them as being 'necessary' to Mindflayer Larval development based on their word alone, really.

It's just a theory, but what if the ten years a Larvae spends swimming in the Elder Brain's juices is actually just to condition the otherwise rather ego-centric creatures into obeying the basically helpless Elder Brain?

If we take the inexplicable 10 years maturation time of the larvae out of the equation, or even without doing so, all it requires still to be done humanely is to capture suitably un-missable humanoids and render them braindead. (I'm sure, of all creatures, the Mindflayer is an expert at Lobotomy, after all. Reduced in a humane way to a mere husk of flesh with a tasty brainy-center, it provides the larvae with it's required 'host', and avoids the whole screaming-victim-of-goodness thing simply enough.

(Note - Without basically homebrewing changes to mindflayer society, you can't really 'convert them' en mass to good, because a steady supply of Evil-Doers enough to feed a civilisation is a little bit of a tall order, short of invading Hell. But as a single adventurer or break-away sect, it's simple enough, really.)

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-14, 05:14 PM
Yes, as I addressed in a later post... but there's no reason to think you have to run them that way.
And judging by the way the DM and I have set up the world, that isn't the way it's going to be run anyway. The goblins in the big "monster" city are going to be much more civilized than the ones we just slew in this village.

I'm thinking of one specific post (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=18049732&postcount=37) of yours in the other thread.

<snip>

I don't see what being a paladin has to do with it. In D&D and in the real world, individuals may have something in common (race, nationality, class, gender, hair colour) while being very different morally. Is it that you feel you ignore this issue in the real world, but your character's paladinhood forces him to face it? Or that you think paladins should always be sure that they're doing the right thing? (Oh brother, do I disagree with that!)

I think it might be the latter. In our game last night, we were forced to have dinner with a succubus my paladin character had a history with. Knowing her reputation and her true nature, I picked at my food instead of digging in, since I didn't want to accidentally commit cannibalism. My DM said that I had made a wise decision.

And before you say I should have fallen for associating with her, I did not willingly associate with her, and in the end, I stood up and openly defied her, triggering the final battle of the session. I really got a chance to shine roleplaying-wise there. Everyone at the table thought so.

(This was for a 3.5 game I'm part of in real life, where I'm a paladin of Heironeous.)

Personally I think the BoED's advice is pretty terrible... but that's a side issue.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. In D&D, objective good and evil do in fact exist, as laid out via alignment. But different people will think different things are right and wrong, or won't care particularly about the morality of their actions, and so will commit good and evil acts yet either not believe or not care that it may make them evil people.

This does not mean the objective good and evil aren't there.

I'm also wondering if perhaps your "black and white morality" is a different issue to the question of objective good and evil. It is possible to believe that a given act is either good or evil, without having to know which it is. It is also possible for two acts, superficially the same, to be morally different depending on their contexts (basically because nothing is "an act" in itself - every act is actually unique, slightly different from every other, because of the context it's embedded in). I suspect you're looking for simple, clear rules that can be applied universally and assure you that you're always doing The Right Thing - when actually, doing The Right Thing is bloody hard and it takes a lot of work and thought just to not really be sure of anything except that you're trying.

You know what you get at the end, though? An interesting story and a likeable character - maybe.
This. This, I think is what I'm trying to say.

Out of curiosity, what specifically do you find hard to accept?
I'm not sure, but I think it's essentially "How can someone commit an act that is unequivocally evil, yet feel no remorse, guilt or shame for their actions?"

I cried last time I swore at my sister. I can't imagine how terrible I'd feel if I actually did something like rape or murder.

This is what people are talking about when they say "don't take it so seriously". You're talking about a parody. Yes, the idea of Good vs. Evil as "sides" where the Good guys go out and kill any Evil guys they find, right down to young children, is disgusting. That's because it's meant to illustrate how these things are not supposed to work.
So it's taking it to it's logical extreme and then showing how flawed such a concept is for all to see?

kamikasei
2009-03-14, 05:39 PM
I'm not sure, but I think it's essentially "How can someone commit an act that is unequivocally evil, yet feel no remorse, guilt or shame for their actions?"

I cried last time I swore at my sister. I can't imagine how terrible I'd feel if I actually did something like rape or murder.

But you would think that those are horrible things. Besides the simple fact that people are not all equally empathetic or sensitive or however you want to put it (and it sounds like you're pretty far out on an extreme there), it's not as if everyone in either the real world or a D&D setting walks around with a little meter in their head telling them whether what they're doing is good or evil. You do have the phenomenon of people who believe a given act to be wrong but do it anyway (compulsion, weakness, rebellion), but there are also - and this is what we've been discussing in connection with "evil societies" - people who simply have a different list of what is right and wrong, which in a D&D setting may disagree with the list the devils and angels work off, but which to them means they're doing what they "should" do (and they'll put any twinges of empathy for those wronged by it down to weakness. Realise that suppressing empathy is in fact necessary to do good in many cases - could a surgeon do his job if he felt the pain of every incision he makes?).


So it's taking it to it's logical extreme and then showing how flawed such a concept is for all to see?

Sort of. Good and evil have to have actual meaning. If they're just labels for "sides", then you get "good" guys doing bad stuff to people who are only "evil" because that's the team whose colors they wear. It's an unfortunately common blindness, not just in D&D, rooted in the basic human tendency to form in-groups and out-groups and treat "right" as "what my in-group does" and "wrong" as "what those outside it do".

Xuincherguixe
2009-03-14, 05:54 PM
I for one don't see much of a difference in killing things, and eating their brains.

Even if ripping out a person's brain is painful and cruel, you could kill them in a normal fashion.

Which is also probably a pretty horrible way to die really. (Hacking them repeatedly with a sword and all.)

When you get right down to it, eating nummy and delicious brains isn't much different than looting corpses. It's recycling!

Tensu
2009-03-14, 07:37 PM
When you get right down to it, eating nummy and delicious brains isn't much different than looting corpses. It's recycling!

lot like how I feel. If you kill something that you're mentally and physically capable of eating, it'd be more evil not to.

so fear not all wannabe-good guys who have insatiable cravings for the flesh and/or brains of intelligent humanoids: you can have your alignment and eat it too! (well maybe not eating your alignment so much as eating the alignment your species usually is, but you know what I mean.)

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-14, 07:43 PM
Well, I had a D&D session last night with me 3.5 IRL group. I feel it went well, and I made the right choices.

