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Shadowknight12
2011-10-29, 08:19 PM
Good day to all.

I'll be running a campaign soon-ish, where the premise is that undead are always intelligent and pretty much just like everyone else (no morality or outlook change). There are no necromancers or Create Undead spells, all undead arise from dying in traumatic circumstances, having powerful emotions tying them to the world, outright refusing to die or due to having some important unfinished business to complete. And contagion, of course (ghoul's bite, vampire's embrace and so on).

Now in this campaign world, the lands of the living have their gods, and the common philosophy among them all (even the gods of death) is that undead are terrible abominations that must be killed on sight. You know, just like your standard D&D setting. The problem is, in this world, undead are just as free-willed, intelligent and morally diverse as the living, and the tone I want to convey is that killing an innocent undead is the medieval equivalent of a hate crime.

Now, my problem is, does this actually work (i.e., seems believable) on a domestic level? The undead have their own (very crappy) lands, so any newly risen undead in a kingdom can make their way there for sanctuary, but I wonder if this is actually believable on a human point of view. I know that zombie movies are extremely fond of the old trope where a person gets killed by a zombie because they cannot bring themselves to harm their zombified loved one, but that just seemed incredibly absurd and stupid to me. However, is there some/any truth to this? Will people indoctrinated by their churches and authorities on the evils of undead, choose to shelter their undead loved ones? It seems pretty evident to me that someone raised their entire lives believing undead are dangerous monsters would put that over whatever they might feel over their loved ones, no matter how much they plead for mercy and assure them they're still the same.

And what about the undead themselves? What would the psychological effect of becoming that which you've been taught to hate would be? Would there be a nation of beleaguered undead at all? Wouldn't suicide (in the cases where that's feasible) be more common? Or would people's survival instinct trump all (which is what I think, but hey, I could be wrong)? Would the undead choose to embrace their monster-ness out of spite, deny their condition, attempt to make the best of what they have, resent undeath in general, develop self-loathing or (as I think) all of the above (from person to person)?

So, I suppose what I'm saying is, is this premise actually sound, or does it utterly fail when you look at it with a critical eye?

EDIT for FAQ:


Mindless undead aren't gone, they're just not mindless any more. Skeletons and zombies do exist, they're just intelligent and free-willed. Too-powerful undead still exist as well, but they're rare (though this is a more universal rule than anything pertaining exclusively to undead; power in general is like wealth, and tends to be distributed like a pyramid), predatory undead most certainly exist and that's practically the main reason undead are reviled and feared.

In fact, pretty much all undead are predatory by nature due to the conservation of mass and energy. In order for them to obtain the energy they need to move, use their powers and remain animate, they must feed. The only thing that varies is what their source of nourishment is. Some require the blood of the living, others their flesh, others drink in emotion, others drain magic, others drain vitality, warmth, breath, thoughts, memories, and so on. As a general rule, incorporeal undead feed on abstract things like emotions, thoughts and memories, while more corporeal undead have more physical requirements.

EDIT 2:


As I will be running it, corporeal undead have to re-kill themselves to move on (which is rather difficult, considering that most undead are rather resistant to damage, save for one or two esoteric sources) and incorporeal undead have to literally will themselves into non-existence, which requires the same courage as a living person would need to slice their wrists.


Mechanically speaking, I won't be having much of a problem. I'll be using oslecamo's monster classes, so it's not going to be that much of a hassle, really. If I have to create monster classes myself, well, he's already helped me create one before (the Verdant Prince) so I think I have a pretty good idea on how to make them balanced. And like I said, power is a pyramid across all categories. High-CR undead and monsters are just as rare as high-level humanoids.


The campaign's metaplot is going to be about the living seeking to invade the undead kingdom for a combination of religious reasons, gaining much-needed slaves, and fear of whatever dark magics they might be brewing (a sort of pre-emptive strike). Some undead are also driven by vengeance and resentment and striking back at the living, which the living use as an excuse to oppress them even further. The PCs will have the choice to do pretty much anything they want. They can ignore the conflict, take sides, try to stop it or profit from it. Or anything they can possibly conceive. Is that still boring? Mind you, there will probably still be ghettos and undead hiding among the living, but the focus of the campaign is probably going to be lying on the brewing war.

EDIT 3:


The undead attitude towards death is practically unchanged from the one they held when they were alive. Some undead fear death, and that's why they are undead (they couldn't bring themselves to face the Great Unknown). Others rejected death not out of fear, but for a specific purpose (vengeance, unfinished business, love, concern for their loved ones, and so on) and they can't bring themselves to commit suicide when/if that purpose is ever resolved.

Suicide victims are a special case. A suicide victim will almost always rise as an undead due to the powerful emotions they were feeling upon performing their fatal act. Only a suicide victim who dies in calm and peace moves on to the afterlife. However, when a suicide victim rises as undead, they almost always do so regretting their choice. RL studies show that suicide survivors almost invariably regret their actions, and did so as they were falling/bleeding/falling unconscious/etc. That is true of the undead too. In the rare case that they don't, they can always try to kill themselves again, which might be easier or harder depending on the specific type of undead they might be. If they're incorporeal, it's a purely mental process. If they're vampires, it's a matter of stepping out into the sunlight. It might be harder for others, however.


The afterlife is very much like Eberron's. The gods give no sign of their presence, and it's debatable whether divine magic really comes from the gods or whether it's faith alone that gives them power, or whether they are tapping on another, still-undiscovered source. However, I go one step further: there's no Dollurh. You cannot planeshift to where souls come from, or go when they die. Death is the Great Unknown.

Resurrection still exists and it's affordable by the wealthier classes. Poorer classes might just save up enough for one, or find a charitable priest willing to cast it for free. However, a very large percentage of souls do not answer the call to return. Those who do, regardless of past deeds or moral outlook, report having no memory of the afterlife except for a sensation of perfect happiness (that's why most souls don't return, because they prefer to remain in such a state/place/condition than return to a life that will never measure up to it). Needless to say, it takes a very powerful reason or an exceedingly selfless individual to accept resurrection.

Religions vary on what they preach. Some preach the typical "reward and punishment" affair and try to either portray "evil" people who were resurrected as either worthy of paradise or as liars and heretics (whatever is easier), while others preach something I'm shamelessly cribbing from the Egyptian mythology where the soul has many parts and some remain behind, so while some part of you might be in perfect happiness, another might suffer if you don't follow the tenets of the faith. Others don't focus too much on the afterlife and focus more on either what happens while you live or what happens after True Resurrection's time limit passes (reincarnation? absorption into their divinity? transformation into outsider? varies from religion to religion).

Outsiders support the dogma of whatever religion they serve, and it's unclear whether they do so to fool mortals (it's impossible to discern, magically or not, when an outsider is lying) or because their dogma is indeed true. They cannot (or will not) reveal anything that you cannot find in a religious text, so interrogating outsiders sheds no light into the workings of the afterlife.

Some religions declare others heretics (but they don't rock the boat due to economic reasons), others consider themselves one big pantheistic religion with different aspects, and others have teachings that are not mutually exclusive with those of other faiths, so most religions are more or less allied with each other when it comes to the undead.

Reluctance
2011-10-29, 08:58 PM
Once you remove the mindless undead, the ones cursed with predatory (and often infectious) appetites, and the ones who are too powerful to be realistically limited by a town full of commoners, you're going to have to do a lot of homebrewing to have workable undead. I might feel pity for something that has to eat still-living flesh, but my compassion for its victims will trump that.

The problem with undead as you describe them is that they wouldn't go off to create their own nations. Revenants with emotions strong enough to defy the grave tend to focus on whatever drives them, only to move on (and stop moving) once their goal is achieved. They can be smart enough to hide the fact that they're the living dead, and to seek aid from living allies, but they're too single-minded to create any real society of the dead.

You might be better off taking a page from Shadowrun, and instead of talking about the undead, have the occasional human spontaneously mutate into some metahumanoid form. Society and religion call them murdering possessing entities, mutants obviously have a different view of things.

Hiro Protagonest
2011-10-29, 09:14 PM
Vampires set up an organization called The Red Cross to collect blood, or a living person sets it up to collect blood for vampires. Remove the alignment restriction.

Ghosts already can be any alignment.

Liches can be any alignment, it's just that most get the ritual from Orcus, rather than doing it the hard way and creating one from scratch, and he only gives it to the evil ones.