My paladin had just completed clearing some dwarven tombs of undead to earn dual-citizenship with the Dwarven Kingdoms (In our campaign, you have to be a registered citizen of a particular nation to train in certain classes. My character's home nation of Armorica trains bards, paladins and wizards, while the Dwarven Kingdoms train fighters, clerics and paladins. I needed dual-citizenship to multiclass from paladin to fighter. Prestige classes are almost always granted by the Gods.)

Upon further examining the lone mummy (the others were dwarven skeletons), I found that the mummy was not in fact dwarven. Dwarves don't mummify their dead, but the arcane object in its mouth bore sigils common in Hyperboria (the home nation of our kobold/werewolf sorcerer, who also obtained dual citizenship to take levels of cleric. Hyperboria is now a wasteland due to the Rain of Cold Fire, and its empress has married the king of Sylvania following the death of her husband.) I showed this to the local dwarf king, who asked me to speak with the queen about it.

We returned shortly after the wedding (Which half the party was at. The kobold/werewolf sorcerer and I went to the dwarf kingdoms escorting both the Sylvanian chancellor to negotiate trade agreements, and to keep an eye on the halfling treehugger. He'd been sent with the chancellor since it was his fault the empress's nation was destroyed, and the king felt his bride to be wouldn't appreciate his presence.)

When we hooked up with the rest of the party, I presented my information about the undead to the queen, who figured it must have been a rogue sorcerer, and said she would get me information on sorcerers who've gone missing lately, after I volunteered to personally track down the necromancer and bring him to justice.

Then I bought two pounds of some of the last cold iron in the world (which we had previously delivered) that I plan on making into a sword to later be upgraded to a Holy Avenger when I'm high enough level and have enough money.

After that, we also recieved an assignment from the king to travel south and find his son, who'd left on diplomatic business and hasn't returned. We left the captol and headed south, and eight days later, things REALLY got interesting!

We start approaching this tower that looks, for lack of a better term, like a giant penis, when our carriage is surrounded by six half-fiends on nightmareback. I know something's up when the first thing they ask us is "Do any of you have a spouse or a significant other?" Most of us aren't but most of them fib that they are, while I explain that I took vows of chastity, and they say that no one passes through this territory without visiting the "Lady of Delight." Seeing as they have freakin Pyramid Head swords, we don't have much of a choice. Then, when they let slip that she has many names, including "Duessa," I get riled. In my character's backstory, he met up with a sorceress by that name who turned people into trees, and later found out she was a succubus, so I know that we are in deep trouble and I am royally pissed. When the knights ask me to identify myself, I tell them with confidence and the disgust is thick in my voice. They snicker amongst themselves, saying that my reputation precedes me.

We arrive at the giant penis, and are asked to check our reindeer into the stable (Sylvania doesn't have horses, so they use reindeer.) We look in and when we see a seven-headed pyrohydra and a tortured unicorn, we decide against it, and leave the carriage at the door, so if we need to make an easy getaway, we can rush out the door and into the carriage.

We get lead into the giant penis and are asked if we want to change into something more comfortable (which in this case meant dresses and clothes worn by the former inhabitants of the tower, not fetish gear.) We refused, knowing if things got ugly, we would want to keep our armor. The brothers who escorted us there said if that was the case, they'd wear their armor as well. Our attention is directed to a the tapestries above. Most of them depict what can only be described as a combination of the Kama Sutra and Japanese tentacle porn, but one depicts a much more grisly scene:

It starts with a man in white robes, wearing the symbol of Ehlonna, governing the village in peace. Then, a beautiful woman appears and leads him into a tree with a hole in it. In the next scene, the woman is wearing the white robes and leading the village. Then she divides the young folk into two groups. The ones too young to understand or feel guilt, are turned into trees, while the others are twisted into strange creatures. The next scene depicts a harsh cold winter, with the trees getting chopped down, and seeming to bleed, while the ones who were changed hang on nooses from the tower. The final scene depicts the villagers bowing to the woman again, but now she wears red robes and has wings.

I'm visibly disgusted, the ranger girl is scared out of her mind, and everyone else is definately uneasy. Then the succubus herself shows up and dinner is served. I, naturally, don't eat it since I don't trust her. For all I know, it's human flesh. Closer examination reveals that it is in fact venison, but I still don't eat it. The half-orc rogue (Who was a human before the Wormwood explosion, and was reincarnated as a dwarf, much to his horror, since he lived in a gnome country and hated being short, so he hung himself and was reincarnated a second time as a half-orc, which he didn't consider optimal, but much better than being a dwarf or a halfling.) didn't hesitate to help himself to the frostwine she was serving however, that was grown in the area where the kids who were turned into trees used to be. The bard's player called it "baby wine."

After a bit of time, she decides to cut all the hospitality crap and start trying to tempt the party into deals. She offers the elf bard, who has a bit of a reputation for being a gold-digger, but she's not a slut, She's CG and is religious (being a follower of Corellon Larethian), the ability to charm men like she does. She politely refuses. Then she suggests we side with her in her scheme to depose the king, saying to some of us that we don't owe him anything, since we're not Sylvanians, and to our Sylvanian members she offers wealth, power, even vengeance. They're all dancing around refusing, since they don't want to piss her off, when I decide not to put up with this charade anymore.

I stand up and slam my fist on the table, yelling "I'VE HAD ENOUGH!"

The succubus immediately turns her attention to me, smirking.

"Ah...Sir Redcrosse...It's not too late to take back what you said to me before."

"After the crimes you've commited here?!"

"Crimes? Ha ha...I've done nothing here paladin. The crimes here were committed by the villagers. Are they truly worth saving? And what of the king? You're not a Sylvanian. You don't work for him. And is he any better? He's used some very underhanded methods, and now through his marriage he rules a third of the contintent."

"ANYTHING is better than siding with the likes of you!"

I defy her right to her face, and by the end of it, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself.

Then she says "That truly is unfortunate. Well my sons. I'll let you have dessert!"

She teleports out of the room, and her sons stand up and draw their weapons, and the battle begins...

I immediately used my Knowledge Devotion feat to get a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls against the half-fiends, and then the halfling treehugger plopped down a Wall of Thorns, trapping the brothers. Our druid began summoning animals to help distract them and soften them up for us. The sorcerer used his familiar to give me a Magic Weapon spell and the elf bard Hasted us. The inebriated half-orc rogue made for the front door, now locked, to try and unlock it so we could escape, while the elf ranger opened fire with her bow. And then...I turned my attention to the half-fiend next to me and opened up a can of SMITE EVIL on his ass!

The sorcerer softened up the brothers with spells, which were dampened somewhat by their ER and DR, while both I and the animals pounded on them, and the wall of thorns kept them in place. Shortly after the animals had dispatched one of the six, the druid was done summoning, and wildshaped into a bear. With our combined strength, and the spell-slinging from both the treehugger and sorcerer took down another of them. Meanwhile, the bard helped the rogue with the door, while he drunkenly dodged Melf's Acid Arrows from the door trap, and a well-placed arrow from the ranger killed a third half-fiend. Then the rogue got the door opened, and we were greeted by seven unfriendly faces. Duessa had released her pyrohydra to finish us off. Quickly, we finished off two more of the brothers, while the oldest one, their leader, fled into the kitchen and escaped. The sorcerer was injured and shifted into his werewolf form, and then he and the druid turned their attention to the hydra. They tore into it surprisingly quick. The bard tried to heal the druid's injuries, but the dice were mean and rolled low. All seven heads converged on the druid and tore him to shreds, his final words a defiant roar! A hailstorm from the treehugger finished it off. We quickly grabbed what loot we could and fled the tower just as it collapsed. Then the bard and I, against the advice of the party, went to the stable to see if we could save the unicorn. It turned out to be harmless, since Duessa had fled on one of the nightmares, and turned the others loose, leaving the unicorn alone. We decided to take care of it until we could get help for it (and the bard had always wanted a pet unicorn anyway). Then we persuaded the villagers to follow us to safety, though they were as traumatized as the unicorn was. Our carriage and our reindeer had been trampled by the nightmares, so we had to continue our search for the Sylvanian prince on foot...and that's where the session ended.

What do you think? Did I do the right thing?

GoC
2009-03-14, 07:48 PM
It is fairly difficult to "leech" off of a medieval state's largess; in general they provided little more than security.

And most adventuring parties don't even need society. Casters can provide food, water, clothing, shelter, swords and more or less anything they desire. Even attractive members of the opposite sex! Just dominate and polymorph a goblin.:smallbiggrin:

Anyway, more on topic:
What about a race that has some very very destructive children?
Say some powerful 10HD psionic beasts that go around slaughtering villages.
Do you kill one if you see it? Let's say capture is generally unfeesable.

The adults of the race in question are sometimes good, sometimes evil.

Dervag
2009-03-14, 08:57 PM
To Zousha

To summarize: you fought a bunch of undead, which is morally neutral. You did some trading and exchanged some information, which is again OK.

Then you effectively got dragged into Creepy Evil Succubus's tower, where you discovered evidence that she was committing all manner of atrocities.

You refused to help her stage a coup against a ruler who had dealt with you honorably.

You got all defiant and angry about all the nasty stuff she did, at which point she tried to kill you. You fought your way out of her tower.
______

I see nothing dishonorable or unreasonable about your actions. Some hypothetical other bunch of people might have done something else that would have been honorable and reasonable, but that doesn't mean there was anything wrong with what you did.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-14, 10:35 PM
To summarize: you fought a bunch of undead, which is morally neutral. You did some trading and exchanged some information, which is again OK.

Our DM said that in our campaign setting, killing undead is always a good act. The neutral party members who were with me became Good. Though those same party members were moved back to Neutral for assisting the rogue's suicide.

Also, I've been working with that other group, and I took the suggestion of trying to get the child my other paladin couldn't save raised from the dead. When I asked the doppleganger cleric if it was possible, she slapped me in the face, for daring to ask her to disrupt what she called "the cycle." People live. Then they die.

Here's what I said in response.


That girl was cut down in cold blood. She never had a chance to grow up. She never had a chance to fall in love. Never had a chance to have children, raise a family. She never had a chance to pass from this world in peace, surrounded by all whose lives she had touched. I know The Raven Queen is the guardian of death, and the master of fate, but surely it was not this innocent child's fate to pass from this world in violence, to leave her parents suffering in grief because we couldn't save her!

Her response floored me.


So was my child. Now stop talking.

Not only was our doppleganger cleric our emo rogue/warlock's lesbian lover, but she also was a mother! :smalleek:

I have no idea how to respond to this. That girl's death was sort of my character's wake-up call to just what kinds of evils can go on in the world, and he wants to try and make things right. But now he's essentially learned that the cleric won't do it out of deference to her god and out of respect for her late child.

Plus, the DM raised the point that if we bring back that girl, the other villagers aren't going to be too pleased about it since everyone lost friends and family to the goblins, and we wouldn't have the time or resources to raise them all.

So I don't know how my character should respond to this. I'd originally planned to make him a sunny-natured extrovert. A ray of hope in our depressing grey campaign setting. And my DM's been supportive of that concept. But moral quandaries like this always upset me because there isn't a clear-cut answer, and I worry that if I just let the matter drop that'd be hypocrisy to Pelor's doctrine. What kind of paladin am I if I can't save one little girl?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-14, 11:28 PM
UPDATE: When my paladin didn't respond out of shock at the doppleganger cleric's revelation, she punched me in the face and stormed off.

Dhavaer
2009-03-14, 11:41 PM
What kind of paladin am I if I can't save one little girl?

Not much of one. However, if you meant what kind of paladin are you if you can't save that particular little girl, one who can't control minds or stop time. The only thing you could have done in the circumstances would be to divine challenge the goblin holding the girl, and that wouldn't always be possible or effective.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-15, 12:37 AM
They cut her throat before I even had a chance to move.

FoE
2009-03-15, 01:05 AM
Sounds like your doppelganger cleric needs to dial down the drama a bit. Sounds like your group needs to dial down the drama a bit.

Nightson
2009-03-15, 01:34 AM
"There are many who die who deserve life. I am just a man, I cannot save the world, I cannot protect everyone. But I will not let that stop me from protecting those I can, from saving as many as I can. That is how the world is moved, not by the mighty shoves of a few, but by the insistent pushing of the many, working for good of all."


As a characterization idea, maybe your character could write down the name of the girl, and all of those he might have failed to save before and pray for them each night. Not only as an act of remembrance, but also to remind your character that not everyone can be saved, that sometimes he'll make mistakes or just not be fast enough.

krossbow
2009-03-15, 01:40 AM
Uh... Yeah, you were right. Look, i don't mean to sound like a jerk, but your character needs to grow a pair, and stop taking **** from the significantly less moral characters in your world. Show them what a pissed of paladin can be like.