Shadowknight12
2011-10-29, 09:19 PM
@Reluctance: I think I need to clarify a few things in the OP. Mindless undead aren't gone, they're just not mindless any more. Skeletons and zombies do exist, they're just intelligent and free-willed. Too-powerful undead still exist as well, but they're rare (though this is a more universal rule than anything pertaining exclusively to undead; power in general is like wealth, and tends to be distributed like a pyramid), predatory undead most certainly exist and that's practically the main reason undead are reviled and feared.

In fact, pretty much all undead are predatory by nature due to conservation of mass and energy. In order for them to obtain the energy they need to move, use their powers and remain animate, they must feed. The only thing that varies is what their source of nourishment is. Some require the blood of the living, others their flesh, others drink in emotion, others drain magic, others drain vitality, warmth, breath, thoughts, memories, and so on. As a general rule, incorporeal undead feed on abstract things like emotions, thoughts and memories, while more corporeal undead have more physical requirements.

The point you raise about revenants is valid, though, and exactly what I was looking for when I created this thread. However, I have to ask, why wouldn't a revenant seek a society of similar beings once their purpose is fulfilled? Once a ghost has passed on its message, once the revenant has obtained revenge, the ghoul has atoned for its crimes, the vampire has learnt that suicide was not the answer and so on, once their purpose is resolved, why wouldn't they want to band together to defend themselves against a hostile world? It just seems natural to me that people would flock together for survival when threatened (and when whatever important issue they have to resolve is out of the way).

Also, thanks for the X-men suggestion, but that's really not my thing. The entire point is presenting undead in a way that hasn't (to my knowledge) been portrayed before, and exploring the ramifications of such a change on a standard fantasy setting. The entire point is to explore aspects such as discrimination, hypocrisy, mindless hatred and victimisation, from the point of view of creatures that blur the line between victims, heroes and villains.

EDIT:


Vampires set up an organization called The Red Cross to collect blood, or a living person sets it up to collect blood for vampires. Remove the alignment restriction.

Ghosts already can be any alignment.

Liches can be any alignment, it's just that most get the ritual from Orcus, rather than doing it the hard way and creating one from scratch, and he only gives it to the evil ones.

I'm afraid I don't follow.

Hiro Protagonest
2011-10-29, 09:25 PM
I'm afraid I don't follow.

You wanted ways to make them more sympathetic. Is there one part in particular you don't get?

Shadowknight12
2011-10-29, 09:32 PM
You wanted ways to make them more sympathetic. Is there one part in particular you don't get?

Well, I do have ideas on how to make them more sympathetic, that's not what troubles me in particular (in fact, I want to keep the bad rep that undead get, about how prospective liches must commit an act of unspeakable evil in their ritual, or how vampires are Always Chaotic Evil, but I want to make those beliefs, not actual game rules).

What I'm trying to find out is if the premise holds up to close scrutiny, if there are logical flaws or "People don't work that way" conflicts, you know, the sort of thing that can completely ruin a campaign because it wasn't well thought-out.

Reluctance
2011-10-29, 09:44 PM
In fact, pretty much all undead are predatory by nature due to conservation of mass and energy. In order for them to obtain the energy they need to move, use their powers and remain animate, they must feed. The only thing that varies is what their source of nourishment is. Some require the blood of the living, others their flesh, others drink in emotion, others drain magic, others drain vitality, warmth, breath, thoughts, memories, and so on. As a general rule, incorporeal undead feed on abstract things like emotions, thoughts and memories, while more corporeal undead have more physical requirements.

Try to imagine that a religious/ethnic/etc. group existed who had to rape daily. If they did not force themselves on one actively resisting partner per day, they would sicken and eventually die. Would you cast them as characters to be empathized with, or would you consider their extermination a sad necessity? It's the same with any form of undead that has to harm living humans to keep on going.

Not to mention that undead that need to feed on living things - usually human living things - are going to have a hard time creating their own societies without some heavy slaving going on. You can live close to your food source or you can import it, but without one of those your civilization will be finished before it's started.

icefractal
2011-10-29, 09:50 PM
If you're talking about whether undead could escape the area where they rose, I don't think it's a problem for most. Incorporeal ones can just dive underground when pursued, and even a zombie has pretty good ways to escape (can see in the dark and doesn't breath, so just find a deep river and walk along the bottom).

An issue, however, is sustaining themselves once they've escaped. For those that just need flesh or blood, if animals will do then they're fine. For those that subsist off emotions or need specifically human essence, then living in an undead-land far from people seems impractical.

Also, for those that must drain humans (or other sentient creatures), and the draining is harmful, then they actually are bad to have around, not just perceived as such. A vampire that kills people periodically is not the victim when the town wants to stake it.

Edit: Mostly ninja'd by Reluctance.

Shadowknight12
2011-10-29, 10:07 PM
Try to imagine that a religious/ethnic/etc. group existed who had to rape daily. If they did not force themselves on one actively resisting partner per day, they would sicken and eventually die. Would you cast them as characters to be empathized with, or would you consider their extermination a sad necessity? It's the same with any form of undead that has to harm living humans to keep on going.

I would actually cast them as sympathetic characters. Casting them as villains is too easy. It's too black and white. By casting them as sympathetic characters and showing that they don't enjoy the rape, that they're just like everyone else, and that you could become one of them at any time by one of Fate's cruel twists, I help create a dramatic, compelling story. The kind of stories that my players enjoy. And by casting the "good guys" as vicious sadists that kill innocents without proof (such as the undead that can feed off the resonance of death found in cemeteries, and are therefore not predatory), I help create a story of gray and gray, rather than black and white.


Not to mention that undead that need to feed on living things - usually human living things - are going to have a hard time creating their own societies without some heavy slaving going on. You can live close to your food source or you can import it, but without one of those your civilization will be finished before it's started.

That is very true, and something I should definitely think about. Animals are a fine substitute for almost all corporeal undead (with a few exceptions, such as vampires, but even then, they don't need to kill in order to feed), and those that feed on abstract things such as emotions and thoughts can well feed on other undead.

What else would be a concern? Leaving food aside, that is.


If you're talking about whether undead could escape the area where they rose, I don't think it's a problem for most. Incorporeal ones can just dive underground when pursued, and even a zombie has pretty good ways to escape (can see in the dark and doesn't breath, so just find a deep river and walk along the bottom).

That's not usually a problem. Undead are tireless, after all, on top of all that you've mentioned.


An issue, however, is sustaining themselves once they've escaped. For those that just need flesh or blood, if animals will do then they're fine. For those that subsist off emotions or need specifically human essence, then living in an undead-land far from people seems impractical.

Indeed, that strikes me as a problem. Those that need to feed on vitality can feed off animals too, but those that need emotions, thoughts, memories, magic and the like will end up being a burden on their fellow undead. Having said that, it's somewhat compensated by those with easy feeding requirements, like the kind that is sustained when they are remembered by their loved ones, or simply by soaking in deathly energies.


Also, for those that must drain humans (or other sentient creatures), and the draining is harmful, then they actually are bad to have around, not just perceived as such. A vampire that kills people periodically is not the victim when the town wants to stake it.

And if the draining isn't harmful? And killing is not required? Does that muddy the issue somewhat? If a vampire can feed off a village without harming or killing anyone (and the only traces of his presence are particular vivid and pleasant dreams their victims believe they have during the night), is it really bad? Or is it a more morally-gray situation?

kieza
2011-10-29, 10:08 PM
Even the predatory undead could have sympathetic individuals. Vampires, even if they can't feed on animals, could set up a "Red Cross" sort of thing--in fact, they could do it by providing their donors with protection from less civic-minded individuals.

Incorporeal undead...maybe they could drain negative emotions, acting as therapists? The ones that drain memory could suppress the memory of traumatic events. The question is if anyone would consider letting a wraith into their head in order to deal with their traumatic childhood.

icefractal
2011-10-29, 10:38 PM
And if the draining isn't harmful? And killing is not required? Does that muddy the issue somewhat?If it's not harmful, then they're fine - not inherently bad, just with a bad reputation. Feeding from those that don't volunteer is morally imperfect, but in the circumstances it could be justified. However ...


By casting them as sympathetic characters and showing that they don't enjoy the rape, that they're just like everyone else, and that you could become one of them at any time by one of Fate's cruel twists, I help create a dramatic, compelling story. This sounds like they do necessarily harm people, whether they enjoy it or not. And in that case, people are not wrong to drive them away or destroy those that won't leave. Sure, they're not as unambiguously villainous as if they did it for fun, but it isn't prejudice to refuse harmful draining.