Someone punches you, slam them back; never does it say a paladin has to be "nice". The world seems to be a crap sack world, and the only way to put it back on track is with a whole lot of asskicking.
begin to organize some crusades.






I'm sorry, but your group sounds like a bunch of wangsty drama queens. Theres not really a whole lot you truly can do; almost anything you do will probably get twisted in order to make things as emo and dark as it can get.

This is NOT typical of most D&D campaigns/groups.

Dacia Brabant
2009-03-15, 02:08 AM
What kind of paladin am I if I can't save one little girl?

One who worries too much. First lesson they teach you in paladin school is you are not a god (or if they don't they should). Maybe that's just the character's naivete speaking but you can't save everyone, so you may as well use that tragedy as the reason for him to learn that. If he doesn't he's just going to end up paralyzed by doubt--such as with how he's taking crap from those hooligans in your party for no good reason. I hate to say it but I think you'd almost be better off if you were playing him as the self-righteous type instead.

Of course I'd have already Radiant Smoten your group's keisters into the ground and moved on so take what I say with a grain of salt I guess.



(Note - Without basically homebrewing changes to mindflayer society, you can't really 'convert them' en mass to good, because a steady supply of Evil-Doers enough to feed a civilisation is a little bit of a tall order, short of invading Hell. But as a single adventurer or break-away sect, it's simple enough, really.)

That was an amusing write-up that preceded this, I will admit, so I'm not going to try to poke holes in it. I'm still skeptical though of your conclusion, mostly because I don't see what the impetus would be for one of them to break away from the life their nature seems to dictate. Maybe you can come up with mechanics for it but I asked for a plausible reason for one to be good and finding one doesn't seem simple at all to me.

Jayngfet
2009-03-15, 02:16 AM
Dude, I second the motion of your paladin growing a spine. In a world where everyone is cynical neutral and you want to be a beacon of hope the way to do it is kick as much ass as possible and not angst publicly over losses. If everyone is being a drama queen wat I'd do is throw up as much GAR as I could manage to throw them off. In short, be hot blooded (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HotBlooded). It will throw off the wangst and people will think "if this guy goes through mind shattering experience on a daily basis and can still stick out his chest and do what's right so can I".

Dervag
2009-03-15, 02:29 AM
Our DM said that in our campaign setting, killing undead is always a good act. The neutral party members who were with me became Good. Though those same party members were moved back to Neutral for assisting the rogue's suicide.That raises some awkward issues.

For example, if killing undead is always good, is refusing to kill undead when one has the chance evil? I mean, feeding starving orphans is good, right? If I have a big sack of food handy and there are a bunch of starving orphans in front of me, and I just walk away, I'm pretty darn evil.

For killing undead to be an "always good" act, it has to be an intrinsic good, something that is inherently desirable if one wishes to act morally. My view is that unless the undead are actually threatening someone (and zombies locked in a tomb aren't), then killing them is simply neutral.

But that's an argument between me and your DM, and since we don't know each other and probably never will, who cares?
_____

As for assisting a suicide, whether or not that's evil should probably depend on circumstances, much like killing undead. Killing undead is generally a good idea, and is almost never an evil idea, but it isn't always intrinsically a good idea. Assisting a suicide would be the reverse, especially if we use a broad definition of "suicide."

For example, let's say we need to seal the monster in a cave by blowing up the roof, but we need someone to stay behind and trigger the explosives- which will certainly kill the one who stays. If I volunteer to stay and you plant the explosives, are you assisting in my suicide?
______


So I don't know how my character should respond to this. I'd originally planned to make him a sunny-natured extrovert. A ray of hope in our depressing grey campaign setting. And my DM's been supportive of that concept. But moral quandaries like this always upset me because there isn't a clear-cut answer, and I worry that if I just let the matter drop that'd be hypocrisy to Pelor's doctrine. What kind of paladin am I if I can't save one little girl?A paladin of finite resources? A mortal man? In other words, the only kind of paladin that can exist in a universe that isn't all sunshine and flowers and unicorns and rainbows all the time?

This is a chance to create a character who is determined to be ethical and honorable in a universe that doesn't always make that easy, and who never gives up. I'd take one guy like that over ten of the Pollyanna types who are always optimistic and shiny with goodness... in a universe that never challenges their optimism and goodness.

Being the guy who really does care in a world that, by and large, doesn't give a damn is hard, and it takes either a lot of willpower to keep it up. Paladins aren't just supposed to be powerful; they are supposed to be heroic. And that kind of willpower is one of the key features of heroism.
_______


Sounds like your doppelganger cleric needs to dial down the drama a bit. Sounds like your group needs to dial down the drama a bit.Seconded.
_______


Uh... Yeah, you were right. Look, i don't mean to sound like a jerk, but your character needs to grow a pair, and stop taking **** from the significantly less moral characters in your world. Show them what a pissed of paladin can be like.A paladin who reacts with physical violence against people they view as less moral than themself (not evil, just less moral) has catapulted across the Miko line. That's not a good place to be.

Should Zousha's character "Grow a pair?" In the sense of not letting the kind of horrors said character volunteered to face and fight trigger spasms of angst, yes. In the sense of engineering conflict with everyone else in the group? No.


Someone punches you, slam them back; never does it say a paladin has to be "nice". The world seems to be a crap sack world, and the only way to put it back on track is with a whole lot of asskicking.
begin to organize some crusades.Crusades don't end well. Not if your goal is to make the world less of a mess. Just look at what happened to the real crusaders.

That said, it's reasonable for Zousha's character to have a rule, made very clear to others, that if you hit him he will hit you. This should definitely stay at the unarmed level, but a good warrior can't be expected to stand there and let other people with poor self-control use them as a punching bag.

However, this rule should be made clear in advance. As in "Raven whateveryournameis, I understand why you hauled off and slapped me. But if you ever hit me again, I'm going to hit back."
______

Nightson
2009-03-15, 02:38 AM
If you really want to hit them back, don't use your fists, use pity and kindness.

Jayngfet
2009-03-15, 03:54 AM
If you really want to hit them back, don't use your fists, use pity and kindness.

In general, the type of PC'd here don't seem to be the kind that would respond well to that. Sometimes you need to be physical to solve a problem. Why else would a champion of law and good need to learn how to fight as well as trained warriors?

krossbow
2009-03-15, 04:00 AM
if you want to respond with pity, play the healer class (not a class that can heal, specifically the "healer" class, the one that can only cast healing spells and gets a unicorn).


You can respond all you want with pity and sympathy, and the psychos that apparently live in this world and torture things with impunity can gut you while the rest of the party does a poetry session about it all.




Otherwise, you can play a paladin; lay down the law, tell them HOW IT IS, warn them that there are lines that will not be crossed, and kick some ass.

When someone is actively taking part in things that kill, maim or torture others, or if they are purposely allowing such things to take place for personal gain (cough, cleric, cough) its time to lay down the law.





Paladins are mortals, and cannot save everyone; they cannot stop a girl's throat from being cut while on the other side of the room. They cannot bring all the dead back to life, and they cannot be completely and utterly infallible. But you know what? they keep coming. They protect whoever they can, whenever they can, wherever they can; they do all the good that they can possibly DO. They know they can't save everyone, or stop all the villians, but they suck it up; they endure.

They keep doing whatever they can do, to the best of their ability, till they drop dead. And thats their strength; thats their power.

Nightson
2009-03-15, 04:17 AM
In general, the type of PC'd here don't seem to be the kind that would respond well to that. Sometimes you need to be physical to solve a problem. Why else would a champion of law and good need to learn how to fight as well as trained warriors?

Physically fighting with the party, I feel fairly confident in saying, is always going to end badly. If you hit them back, the type of characters don't seem likely to consider everything even and never hit you again.

The paladin doesn't get to choose the morality of the rest of the players, unless you're looking to get uninvited to a game.

Jayngfet
2009-03-15, 01:07 PM
Physically fighting with the party, I feel fairly confident in saying, is always going to end badly. If you hit them back, the type of characters don't seem likely to consider everything even and never hit you again.

The paladin doesn't get to choose the morality of the rest of the players, unless you're looking to get uninvited to a game.

I'm not saying open fighting. But if you're being disrespected and beat up by any character, PC or NPC and want to be a shining pillar of morality it won't work. If you sit there like a punching bag no one will respect you. If another PC hits you it's perfectly valid to hit back.

Xuincherguixe
2009-03-15, 01:19 PM
I only just skimmed that long post, but the game sounds hilarious.

Dervag
2009-03-15, 01:34 PM
Otherwise, you can play a paladin; lay down the law, tell them HOW IT IS, warn them that there are lines that will not be crossed, and kick some ass.Done with regards to NPCs that makes some sense.

Done with regards to the PCs, that's a really stupid idea. The other players have every bit as much right to play the game as you do. If your character attempts to dictate morality to their characters with threats and violence, nothing good will happen. The most likely result ends up with your PC staked out for the ants or something.


When someone is actively taking part in things that kill, maim or torture others, or if they are purposely allowing such things to take place for personal gain (cough, cleric, cough) its time to lay down the law.In this case, the cleric is refusing to do something specific because of her religious beliefs. Religious beliefs that happen to be reinforced by her own past experiences.

That is not a justification for trying to "lay down the law" to people who are in fact your equals and who are fully entitled to tell you to take your law, fold it until it's all sharp corners, and stuff it.


I'm not saying open fighting. But if you're being disrespected and beat up by any character, PC or NPC and want to be a shining pillar of morality it won't work. If you sit there like a punching bag no one will respect you. If another PC hits you it's perfectly valid to hit back.This is a "boundaries" issue. In real life, to get along, people define boundaries to avoid tension. Some of those boundaries are physical (this side of the room is mine, the other side is yours).

Others are behavioral boundaries. The most common one is "no hitting," because at the most basic level no social interaction can function while people are hitting each other.

In a group of real people thrown into the kind of situations an adventuring party, one of the first steps would be to establish some kind of boundaries. Especially if they're traumatized weepy angsty people like so many of the ones in Zousha's party.

This is something Zousha should talk to the other players about, in my opinion.

"My character isn't willing to sit there and be a punching bag any more; it's just not who he is. That doesn't mean I want to start massive PvP deathmatches within the party. But if someone punches him, he's going to punch back. He's a fighter*, he's killed people in fights. He's not automatically willing to let people beat on him just because they're mad at him and not obviously evil. My paladin isn't interested in an abusive relationship with other party members."

*in the literal sense, "one who fights."
____

It's not about laying down the law or being an ass to other people. It's about establishing some boundaries and making your character tough and resolute enough to enforce those boundaries, rather than sitting there and weeping about it.

Of course, the flip side of those boundaries is that Zousha's paladin needs to respect the boundaries of others, at least insofar as the paladin knows where those boundaries are. If Zousha's paladin had hauled off and slapped the cleric first for refusing to raise the dead in this case, then he would be in the wrong.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-15, 01:47 PM
Sounds like your doppelganger cleric needs to dial down the drama a bit. Sounds like your group needs to dial down the drama a bit.

Or turn it up to 11 and break off the knob :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, this group sounds like they can do teh dramaz and revel in it. If that's the way it's going to be, then you should just go with it.

I will echo the "grow a spine" comment, but I will note this doesn't mean you have to start slapping around the other PCs. First, you should ignore the sort of physical indignities that your fellow PCs throw at you - escalation of those matters never ends well. However, don't forget them; next time you save the Doppleganger say something along the lines of "we all have a time to die, but as long as I draw breath, no innocent shall die if I can do anything about it."

You may want to prepare some sermons for when you haul their collective asses out of fires; nothing insulting, but showing the Rightness of your action and how giving a damn about the lives of others is a Good Thing.

Remember, you are Morally Superior to everyone else, so act like it :smallbiggrin:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-15, 02:09 PM
I see what everyone's saying, I think. Instead of whining about the girl's death to people who don't care, I need to move on. I like the idea of praying for both her and for the rest of the villagers who died in the attack, so that I don't forget them, and that even though Pelor says to protect the innocent, I'm not some kind of god who can be everywhere at once and stop all suffering.

I'm reminded of an episode of Criminal Minds, where it's revealed that Reed has been suffering from nightmares about a little girl being taken by some vague, indistinct monster. At the end of the episode, Gideon confides in him, bringing his attention to a picture on his desk of a girl who he managed to save in an investigation. He tells Reed, "We can't save all the little girls from all the monsters, but the ones we do save. That's all I need." I probably misquoted that, but the essence is that even though I can't save the day every time, that doesn't mean I can't save the day at all.