Reluctance
2011-10-29, 10:42 PM
In this case, the closest you'd come to an undead civilization is the occasional ghetto. Corporeals would need to be able to do a good job passing for human, incorporeals would generally take advantage of the fact that hiding is easy when you can enter solid objects. Nature may be full of energy to hippie druid types, but it's always been portrayed as antithetical to the energies that keep corpses moving.

That, and the dead leaving their graves to just hang out is a source of cheap laughs, nothing more. Undead can have benign purposes, long-term purposes and/or open-ended purposes, but one without purpose will probably move on to whatever afterlife in the very near term.

You'll need to homebrew lesser versions of popular undead archetypes if you expect this setting to play at all like you expect it to. Outside of your basic skeletons and zombies, most undead have little to fear from commoners with pitchforks. Oppressed minorities many CR above their oppressors strike me as more heavy-handed commentary than anything internally consistent.

"The undead all go to live in the undead kingdom" is really boring, except for maybe asking what the undead kingdom is like. "The undead have to follow their drives, find sustenance where they can, and keep a low profile in a world made for humans" is better. (Undead who are too driven in their focus or too cavalier in their feeding are your classic evils. Seeing everyone around you as a pawn, an obstacle or a buffet will tend to cause some pretty callous interactions with the living.)

Golden Ladybug
2011-10-29, 11:41 PM
Okay, so your goal is to make your Undead a sympathetic element? That's fine, but the application you're suggesting doesn't strike me as the best way to go about it.

When I last DM'd a full campaign in real life, I did something similar to this, but only using Zombies. They were a standard element of the campaign, and an enemy that my players would occasionally run into and trounce, before going off to do whatever. My Zombies didn't speak, but they acted differently to Zombies as are normally expected to act. They would never be the aggressor, they would attempt to run and sometimes they would even attempt to save other zombies if they were in trouble. My players thought I was doing a Tucker's Kobolds for Zombies deal, and didn't pay any attention.

Until I threw the first talking Zombie at them. The quest had them taking a young girl who had been bitten by a Zombie to a temple to be healed of her wounds, along with her friend who was accompanying her for moral support. For the purpose of the world, being bitten turned you into a Zombie if you didnt' get it treated; you know, standard Zombie lore that isn't necessarily true of D&D.

Random Encounter happens; Bandits accost you on the road, and you fight them off. Some dice are rolled, etc, etc

When they returned to the girl, she'd turned. Become a zombie, and was devouring her best friend. She'd killed this girl who'd risked danger to see her safely to the temple, because after turning, she'd needed to feed.

She was crying, and whispering "I'm sorry I'm sorryI'msorryimsorry..." with increasing franticness, until all that the player could hear of it was sobbing as she ate someone she'd cared about. She dropped the body and stood up, and I described her to the party; she had blood coating her face, and tears (the moisture slowly turning to the black ichor that was common of the other zombies they'd encountered) were flooding from her eyes. All she said to them was "I couldn't help myself...I was just so hungry"

And then she turned and ran away from them, into the night. They later went looking for her, and found her body with its head smashed in. The body was holding a large boulder in its hands, rolled slightly off the remains of its head.

My players were slightly disturbed about this, and from then on, I upped the ante just a little. Undead would get more of a description when they showed up, they'd have little traits. I spent more time on the description for different zombies than I did for other characters; my particular favourite was the perpetually creepy girl with pigtails and a ripped up teddy bear dragging along in the snow behind her, with half her jaw missing. I did my best to not make much out of it, but I think they got the message.

My point is, if you're going for emotional impact by making your Undead sympathetic characters, you won't get very far unless you can get in your player's head. If you have a Skeleton who just wants to be friendly with the players, they'll laugh it off. But if you have them figure it out themselves, and realise what's been going on, and then present the situation in a slightly different light, you can have a big impact. Its really hard to do, but the reward can be worth it.

This does depend on your group though; sometimes players don't care, and that's fine. If you think your group is going to have pause when they figure out that all the undead they've been killing are just as intelligent as any given villager and don't want to (re)die, than prep the mindgames. Otherwise you won't see the return you want.

And drop the Undead country, I think. I don't see it working, for reasons that others in the thread have pointed out already

Connington
2011-10-30, 01:17 AM
Probably the first thing you need to do is figure out what kind of response you want your players to have. Let's say that it's a given that all Undead are intelligent, free-willed, self-conscious, and retain some or all of their old personalities. From that starting point, you have a huge sliding scale that goes from "The Undead are tragic monsters, and you'll be reminded of that fact every time you talk to one just before you have to slay it" to "The Undead are no more likely to hurt people than the Living"

Obviously there's a lot of space between the two, but if you really want to have your PCs to see the Undead as an oppressed minority, you need to lean more toward the good end of the scale. Otherwise, they're probably going to see the burden of proof as on the vampire or zombie claiming not to be a monster.

PersonMan
2011-10-30, 03:57 AM
This sounds like they do necessarily harm people, whether they enjoy it or not. And in that case, people are not wrong to drive them away or destroy those that won't leave. Sure, they're not as unambiguously villainous as if they did it for fun, but it isn't prejudice to refuse harmful draining.

It seems more like this was the response to that specific point, not about the undead in general.

gkathellar
2011-10-30, 04:24 AM
The problem here is that as long as the undead feed on humans, you simply cannot remove the question of how humanity would deal with its "predators." In the case of draining intangibles like memory and emotion, you're not improving things much. Certainly, you can make those predators sympathetic, and even have some non-predatory undead as discriminated against.

That said, since negative energy is an undead creature's power, one thing you could do is to make their eating habits more abstract (especially for the incorporeals). Powerful or "enlightened" undead might eat death and negativity out of the world. A powerful undead sage might sit beneath the center of a metropolis, for example, feeding on the dark emotional energies that flowed through the city and reducing them just a fraction in the process. Other powerful undead might eat illness, devour curses, or feast on old age.

I don't think you're getting anywhere with vampires though, unless you've got a pretty small vampire population and a pretty large population that wants to give blood/negative levels to them. Blood loss is pretty severe, as is level drain. Ghouls are also a problem, since they're explicitly driven to cannibalism.

Finally, what is the undead attitude towards death, and what is actually known/generally believed about the afterlife?


Incorporeal undead...maybe they could drain negative emotions, acting as therapists? The ones that drain memory could suppress the memory of traumatic events.

This crosses the nightmare fuel line for me, though. I can certainly see some people being okay with it, but I wouldn't want some ghost shrink reaching into my head and performing a spectral lobotomy on my "negative" emotions.

Zombimode
2011-10-30, 05:19 AM
Now in this campaign world, the lands of the living have their gods, and the common philosophy among them all (even the gods of death) is that undead are terrible abominations that must be killed on sight. You know, just like your standard D&D setting. The problem is, in this world, undead are just as free-willed, intelligent and morally diverse as the living, and the tone I want to convey is that killing an innocent undead is the medieval equivalent of a hate crime.

There's a problem within your premise: Undead are typically seen as abominations because they are. In your world they arent, so there is no reason why anyone would see them as anything but what they are: intelligent sentinent beings.

You have to work on that: maybe there was a time that set the precedent, a time where undead were a menancing threat to all living things; a Wightapocalyse for instance.
Or the gods have a hidden agenda which involves villianizing (is that a word?) the Undead.

gkathellar
2011-10-30, 05:32 AM
EDIT: Two other thoughts. First of all, how are you going to work out evil clerics and their Rebuking ability? Because that would have pretty heavy implications for the undead themselves, perhaps far more than Turning.

Secondly, maybe the Positive/Negative energy thing should have more of a Law/Chaos bent than a Good/Evil one? As in, Positive Energy is about life and structure and buildup, while Negative Energy is about entropy and breakdown. The social dynamic of religious establishments vs. the undead could mirror and emphasize that dynamic, with an undertone of desired balance between the two.


There's a problem within your premise: Undead are typically seen as abominations because they are. In your world they arent, so there is no reason why anyone would see them as anything but what they are: intelligent sentinent beings.

The only way that would amount to a problem with Shadowknight's premise is if intelligent beings always behaved rationally, or their behavior always had to be well-founded or ethical. It's perfectly reasonable to construct a campaign setting in which people have poorly founded or totally unfounded beliefs, because that's a thing that happens.

So ... yeah, given that his campaign presumably isn't set in the Silver Millenium and populated by ethically and intellectually faultless moon people, what you're calling a problem with the premise isn't really a problem at all.

Zombimode
2011-10-30, 06:09 AM
So ... yeah, given that his campaign presumably isn't set in the Silver Millenium and populated by ethically and intellectually faultless moon people, what you're calling a problem with the premise isn't really a problem at all.

You missed my point. My point was: without any reason to believe that undead are abominations, nobody would. A "reason" is not automaticly a "good reason", so misunderstanding, deliberate misinformation etc. are all prefectly fine reasons.

What I missed is that this was clarified in the OP: Undead still need to feed on the living one or the other way. Thats a compelling reason to fear and despise the Undead.

gkathellar
2011-10-30, 07:14 AM
You missed my point. My point was: without any reason to believe that undead are abominations, nobody would. A "reason" is not automaticly a "good reason", so misunderstanding, deliberate misinformation etc. are all prefectly fine reasons.

What I missed is that this was clarified in the OP: Undead still need to feed on the living one or the other way. Thats a compelling reason to fear and despise the Undead.

Even without that there would still be two pretty compelling reasons: a) they're different, and therefore terrifying, and b) they're made of corpses and that creeps people out.

Hel65
2011-10-30, 08:01 AM
I know that zombie movies are extremely fond of the old trope where a person gets killed by a zombie because they cannot bring themselves to harm their zombified loved one, but that just seemed incredibly absurd and stupid to me. However, is there some/any truth to this? Will people indoctrinated by their churches and authorities on the evils of undead, choose to shelter their undead loved ones? It seems pretty evident to me that someone raised their entire lives believing undead are dangerous monsters would put that over whatever they might feel over their loved ones, no matter how much they plead for mercy and assure them they're still the same.


This depends on people. In real world you could find examples for any type of behaviour - families sheltering murderers, families giving up their closest relatives to police, families persecuting completely benign relatives for being different in a way they are indoctrinated to find inacceptable.



And what about the undead themselves? What would the psychological effect of becoming that which you've been taught to hate would be? Would there be a nation of beleaguered undead at all? Wouldn't suicide (in the cases where that's feasible) be more common? Or would people's survival instinct trump all (which is what I think, but hey, I could be wrong)? Would the undead choose to embrace their monster-ness out of spite, deny their condition, attempt to make the best of what they have, resent undeath in general, develop self-loathing or (as I think) all of the above (from person to person)?


I also think all of the above, though I guess you could look for psychological studies of people in a somewhat similar situation (that is, you need to be first indoctrinated against some "condition" and then gain/discover it in yourself. It might or might not be predatory.)

Ghouls are also a problem, since they're explicitly driven to cannibalism.


Not if they just stalk cemeteries and eat dead bodies, without making (killing people) them themselves.


You missed my point. My point was: without any reason to believe that undead are abominations, nobody would. A "reason" is not automaticly a "good reason", so misunderstanding, deliberate misinformation etc. are all prefectly fine reasons.

What I missed is that this was clarified in the OP: Undead still need to feed on the living one or the other way. Thats a compelling reason to fear and despise the Undead.
Xenophobia developed in human societies because strangers brought new diseases with themselves. Undead, themselves immune to disease, but full of germs and other disease agents, potentially highly lethal, would cause people to develop super-undead-xenophobia.

gkathellar
2011-10-30, 08:15 AM
Xenophobia developed in human societies because strangers brought new diseases with themselves.

And those diseases weren't always pathogens. Japan isolated itself from the outside world largely to protect itself from the growing presence of Christianity and Western culture in the Pacific (which had gone badly for some other island nations). Similar historical cases exist.

Reluctance
2011-10-30, 08:53 AM
Xenophobia developed in human societies because strangers brought new diseases with themselves. Undead, themselves immune to disease, but full of germs and other disease agents, potentially highly lethal, would cause people to develop super-undead-xenophobia.

Actually, xenophobia generally comes about due to real or perceived competition for resources. Shadowknight's "A dead guy's gotta feed" actually provides some rationale. Otherwise, you get into the classic argument about just what makes raising undead bad enough to deserve the [Evil] tag.

Remember also that this isn't like the real world, where the dead getting out of their graves goes against everything we've come to understand. If they've been doing it since time immemorial, they're not necessarily any more different than elves and dwarves.

Daer
2011-10-30, 09:26 AM
I would think that letting party first meet antu-undead group members that are so fanatic, hateful and ruthless aso. that players would side with undeads even with just that.

Hiro Protagonest
2011-10-30, 11:22 AM
It mostly depends on the afterlife in your setting. Do the judges of the dead take into account evil acts done so the undead can survive? Is the afterlife for neutrals like the Fields of Asphodel or like the afterlife in Narnia, where it's like the mortal world, but clearer and sharper? Because if the judges don't, and if it's the latter, then killing them would be mercy.

Wyntonian
2011-10-30, 04:58 PM
It mostly depends on the afterlife in your setting. Do the judges of the dead take into account evil acts done so the undead can survive? Is the afterlife for neutrals like the Fields of Asphodel or like the afterlife in Narnia, where it's like the mortal world, but clearer and sharper? Because if the judges don't, and if it's the latter, then killing them would be mercy.

Emphasis mine.

On the other hand, it might not be. If you mean visually and sensually (pertaining to senses, that is), then yes, it would be. But what if the afterlife was a place where things were, by definition, morally clearer? Undead could be the people who died trying to hide their own crimes from themselves behind a "it's a gray area" defense, weak as that might be, and are terrified/unwilling to accept the concept of the true moral clarity and understanding that the afterlife holds, and flee from it. Hell, the concept that undead committed some sort of crime in their lifetime so bad (even if it wasn't really), that they can't bear to really look at it could be justification enough for some people to make them re-dead.

Shadowknight12
2011-10-30, 10:54 PM
Wow! Thanks for the responses, everyone! This has given me plenty to think about. I'll use spoilers heavily for the sake of avoiding large walls of text.

@kieza:

Those are excellent ideas on how to give another sympathetic take on the undead and making them less objectively "bad." Definitely going on my "to do" list.

@icefractal:


If it's not harmful, then they're fine - not inherently bad, just with a bad reputation. Feeding from those that don't volunteer is morally imperfect, but in the circumstances it could be justified. However ...

I will make this vary from undead to undead. Some will try to prove that they're not monsters while others will react with spite and embrace their darker selves.


This sounds like they do necessarily harm people, whether they enjoy it or not. And in that case, people are not wrong to drive them away or destroy those that won't leave. Sure, they're not as unambiguously villainous as if they did it for fun, but it isn't prejudice to refuse harmful draining.

No, that was just answering Reluctance's "what if" scenario.

@Reluctance:

I have to say, that's very interesting take on it. I do wonder, what's so implausible about the living banishing their undead to a barren land? Of course, not all of them will be banished. Some kingdoms (those where religion doesn't hold as much sway as gold) will use undead as slaves (they're rather good as cheap workforce), some will destroy them on sight, some will tolerate them in the ghettos you suggest and some will banish them.

And I don't want to break the forum rules by discussing RL examples, but it's not unheard of that certain groups will band together to form societies when survival is at stake.

Also, I never really bought into that trope where undead can just simply "move on to the afterlife." As I will be running it, corporeal undead have to re-kill themselves to move on (which is rather difficult, considering that most undead are rather resistant to damage, save for one or two esoteric sources) and incorporeal undead have to literally will themselves into non-existence, which requires the same courage as a living person would need to slice their wrists.

I find the "cheap laughs" comment most curious. As I understood it, comedy relies heavily on tone, mood and delivery, rather on intrinsically funny things (as such things vary from people to people), so I don't understand how undead having their own (morbid) society would be a source of cheap laughs, rather than something creepy and slightly tragic.

Mechanically speaking, I won't be having much of a problem. I'll be using oslecamo's monster classes, so it's not going to be that much of a hassle, really. If I have to create monster classes myself, well, he's already helped me create one before (the Verdant Prince) so I think I have a pretty good idea on how to make them balanced. And like I said, power is a pyramid across all categories. High-CR undead and monsters are just as rare as high-level humanoids.