I'm still a bit confused as to how to explain to the girl's parents, after I suggested the possibility of raising her to them, that I actually can't (or rather the cleric won't) do it. I just set their hopes up, and now I've got to break their hearts a second time.

At least the rogue with the dagger came over and asked if I was okay when I got punched. After seeing her player roleplay her a bit more, she's not so much emo as she is desenstitized to cruelty and rather apathetic. She thinks hope's foolish because she's been around the block a lot. She only goes into the whole "blood is beautiful" bit when she really gets upset.

Nightson
2009-03-15, 03:39 PM
I'm still a bit confused as to how to explain to the girl's parents, after I suggested the possibility of raising her to them, that I actually can't (or rather the cleric won't) do it. I just set their hopes up, and now I've got to break their hearts a second time.


Introduce parents to cleric. "She doesn't wish to raise the girl" Walk away.

Jayngfet
2009-03-15, 03:49 PM
Introduce parents to cleric. "She doesn't wish to raise the girl" Walk away.

This, your not responsible here and lawful good doesn't mean taking other peoples problems when they cause it themselves.

ArchaeologyHat
2009-03-15, 04:10 PM
Oh, this one's easy. Let me run a few scenarios past you:

Scenario 1: You go to a very expensive restaurant, and after finishing your meal you discover you forgot to bring your credit cards or cash. The restaurateur gets very upset, and forces you to wash dishes for the rest of the evening to pay off your bill.

This is slavery. Debt bondage is a specific type of slavery, where you are forced to work to pay your debt. The American South slavery was usually the Debt Bondage type, as it was technically possible for a slave to buy their freedom, but the system was rigged so that it was extremely unlikely for the slave to gain enough money to do so. Is debt bondage itself evil, or is it the fact that the system was rigged that was evil?


Good god no! The African Slave-Trade was NOT debt bondage. The slavers might have excused it as a twisted form of debt bondage but it was to a much greater extent... going into peoples countries, kidnapping them then forcing them and their decendants to work themselves to death without wages and in variable but often appalling conditions. It was not debt bondage. Just because it was possible for a slave to be freed does not make the system debt bondage.

Jack_Simth
2009-03-15, 04:21 PM
Good god no! The African Slave-Trade was NOT debt bondage. The slavers might have excused it as a twisted form of debt bondage but it was to a much greater extent... going into peoples countries, kidnapping them then forcing them and their decendants to work themselves to death without wages and in variable but often appalling conditions. It was not debt bondage. Just because it was possible for a slave to be freed does not make the system debt bondage.
To a goodly extent, the guys running the slave ships didn't capture the slaves. They bought them from the natives. Sure, some kidnapping went on, but it was dangerous - the local had spears, bows, and the like, and were pretty warmongering amongst themselves. Much simpler and safer to trade a bunch of rum and/or guns and ammunition to a tribe for some of the slaves they'd captured in their battles.

However, the slavery practiced in the deep south was not the slavery as practiced by the African tribes. In the African tribes, there was always the possibility that the originating tribe would come by and beat out the capturing tribe. Everyone was on roughly equal footing when it came to identifying whether or not someone was a runaway slave. Net result: Slaves were (mostly) treated as people, and slavery wasn't an inherited condition. In the deep south, it was easy to tell whether or not someone was slave-stock (skin color), it was crazy-unlikely that the "mother tribe" would come by to reverse the status quo. As a result, it was a fairly simple matter to make slavery an inherited condition, and there was no particular pressure towards treating slaves well.

Of course, if you go back far enough in history, you get "white slaves" imported to the Americas from England - and most of those WERE kidnapped - out of orphanages - and bound by forged "indentured servant" contracts that were either for an outright indefinite term, or could be extended indefinitely on little-to-no pretext by the contract holder.

Narmoth
2009-03-15, 04:36 PM
O
Plus, the DM raised the point that if we bring back that girl, the other villagers aren't going to be too pleased about it since everyone lost friends and family to the goblins, and we wouldn't have the time or resources to raise them all.

Actually, in 2nd ed, it was pointed out that hirelings would normally not be expected to be brought back to life if they died in combat. To raise a hireling thus made them indebted to you for life (after all, how many commoners can repay 5000 gp?)
Thus, the villagers can't expect you to rise everyone, and you could very well argue that she was a special caste, since you felt to be more responsible for her than for the rest of the village (or some other crap of your choosing)

Then, if the pc priest doesn't bring her back to life, hire an npc.

And now, I'll tell you of a blackguard character I'm playing, who now is redeemed to NG, but whom your pally should be superior to:
Ian Blacksoul, then a LE Ecl 13 bg, 15 ranks in intimidate have:
- payed to get a halfling scout raised, even indebted himself, as he felt it was the honorable thing to do as his commanding officer and the only way to be able to demand soldiers from the king in the future
- intimidated the cleric, paladin and soldiers sent to arrest him for blasphemy not to attack him
- defeated an enemy chieftain and forced him to peace with a neighboring village in a duel where he never drew weapon but used diplomacy and intimidate
- has rescued the kingdom twice and complained that he weren't paid good enough

so, you have something to live up to. Blacksoul were a disgrace to all paladinhood, but he can be used for inspiration as well
Oh, and I'd love to guest play in one of your sessions (I know, it's impossible) with Blacksoul. He's got the saddest, most heroic backstory I've ever come up with, but that just gives him motivation to kick a lot of ass and be fearless in battle when needed.

horseboy
2009-03-15, 05:29 PM
Introduce parents to cleric. "She doesn't wish to raise the girl" Walk away.
Oh very nice. +1 this and +1 grow a spine.
The questions then becomes, as a paladin, do you have a code of honour restriction with striking clergy or women?
I once had a buddy who was a corpsman (and therefore part of the Navy) who had a problem with a marine in his squad. Finally he told him "You know, it may be my job to shove a tampon in your bullet hole, but you keep pissing me off and the lower do on triage you're going to go until I'm out." The withholding of benefits to modify behavior is perfectly acceptable. Granted it may not work so well on the cleric, but she's good as dead anyway, right?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-15, 08:55 PM
This, your not responsible here and lawful good doesn't mean taking other peoples problems when they cause it themselves.