As for the boring/not boring part, the campaign's metaplot is going to be about the living seeking to invade the undead kingdom for a combination of religious reasons, gaining much-needed slaves, and fear of whatever dark magics they might be brewing (a sort of pre-emptive strike). Some undead are also driven by vengeance and resentment and striking back at the living, which the living use as an excuse to oppress them even further. The PCs will have the choice to do pretty much anything they want. They can ignore the conflict, take sides, try to stop it or profit from it. Or anything they can possibly conceive. Is that still boring? Mind you, there will probably still be ghettos and undead hiding among the living, but the focus of the campaign is probably going to be lying on the brewing war.

I'll be adding some of this information to the OP.

@Golden Ladybug:

That's an excellent anecdote, and believe you me, I am taking notes. However, I'm not terribly concerned about delivery (It's going to be PbP, after all, so I will have time to carefully construct my posts and polish them as needed), since I understand that the best way to keep a campaign going is to get the players interested. And the best way to do so is by appealing to their interests and presenting them with intriguing scenes and meaningful choices.


And drop the Undead country, I think. I don't see it working, for reasons that others in the thread have pointed out already

Uh... I think I missed those reasons. Care to elaborate?

@Connington:

No, I will be definitely sliding towards the "they are just like the living" part. I may perhaps be inclined to portray them in a vaguely tragic light, but I will keep it subtle. I won't be having clear villains here. Some undead will be vicious, but there will be quite a lot of living humanoids who will be just like that, or worse. I'm aiming for a gray and gray morality with some good and bad examples in both. There will be altruism, amorality and cruelty on both ends.

@PersonMan:

That's right.

@gkathellar 1:

The predation aspect is pretty much the main "objectively bad" reason to discriminate against undead. I will try to portray it fairly, though. As I said, lots of undead can feed on animals, just like the living, and others can feed on sentenced criminals, for example, or magic users might device a potential replacement. The predation aspect is meant to be a thorny issue.

Yes, I'm definitely using that as food sources. The undead that feed on emotion can easily restrict themselves to hatred, anger and fear, rather than hope, joy and love. There's one that eats illness, yes, but it also transmits it if it's not careful (since it becomes a walking source of very diverse pathogens), and the one that eats old age... hm. I think that one might be a little too good. I'll include it if I can think of a balancing angle, something that doesn't make it automatically a boon to any city.

Vampires will be rare, yes. They usually arise from certain specific types of suicides (allips arise when the person committing suicide was mad, so they don't hold a monopoly on that cause of death). Tentatively, I'm considering that a vampire arises when a person suffers a series of devastating losses and kills herself via blood loss. That turns the blood sucking and energy drain into a metaphor for their souls wishing to recover that which they lost and their bodies hungering for the blood they shed upon death. On the one hand, it's a bit too melodramatic. On the other, it practically guarantees that any vampire PC or NPC has a pretty interesting background from the start.

Ghouls can feed on dead bodies, though I think I might downplay the cannibalism aspect and instead replace it with them being a metaphor for greed and exploitation.


Finally, what is the undead attitude towards death, and what is actually known/generally believed about the afterlife?

Thanks for asking that, I had forgot to clarify it. I'll be adding it to the OP as well.

The undead attitude towards death is practically unchanged from the one they held when they were alive. Some undead fear death, and that's why they are undead (they couldn't bring themselves to face the Great Unknown). Others rejected death not out of fear, but for a specific purpose (vengeance, unfinished business, love, concern for their loved ones, and so on) and they can't bring themselves to commit suicide when/if that purpose is ever resolved.

Suicide victims are a special case. A suicide victim will almost always rise as an undead due to the powerful emotions they were feeling upon performing their fatal act. Only a suicide victim who dies in calm and peace moves on to the afterlife. However, when a suicide victim rises as undead, they almost always do so regretting their choice. RL studies show that suicide survivors almost invariably regret their actions, and did so as they were falling/bleeding/falling unconscious/etc. That is true of the undead too. In the rare case that they don't, they can always try to kill themselves again, which might be easier or harder depending on the specific type of undead they might be. If they're incorporeal, it's a purely mental process. If they're vampires, it's a matter of stepping out into the sunlight. It might be harder for others, however.

The afterlife is very much like Eberron's. The gods give no sign of their presence, and it's debatable whether divine magic really comes from the gods or whether it's faith alone that gives them power, or whether they are tapping on another, still-undiscovered source. However, I go one step further: there's no Dollurh. You cannot planeshift to where souls come from, or go when they die. Death is the Great Unknown.

Resurrection still exists and it's affordable by the wealthier classes. Poorer classes might just save up enough for one, or find a charitable priest willing to cast it for free. However, a very large percentage of souls do not answer the call to return. Those who do, regardless of past deeds or moral outlook, report having no memory of the afterlife except for a sensation of perfect happiness (that's why most souls don't return, because they prefer to remain in such a state/place/condition than return to a life that will never measure up to it). Needless to say, it takes a very powerful reason or an exceedingly selfless individual to accept resurrection.

Religions vary on what they preach. Some preach the typical "reward and punishment" affair and try to either portray "evil" people who were resurrected as either worthy of paradise or as liars and heretics (whatever is easier), while others preach something I'm shamelessly cribbing from the Egyptian mythology where the soul has many parts and some remain behind, so while some part of you might be in perfect happiness, another might suffer if you don't follow the tenets of the faith. Others don't focus too much on the afterlife and focus more on either what happens while you live or what happens after True Resurrection's time limit passes (reincarnation? absorption into their divinity? transformation into outsider? varies from religion to religion).

Outsiders support the dogma of whatever religion they serve, and it's unclear whether they do so to fool mortals (it's impossible to discern, magically or not, when an outsider is lying) or because their dogma is indeed true. They cannot (or will not) reveal anything that you cannot find in a religious text, so interrogating outsiders sheds no light into the workings of the afterlife.

Some religions declare others heretics (but they don't rock the boat due to economic reasons), others consider themselves one big pantheistic religion with different aspects, and others have teachings that are not mutually exclusive with those of other faiths, so most religions are more or less allied with each other when it comes to the undead.

@Zombimode 1:

Well, there's the predation angle, the fact that they look scary and transmit disease, and that religious leaders fear that undeath will "steal" converts from them, in the sense that there's no need to put stock in faith or believe in the afterlife if you can simply live forever. Then there's the fact that undead in general are blamed for pretty much everything that goes wrong when they're around, leading people to believe that they're a walking source of misery and tragedy (rather than simply scapegoats). Is that a good enough reason?

@gkathellar 2:

I'm not using the alignment system (Smite Evil is just Smite That Which Is Not Of My Faith (Smite Heretic, for short), Dictum and the like discriminate faith as well, Aura of Good is Aura of the God of Fire and so on), so all clerics get turn undead (but not destroy). The "official" justification is the same as in regular D&D, but an alternate explanation developed by atheistic scholars is that they're merely channelling positive energy, which is antithetical to the undead and therefore forces them to withdraw from the cleric whether they like it or not. Undead clerics get turn living, which works exactly like turn undead, only affecting everyone but outsiders, elementals, constructs and undead. A lot of clerics get turn outsider, turn elemental and turn construct, though, so turn undead is definitely not universal. In player terms, you can exchange Turn Undead for Turn Outsider, Turn Elemental or Turn Construct. If you're undead, you get Turn Living instead, but you can also exchange it for any of the other three.

The positive/negative energy suggestion is good, but like I said, I'm not using the alignment system. Positive energy is portrayed as life and negative energy is portrayed as death, neither is good nor bad (but, of course, that doesn't stop people from calling them such). In case it needs to be mentioned, Outsiders, Constructs and Elementals are immune to both positive and negative energy. Just like Eberron gave us Repair Damage for constructs, there's Ablate Injuries for outsiders and Dissipate Blight for elementals.

@Hel65:

Huh. Well, I knew about that, yes, but I always thought that the reason people sheltered criminals was due to disbelief, "My son is not a killer!" or attenuation of the crime "He deserved it! It wasn't your fault! It's a victimless crime!" rather than wilful and rational decisions.

Thanks for the food for thought, though.

@Daer:

That's definitely going to happen, regardless of what the players end up playing.

@Jade Dragon:

I've explained the basics of the afterlife to gkathellar (under "@gkathellar 1"), but to answer your questions, it's unknown. I could tell you what the main religions think, but that's neither here nor there, since it's all dogma. In the (extremely rare) case of an undead creature killed and then resurrected, they still recall perfect happiness in the afterlife. That's the only hard fact they have to go with.

@Wyntonian:

That definitely happens, especially for those undead who follow a "hellfire and brimstone" religion and are convinced that eternal suffering awaits them once they die.

If you don't mind, I'm going to steal that justification for some of the more extremist religions. It fits perfectly with their list of reasons to destroy all undead on sight.

NNescio
2011-10-31, 01:58 AM
Remember to have them insist on being called the "Living-Impaired". (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotUsingTheZWord)

Steward
2011-10-31, 05:24 AM
This is a really cool idea!

I think it might be helpful to differentiate between undead. Zombies are going to have the purely social issue of smelling just terrible, right? Undead whose powers involve spreading disease or inflicting massive amounts of pain to all nearby living beings (think the Famine Spirit or the Defacer from the Monster Manuals) are going to have a hard time coping. The former might be able to be rehabilitated but I honestly don't understand how anyone could put up with a Famine Spirit in or near their homes (or vice-versa, honestly; you wouldn't just have to change the fluff but modify the game rules).

But not all undead are like that. Ghosts should be able to get along fairly well, and so can vampires and liches if they make some changes.

My main concern though has to do with the types of undead that you include. This could work if you're sticking with your basic zombies, skeletons, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, ghasts, liches, etc. If you try to include some of the horrors from the Monster Manuals -- especially if you make them really common -- I'm not sure that it could. It's going to be pretty hard for the players to view a Charnel Hound as a victim unless you spend a lot of time focusing on an individual.

hamishspence
2011-10-31, 05:31 AM
The undead that feed on emotion can easily restrict themselves to hatred, anger and fear, rather than hope, joy and love.

Might depend on if "feeding on emotion" actually reduces the emotion of the people present, or if people in a strong emotional state "exude" the emotion into the surrounding area where it can be soaked up by the feeder.

In Heroes of Horror- mind flayers are shown as feeding on strong emotion- so they drive their thralls into murder-orgies and hover over the scene, soaking up the emotions releases.

You could have undead doing something similar- they need the emotion- so they prod people into activities that produce it.

A joyful, happy town might be that way because of an undead "joy-feeder" who has gently influenced the leaders of that town.

And vice versa for an unhappy tyranny.

comicshorse
2011-10-31, 07:01 AM
If they do take the 'barren land' then even if they feed off animals they are going to need to trade heavily with outside kingdoms. Which might not be a problem as they maqke a great workforce. Never stop, never need to be feed, can work with materials normal creatures would find hazardous.
They'd perhaps be even better as craftsman, able to practice their craft for centuries and once they start on a project they don't have to keep putting it down to eat or sleep they can concentrate on it totally.
The other lands could trade animals with them or even volunteers to be lightly fed on. Not great but if you're a beggar starving to death on the streets any option is going to seem better than that. Perhaps even supply condemned criminals as permanent 'herd' in exchange for goods.
Unfortunately this may provide another good reason for people to hate the undead, they are 'taking our jobs' and with their advantages they are a worker that most mortals simply can't compete with.

Some questions: What about inheritance ? If the duke returns as a Zombie is his lands automatically given to his heir or does he retain it. Either way I forsee massive problems.
Also What exactly do skeletons stay alive for ? I can't really see them getting any enjoyment out of life.

And a random thought: If the Undead lands exist and trade with the other lands they are going to need to police themselves. In fact to prove to all the doubters they are going to have to be tougher on undead who attack members of other kingdoms then anybody.
So how would your P.C.s feel about being undead. The few, the pround, the Undead. Members of the SUS (Special Undead Service) tasked with hunting down the rogue undead in the hostile outside world ( and naturally spying on them and quashing threats to your homeland at the same time)

hewhosaysfish
2011-10-31, 08:19 AM
@Jade Dragon:

I've explained the basics of the afterlife to gkathellar (under "@gkathellar 1"), but to answer your questions, it's unknown. I could tell you what the main religions think, but that's neither here nor there, since it's all dogma. In the (extremely rare) case of an undead creature killed and then resurrected, they still recall perfect happiness in the afterlife. That's the only hard fact they have to go with.

@Wyntonian:

That definitely happens, especially for those undead who follow a "hellfire and brimstone" religion and are convinced that eternal suffering awaits them once they die.

If you don't mind, I'm going to steal that justification for some of the more extremist religions. It fits perfectly with their list of reasons to destroy all undead on sight.

Can animals become undead in this scenario?

The thing with religion in this scenario is that you don't want to assume that the setting has the standard medieval-fantasy religion with the standard Christian-European-inpsired folklore and morality and then ask yourself "What would happen if we added non-monstrous undead to this?"
Because in the setting it probably happened the other way around: the undead probably existed before the idea of religion, before civilisation, possibly even before the invention of language(!).

If you want these religions (and by extension, the cultures that believe in their doctrines) to seem believable in their approach to the undead then you have to provide an answer the question of "Why do they preach what they preach?"

Were their doctrines:
A) Really, actually, honestly handed down from some deific being;
B) Invented by their primitive ancestors to try and explain aspects oft he world around them that they couldn't control; or
C) Originally A or B but modified by biased or corrupt individuals?

Now I understand you don't want to present definitive answers to questions of faith in this setting and that's fine; if multiple explanations fit then no-one need know which on is right.

For example, if the priests of Lady Heallylightgoodness say that she has declared zombies to be cursed and that we should cast them out then that could either be because she personally descended from Heaven on a cloud a thousand years ago and said as much (option A) or it could be because their Stone Age anscestors noted that people who hung around with Ug the caveman-zombie tended to get horrible diseases and they figured this must be because rotting corpses were cursed by some higher power which they eventually name Heallylightgoodness (option B).
Your players don't need to know which answer is correct. Heck, you don't have to know which is correct as long as there are two potential roots for each belief. But if there's only one possible explanation (and option A is alaways an option) then that one becomes correct by default.

Skeletons? Well either (A) Lady Heallylightgoodness hates them too or (B/C) people were too afraid of disease to distinguish between zombies and skeletons?

Vampires? (A) The goddess hates them or... what? There has to be something that would cause Bob the Generic Ancestor to point at his brother Dave and say "ZOMG! This is his fault! This is all because (ever since he got depressed and stabbed himself in the neck) he's started drinking the blood of the deer he hunts and burying himself in the ground at night*! Drive a stake through my brother's heart to appease the gods!!!"
And it would have to happen often enough and be serious enough that vampire-haters would form a large enough group to dominate the non-vampire-haters (socially, ecomonically or militarily) despite the fact the latter had vampires on their side.
I can't think of anything just now...


*It must really have sucked to be a vampire before hut-building technology started to get off the ground.

gkathellar
2011-10-31, 08:36 AM
@Undead-eating-abstractions, I was actually thinking of a specific example from the Vertigo Comics Lucifer. There's a demon who kidnaps this incredibly kind, good man with terminal cancer, and he's afraid it's going to eat him — but as a being of evil, it needs to feed on evil to give birth, so it eats his cancer (via magic, it doesn't need to cut him open or anything). He goes home fine, the demon has its baby, and the reader goes d'awww.

When you get to eating higher-order things like "age" or "strife," I would say most undead should be incapable of things like that. You can't have a fountain of youth in every town square because the fountain of youth is one-of-a-kind and not necessarily amenable to helping you out. Save it for the enlightened, the ancient, and the very powerful — undead who are just kind of breaking the rules. Moreover, these undead might not even eat that often — I figure eating a country's national identity probably keeps you sustained longer than eating a corpse. Maybe even for decades, or hundreds of years.

You should totally have an undead that eats money, too.


Might depend on if "feeding on emotion" actually reduces the emotion of the people present, or if people in a strong emotional state "exude" the emotion into the surrounding area where it can be soaked up by the feeder.

It also depends on whether "feeding on an emotion" actually removes an emotion from someone's head, or just has a suppressing/balancing effect, or what. I'd actually be a lot more comfortable with the exuding option, because it means that ghosts aren't reaching into my skull and pulling out my thoughts.

moritheil
2011-10-31, 09:17 AM
the tone I want to convey is that killing an innocent undead is the medieval equivalent of a hate crime.

Very nice; it should give great opportunities for your players to RP their reconciliation of their culture's beliefs with the truth.


Now, my problem is, does this actually work (i.e., seems believable) on a domestic level?

I think there are a couple issues here.

Can it work in theory? Sure. The idea that the world is not as it seems is a fantasy staple. People can certainly have fun with it.