My particular character in this instance isn't Lawful Good. Paladins in 4e have to match their deity, and Pelor is just Good.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-15, 09:06 PM
Actually, in 2nd ed, it was pointed out that hirelings would normally not be expected to be brought back to life if they died in combat. To raise a hireling thus made them indebted to you for life (after all, how many commoners can repay 5000 gp?)
Thus, the villagers can't expect you to rise everyone, and you could very well argue that she was a special caste, since you felt to be more responsible for her than for the rest of the village (or some other crap of your choosing)

Then, if the pc priest doesn't bring her back to life, hire an npc.
Not to mention that at the moment, the cleric can't cast the ritual anyway, and I don't have the money to pay for it.

And now, I'll tell you of a blackguard character I'm playing, who now is redeemed to NG, but whom your pally should be superior to:
Ian Blacksoul, then a LE Ecl 13 bg, 15 ranks in intimidate have:
- payed to get a halfling scout raised, even indebted himself, as he felt it was the honorable thing to do as his commanding officer and the only way to be able to demand soldiers from the king in the future
- intimidated the cleric, paladin and soldiers sent to arrest him for blasphemy not to attack him
- defeated an enemy chieftain and forced him to peace with a neighboring village in a duel where he never drew weapon but used diplomacy and intimidate
- has rescued the kingdom twice and complained that he weren't paid good enough

so, you have something to live up to. Blacksoul were a disgrace to all paladinhood, but he can be used for inspiration as well
Oh, and I'd love to guest play in one of your sessions (I know, it's impossible) with Blacksoul. He's got the saddest, most heroic backstory I've ever come up with, but that just gives him motivation to kick a lot of ass and be fearless in battle when needed.
You know, if you want to, you're more than welcome to stop by. You can reach the forum where we do the roleplay through the "Respite" link in my sig. The particular game I'm talking about is called "The Vale of Thorns.":smallsmile:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-15, 09:14 PM
The questions then becomes, as a paladin, do you have a code of honour restriction with striking clergy or women?
I don't think Pelor says anything about hitting people. There's nothing that says "Turn the other cheek" or anything. Still, even if it's something a paladin would do, it's certainly not something a gentleman would do, and I like to think of myself, whether in roleplay or in real life, as a gentleman.

I once had a buddy who was a corpsman (and therefore part of the Navy) who had a problem with a marine in his squad. Finally he told him "You know, it may be my job to shove a tampon in your bullet hole, but you keep pissing me off and the lower do on triage you're going to go until I'm out." The withholding of benefits to modify behavior is perfectly acceptable. Granted it may not work so well on the cleric, but she's good as dead anyway, right?
Um...since I'm not familiar with naval terminology, I'm afraid your point is lost on me. :smallconfused:

krossbow
2009-03-15, 09:32 PM
Um...since I'm not familiar with naval terminology, I'm afraid your point is lost on me. :smallconfused:



Tampons are great for treating bullet wounds.



First Aid Gear

Speaking of medical equipment. Here are some commonly found items that can literally save your life in the field:

* Tampons

* Maxi-Pads

* Duct Tape

* Bandanas

* Tie Down/Compression Straps

* Hand Sanitizer

* Super-Glue

OK, I know what you're all thinking: How in the hell can these help an infantryman? Let me illustrate some things for you. When you're in the field in a place like Iraq , sometimes you do things that the "normal" person back home wouldn't even dream of. While with my unit deployed throughout Iraq, our salty Navy corpsmen taught us grunts many an interesting thing from what they call "ghetto first aid" (or more politically sensitive) "field-expedient field medicine".

Say you or one of your comrades has a puncture wound or gunshot wound. With your handy "ghetto" first aid kit in your MIL-SPEC+® Medic Pouch, you insert a tampon in the puncture or bullet wound; on contact with the blood, the tampon expands and semi-closes the wound. Then you put the Maxi-Pad over the wound to absorb more blood. You then use the Duct Tape as a weatherproof bandage. Over that, for added protection (God willing, if the wound is on an extremity), you can use the bandana to cover the wound until professional medical attention is available. For small cuts and lacerations, you can apply the hand sanitizer to disinfect and the Super-Glue as a sealant to protect the wound. (That's how "ghetto first aid" works.)

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-16, 02:09 AM
*cough* Tampons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampon)

Very absorbent.

EDIT:
Oh, Triage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage).

Man, how did I live without Wikipedia?

Kris Strife
2009-03-16, 02:23 AM
And triage is the system used by military and emergency medical professionals for determining who needs care quickest based on the severity of the wounds, available resources and likelyhood of survival. Typically goes: Serious, life threatening; Serious, not likely to survive; Serious, non life threatening; Minor/Walking Wounded.

krossbow
2009-03-16, 05:45 AM
i would like to state that, while the idea of "turn them with happiness and joy!" sounds good, its not likely to work.

In this world, there are people who's moral views are truly, truly broken. History is filled with them. As far as things go, the only way that has ever truly worked has been to either break them completely into submission to learn a different lifestyle, or for them to hit a low point so absolute that they have to take a long look at their life and society.

Its why generally you only hear stories or societies or people changing their ways when they hit ROCKBOTTOM. when things are going alright, its very easy for us as humans to rationalize our actions. Even at the very edge of the abys we will continue to do so. Its only when one falls, and falls hard that they wake up.




Furthermore, they will tend to target and attack others who are different from themselves, or are "weaker". Even if you think that you can change them with kind works, its unlikely, no matter how things look. Even Jesus pulled out a whip and resorted to violence, and, while not applicable to people, "casting out demons" was not a weak request to them.

Hobbes has a quote on this "And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all." Say what you will about the rest of his works, that single quote has held true in almost every observable situation in history and society.

Without a strong implication of threat, you won't clear out much scum.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 12:50 PM
*cough* Tampons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampon)

Very absorbent.

EDIT:
Oh, Triage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage).

Man, how did I live without Wikipedia?

Oh I knew what a tampon was. I just didn't know what triage was.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 12:54 PM
i would like to state that, while the idea of "turn them with happiness and joy!" sounds good, its not likely to work.

In this world, there are people who's moral views are truly, truly broken. History is filled with them. As far as things go, the only way that has ever truly worked has been to either break them completely into submission to learn a different lifestyle, or for them to hit a low point so absolute that they have to take a long look at their life and society.