But the question it seems you really want to ask is, can YOU make it work with your group? And that depends largely on the willingness of your players to roll with it. If they signed up for "I want to take my min/maxed radiant servant through a dungeon and see how many undead he can make explode," and you give them "Morality Play 3: Revenge of the Morality Play," where the entire meat of the matter is predicated on the idea that they will stop and think about what they are doing, things are not going to go well in session.

claricorp
2011-11-01, 12:29 AM
I have recently started working on my own setting and it involves a similar take on the undead.

Almost all undead are not mindless, usually as intelligent as they were in there mortal lives and on occasion, seemingly at random, the dead will return. All of the sentient undead are all constantly depressed, not only have the gained the stigma of their more ravenous and mindless "kinsmen" but live a life of constant physical aching pain and mental anguish of never being able to see their loved ones again, constantly hunted from overzealous warriors of faith and unable to ever truly die.

The undead will still live with their organs gone, their skulls smashed to bits and any destruction of flesh, unless they are almost utterly destroyed, many undead lie in anguish, cut down in fields, forced to look into the distance, or buried in the earth until time finally erodes them into a dust.

So the undead have begun to band into a fighting force far rivaling any undead army known in history, usually created by "slaver" necromancers, these forces are fully autonomous and very individual. Even the horrifying twisted spirits of dark mages and mass murderers have joined the cause, bringing there skills in destruction to the undead army who has one goal.

To destroy the origin of magic itself, the so called tomb of the gods, wherever it may be they are sure to find it, for the are unresting, unrelenting and determined to end their suffering even if it means plunging the world into the magical dark ages.

They can search and prepare for war indefinitely.

At least that was my take on the undead for my campaign.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-01, 07:13 PM
Wow! Lots of responses again. This is awesome, guys. Thanks!

@NNescio:

:smallbiggrin:

@Steward:


This is a really cool idea!

Thank you!


I think it might be helpful to differentiate between undead. Zombies are going to have the purely social issue of smelling just terrible, right?

The weaker an undead creature is, the easier and less harmful its feeding requirements are. For zombies and skeletons, it's 'deathly energies' or simply standing in desecrated/unhallowed ground (in this setting, only temples, places of healing and holy sites are consecrated/hallowed, not graveyards, and all religions have access to those spells; while cemeteries and places of death are almost always desecrated or unhallowed, and only undead can cast those spells).


Undead whose powers involve spreading disease or inflicting massive amounts of pain to all nearby living beings (think the Famine Spirit or the Defacer from the Monster Manuals) are going to have a hard time coping. The former might be able to be rehabilitated but I honestly don't understand how anyone could put up with a Famine Spirit in or near their homes (or vice-versa, honestly; you wouldn't just have to change the fluff but modify the game rules).

That could happen, true. I'm not opposed to making fluff/crunch changes if I must. After all, a lot of crunch changes will take place when I turn undead into monster classes (since a lot of mechanics are just downright unfeasible).


But not all undead are like that. Ghosts should be able to get along fairly well, and so can vampires and liches if they make some changes.

That's also true.


My main concern though has to do with the types of undead that you include. This could work if you're sticking with your basic zombies, skeletons, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, ghasts, liches, etc. If you try to include some of the horrors from the Monster Manuals -- especially if you make them really common -- I'm not sure that it could. It's going to be pretty hard for the players to view a Charnel Hound as a victim unless you spend a lot of time focusing on an individual.

I'm going to be creating a thread in the World Building forum where I'll be asking for critique as I go through Libris Mortis and the Monster Manuals handpicking undead and assigning them cause of death, feeding requirements and the like. Charnel Hounds are probably out, on account of me being unable to imagine a humanoid turning into that upon death.

@hamishspence:


Might depend on if "feeding on emotion" actually reduces the emotion of the people present, or if people in a strong emotional state "exude" the emotion into the surrounding area where it can be soaked up by the feeder.

No, I'm going for a "reduces the emotion of the people present." Having said that, when you have a crowd of people in a calm, peaceful state, you will have to rouse them to feel emotions if you want to feed from them. And, of course, the higher the intensity of the emotion you're feeding from, the more sating it is.


In Heroes of Horror- mind flayers are shown as feeding on strong emotion- so they drive their thralls into murder-orgies and hover over the scene, soaking up the emotions releases.

You could have undead doing something similar- they need the emotion- so they prod people into activities that produce it.

That is definitely possible, though it depends on the individual undead. Some prefer to gently syphon negative emotions to alleviate depression, defuse arguments and help people get along. Others would delight in nothing more than watching people slaughter each other and soak up the fear and anger.

Also, some undead feed on pain. They can choose to hang out near the ill and the wounded to alleviate their agony... or chase after the living and become a fearsome torturer.


A joyful, happy town might be that way because of an undead "joy-feeder" who has gently influenced the leaders of that town.

That could happen as well, but the undead should keep the levels of "Joy" under careful surveillance. Too much feeding and the town becomes joyless.


And vice versa for an unhappy tyranny.

And conversely, too much feeding here and his tyranny becomes quite lackluster. :smallwink:

@comicshorse:


If they do take the 'barren land' then even if they feed off animals they are going to need to trade heavily with outside kingdoms. Which might not be a problem as they maqke a great workforce. Never stop, never need to be feed, can work with materials normal creatures would find hazardous.

Exactly. Incidentally, that's also why they're hunted down by slavers, too.


They'd perhaps be even better as craftsman, able to practice their craft for centuries and once they start on a project they don't have to keep putting it down to eat or sleep they can concentrate on it totally.

Also true, but the elves, the dwarves and the fey will always find something to criticise. Also, they don't like competition in the "long-lived craftsmen" niche.


The other lands could trade animals with them or even volunteers to be lightly fed on. Not great but if you're a beggar starving to death on the streets any option is going to seem better than that. Perhaps even supply condemned criminals as permanent 'herd' in exchange for goods.

That's going to be a major part of the metaplot, as some of the living kingdoms pressure the undead nation's neighbours into cutting off trade right before the imminent war.


Unfortunately this may provide another good reason for people to hate the undead, they are 'taking our jobs' and with their advantages they are a worker that most mortals simply can't compete with.

In those kingdoms where undead form ghettos, that's a daily occurrence.


Some questions: What about inheritance ? If the duke returns as a Zombie is his lands automatically given to his heir or does he retain it. Either way I forsee massive problems.

No kingdom recognises undead as the person they were, and therefore they are not allowed to reclaim anything that used to belong to them, save for the contents of their tombs. If that.


Also What exactly do skeletons stay alive for ? I can't really see them getting any enjoyment out of life.

I'm working on assigning specific causes of death to the undead I'll be keeping in the setting. My current ideas for skeletons are: Death By Immolation, Death By Corrosion, Death By Disintegration, Death By Magical Mishap or, more abstractly, what happens when a person who lived by deceiving others refuses to accept their death (because they fear it, because they felt it was unjust, etc.). In this case, being a skeleton represents all their lies and deceptions stripped from them, so that they are "laid bare" for the world to see.


And a random thought: If the Undead lands exist and trade with the other lands they are going to need to police themselves. In fact to prove to all the doubters they are going to have to be tougher on undead who attack members of other kingdoms then anybody.

That's a pretty good idea. I'm definitely going to be stealing that, since I'm already planning to have a group of undead "freedom fighters," who zealously advocate the extermination and/or subjugation of the living.


So how would your P.C.s feel about being undead. The few, the pround, the Undead. Members of the SUS (Special Undead Service) tasked with hunting down the rogue undead in the hostile outside world ( and naturally spying on them and quashing threats to your homeland at the same time)

I have no idea what they're going to do, but I definitely will pitch that to them. If I know them at all, they might all be undead. Except for the one that's going to want to play a Native Outsider (I made them work like Tolkien's half elves, having to choose between mortality with true death and immortality away from the world). I might even have to create an Aragorn NPC and everything.

@hewhosaysfish:


Can animals become undead in this scenario?

Only living creatures (non-Undead, non-Outsider, non-Elemental, non-Construct) of Intelligence 3+ can become undead. So that's a no.


The thing with religion in this scenario is that you don't want to assume that the setting has the standard medieval-fantasy religion with the standard Christian-European-inpsired folklore and morality and then ask yourself "What would happen if we added non-monstrous undead to this?"
Because in the setting it probably happened the other way around: the undead probably existed before the idea of religion, before civilisation, possibly even before the invention of language(!).

That's the way I'm going to run it, yes. Undead have existed for as long as intelligent life itself has existed.