Its why generally you only hear stories or societies or people changing their ways when they hit ROCKBOTTOM. when things are going alright, its very easy for us as humans to rationalize our actions. Even at the very edge of the abys we will continue to do so. Its only when one falls, and falls hard that they wake up.




Furthermore, they will tend to target and attack others who are different from themselves, or are "weaker". Even if you think that you can change them with kind works, its unlikely, no matter how things look. Even Jesus pulled out a whip and resorted to violence, and, while not applicable to people, "casting out demons" was not a weak request to them.

Hobbes has a quote on this "And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all." Say what you will about the rest of his works, that single quote has held true in almost every observable situation in history and society.

Without a strong implication of threat, you won't clear out much scum.

I concur. That's why when I talk to the rogue who believes hope is foolish, I put it in terms she can understand. This woman has been through sheer, utter hell. But, as my paladin has pointed out to her, she hasn't given up yet. She could easily cute her wrists and end her suffering, or break and become someone's slave or something. But she doesn't. She struggles on, and grows stronger because of it. That sounds like hope to me.

Her response?

"Well, if you say so."

Tengu_temp
2009-03-16, 01:03 PM
I want to know how could a lesbian character have a child.

kamikasei
2009-03-16, 01:22 PM
I want to know how could a lesbian character have a child.

If she is in fact bi or was just closeted or in a sham marriage; adoption; rape... though I agree with your unstated point, that it may simply be a lack of thought on the player's part when reaching for maximum angst.

Xuincherguixe
2009-03-16, 01:23 PM
I want to know how could a lesbian character have a child.

Are you sure? This sounds like it could be one of those things could deal sanity damage.

... So yeah, I want to know too.

Nightson
2009-03-16, 02:12 PM
I want to know how could a lesbian character have a child.

Adoption and sperm donation from a friend would be the obvious methods.

FoE
2009-03-16, 02:19 PM
The character is a doppelganger. I mean, the shapeshifter Mystique was able to have a child with another female. Use your imagination.

Another explanation is s**tty characterization. :smalltongue:

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-16, 02:19 PM
Adoption and sperm donation from a friend would be the obvious methods.

Considering this is a medieval fantasy setting, that friend must be very close indeed :smalltongue:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 02:39 PM
That's something I'm wondering as well. Either Suzu (the rogue/warlock) wasn't her first lover, or it has something to do with her doppleganger biology.

I'm more inclined to think a spur-of-the-moment decision though, because as soon as her player said it, the DM asked him "Is this something my character would know about?" meaning that the player'd never mentioned it in his character's backstory. But then again, the player didn't provide a backstory when he first created the character.

Narmoth
2009-03-16, 02:56 PM
I've read through the last pages of your game on the respite forum. Damn I laughed hard.
Really fun reading for those not a part of the problem :smallbiggrin:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 02:57 PM
Pretty narmtastic, huh?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 07:45 PM
Is there anything more that needs to be said?

Kalirren
2009-03-16, 08:09 PM
This is an excerpt from a post I wrote on alignment here a few months ago, but the point is really relevant, so I'm just going to quote myself here. I haven't seen the point brought up in the thread yet after a cursory read, but I do apologize if what I'm about to write has already been written.



Let's think for a moment about what [the Monty Haul] play style is designed to evoke. After all, Tolkien doesn't really do the "adventuring" thing; he does the "quest odyssey" thing. The Fellowship sets off to destroy the Ring. Along their way, things happen to them, and their tribulations acquire meaning in the context of the quest to destroy the Ring. What the Fellowship doesn't do is "just go out adventuring" the way many D&D adventuring parties do. So where does this adventuring come from?

I've thought about it a lot, and I think the closest parallel actually comes from "viking", and I do mean it as a verb, the way it used to be used, like in this passage from an old account.


That's how things were for a number of years - every summer they'd go on viking expeditions and every winter they would stay at home with their families and parents. Thorold brought his parents a lot of valuable things.
To go "viking" meant to hop in your boat and pillage the village on that other island. The Vikings were just people who went viking every summer.

So why am I mentioning this? Well, think about the culture of viking. You gather fifty men and twenty horses, slap them on two boats, and sail for a week out of Norway. You get to the English coast, find a village, and what do you do? There's a village of 500 people with a church and a granary. You want riches and food, you've come all this way, and you're outnumbered 10 to 1. What do you do?

Solution: You burn the church first. When the priests and monks move out the church silver and start crying for help to put out the fire, you kill the unarmed priests and monks and lift the silver. By now the villagers are coming with pitchforks and trying to swarm you, so you run away on your horses. While they put out their burning church, a few lookouts steal enough food for the journey back, and then you all run like heck back to your boat before they find out where you've beached it.

That was the dungeon crawl as it was in real life. The Vikings didn't have actual ogres and monsters and wizards to deal with. They were just outnumbered.

I think the analogy really holds up here. What sort of a society allows adventurers who run around like Vikings to exist? Viking society did. What sort of a world has Vikings in it? One with regions where people live like they did in medieval England and Scandinavia.

Does this mean that "adventuring" shouldn't look the same when you move outside a pastiche medieval Scandinavian setting? My answer: absolutely.

Jayngfet
2009-03-16, 08:12 PM
Can you post a link to your specific campane from the beginning and any other threads? I want a full perspective on this.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 08:19 PM
Do you mean me?

If so, here's the subforum where we play The Vale of Thorns.

http://z9.invisionfree.com/Travellers_Respite/index.php?showforum=16

Jayngfet
2009-03-16, 08:36 PM
Long thread, this could take a while. Once I read the whole thing I'll get back to you.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 08:57 PM
Thank you.:smallsmile:

Jayngfet
2009-03-16, 10:25 PM
Busy night, just read the first few posts. This thing started out as a trainwreck. Cigarettes in the middle of a middle ages forrest? Where the hell are they coming from?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-03-16, 10:43 PM
I don't like that part either. :smallsigh:

What else made it a trainwreck?

Kris Strife
2009-03-16, 11:08 PM
If this was a 3.5 game, I'd ask to join, make a char who is the last survivor of another, now destroyed plane(t) who wants only to protect his adopted world, and everytime another PC starts to angst, scream out "MY PLANE(T) IS DEAD!!!"

And maybe they got the ciggs from Gandalf?

Jayngfet
2009-03-16, 11:09 PM
The existence of a sandwhich, for similar reasons. Not to mention the fact that no one has names that could be related. The entire naming system is off.