If you want these religions (and by extension, the cultures that believe in their doctrines) to seem believable in their approach to the undead then you have to provide an answer the question of "Why do they preach what they preach?"

Were their doctrines:
A) Really, actually, honestly handed down from some deific being;
B) Invented by their primitive ancestors to try and explain aspects oft he world around them that they couldn't control; or
C) Originally A or B but modified by biased or corrupt individuals?

Now I understand you don't want to present definitive answers to questions of faith in this setting and that's fine; if multiple explanations fit then no-one need know which on is right.

The religions say A), obviously. But in truth, it's B), followed subsequently by C).


For example, if the priests of Lady Heallylightgoodness say that she has declared zombies to be cursed and that we should cast them out then that could either be because she personally descended from Heaven on a cloud a thousand years ago and said as much (option A) or it could be because their Stone Age anscestors noted that people who hung around with Ug the caveman-zombie tended to get horrible diseases and they figured this must be because rotting corpses were cursed by some higher power which they eventually name Heallylightgoodness (option B).
Your players don't need to know which answer is correct. Heck, you don't have to know which is correct as long as there are two potential roots for each belief. But if there's only one possible explanation (and option A is alaways an option) then that one becomes correct by default.

Skeletons? Well either (A) Lady Heallylightgoodness hates them too or (B/C) people were too afraid of disease to distinguish between zombies and skeletons?

That's pretty much what's going to happen (B/C). Depending on what I do with skeletons, it might be even simpler than that. It might well be plain old-fashioned revenge. "YOU SET ME ON FIRE WITH YOUR MAGICS! NOW I RETURN FOR REVENGE!" and the murderer, intent on covering his behind, replied "No! It's an evil, lying creature! We must kill it before it destroys us!"

Copypaste that for a lot of undead, add in the fact that they might transmit disease, prey on the living, look scary and were most likely killed for a reason (you can't become undead if you die of old age, after all), and you have a pretty solid case against undead.


Vampires? (A) The goddess hates them or... what? There has to be something that would cause Bob the Generic Ancestor to point at his brother Dave and say "ZOMG! This is his fault! This is all because (ever since he got depressed and stabbed himself in the neck) he's started drinking the blood of the deer he hunts and burying himself in the ground at night*! Drive a stake through my brother's heart to appease the gods!!!"
And it would have to happen often enough and be serious enough that vampire-haters would form a large enough group to dominate the non-vampire-haters (socially, ecomonically or militarily) despite the fact the latter had vampires on their side.
I can't think of anything just now...

(B/C): Vampires can't feed on animals, for starters, and they might lack the self-control to stop themselves before killing people. They also get a power boost, which can lead to them acting as bullies and oppressors. They also need to stay in the darkness and dwell at night, and primitive cultures associated darkness with evil. Some vampires might also have unresolved issues (the very same ones that led to their suicides) and before the advent of psychotherapy, that would've resulted in them having rather damaged personalities.


*It must really have sucked to be a vampire before hut-building technology started to get off the ground.

Seriously.

@gkathellar:


@Undead-eating-abstractions, I was actually thinking of a specific example from the Vertigo Comics Lucifer. There's a demon who kidnaps this incredibly kind, good man with terminal cancer, and he's afraid it's going to eat him — but as a being of evil, it needs to feed on evil to give birth, so it eats his cancer (via magic, it doesn't need to cut him open or anything). He goes home fine, the demon has its baby, and the reader goes d'awww.

That's very interesting example, and pretty much how I imagine a disease-eating undead would work.


When you get to eating higher-order things like "age" or "strife," I would say most undead should be incapable of things like that. You can't have a fountain of youth in every town square because the fountain of youth is one-of-a-kind and not necessarily amenable to helping you out. Save it for the enlightened, the ancient, and the very powerful — undead who are just kind of breaking the rules. Moreover, these undead might not even eat that often — I figure eating a country's national identity probably keeps you sustained longer than eating a corpse. Maybe even for decades, or hundreds of years.

That sums up very well my feelings on the subject. When the predation aspect sounds too good to be true, it's time to change it to something less one-sided. Saving it for one of a kind undead is a very interesting idea, however, and I believe I will do just that.

I'm going to be using the feeding rules from Libris Mortis, tweaked to take into account HD (lower-HD undead can go without feeding for longer) and amount (larger "meals" let undead go without feeding for longer).


You should totally have an undead that eats money, too.

Most definitely. :smallamused:


It also depends on whether "feeding on an emotion" actually removes an emotion from someone's head, or just has a suppressing/balancing effect, or what. I'd actually be a lot more comfortable with the exuding option, because it means that ghosts aren't reaching into my skull and pulling out my thoughts.

Feeding on an emotion acts like the Calm Emotions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/calmEmotions.htm) spell for that specific emotion, and for only one target at a time. The non-violent part of the spell doesn't apply unless the undead chooses a violent emotion, such as rage, hatred, jealousy and the like. In-game, the person is considered to be exuding the emotion like body heat, and the undead feeds on that.

I think I should mention that I'm houseruling that undead are not immune to mind-affecting effects.

@moritheil:


Very nice; it should give great opportunities for your players to RP their reconciliation of their culture's beliefs with the truth.

Thanks! That's exactly what I'm aiming for.


I think there are a couple issues here.

Can it work in theory? Sure. The idea that the world is not as it seems is a fantasy staple. People can certainly have fun with it.

But the question it seems you really want to ask is, can YOU make it work with your group? And that depends largely on the willingness of your players to roll with it. If they signed up for "I want to take my min/maxed radiant servant through a dungeon and see how many undead he can make explode," and you give them "Morality Play 3: Revenge of the Morality Play," where the entire meat of the matter is predicated on the idea that they will stop and think about what they are doing, things are not going to go well in session.

I'm the kind of DM that places the players' fun first and foremost. I'm upfront with everything and I won't be running anything they don't want to play.

The "Morality Play" joke got me good, though. :smallbiggrin:

@claricorp:


I have recently started working on my own setting and it involves a similar take on the undead.

Almost all undead are not mindless, usually as intelligent as they were in there mortal lives and on occasion, seemingly at random, the dead will return. All of the sentient undead are all constantly depressed, not only have the gained the stigma of their more ravenous and mindless "kinsmen" but live a life of constant physical aching pain and mental anguish of never being able to see their loved ones again, constantly hunted from overzealous warriors of faith and unable to ever truly die.

The undead will still live with their organs gone, their skulls smashed to bits and any destruction of flesh, unless they are almost utterly destroyed, many undead lie in anguish, cut down in fields, forced to look into the distance, or buried in the earth until time finally erodes them into a dust.

So the undead have begun to band into a fighting force far rivaling any undead army known in history, usually created by "slaver" necromancers, these forces are fully autonomous and very individual. Even the horrifying twisted spirits of dark mages and mass murderers have joined the cause, bringing there skills in destruction to the undead army who has one goal.

To destroy the origin of magic itself, the so called tomb of the gods, wherever it may be they are sure to find it, for the are unresting, unrelenting and determined to end their suffering even if it means plunging the world into the magical dark ages.

They can search and prepare for war indefinitely.

At least that was my take on the undead for my campaign.

I find it fascinating how we have such similarities and yet you went in a most interestingly different way. You went for an epic, tragically desperate conflict, made undead incredibly tragic villains and played the Morality Play from a different perspective. As I understand it, you want the players to pause and think about whether the suffering of a people justifies dooming the world to the magical equivalent of the dark ages.

Thanks for sharing, I found it quite tasty and nutritious as food for thought.

When I make the thread in the World Building forum, I'll be sure to link it in the OP. Criticism is, as always, highly appreciated.

Quietus
2011-11-01, 08:03 PM
There's something I've adopted in my own games, to make the Necromancy, Undead-Making spells earn their [Evil] tag. I know this doesn't apply here, but it might help to justify why some groups would hate undead.

Life is run on positive energy. Undeath is run on negative energy. This is where I started it all from; why is it this fundamental difference? In my games, I decided that creating an undead involved the horrific twisting of the individual's soul, such that it was no longer recognizable. In order to create an undead, you were using dark magics to twist the very nature of what they were, and bind the result into the shell of its former corpse, leaving it in constant, unbearable pain.

To adapt this for your world.. "all undead arise from dying in traumatic circumstances, having powerful emotions tying them to the world, outright refusing to die or due to having some important unfinished business to complete". All these suggest the presence of an overwhelming emotion or drive. My recommendation would be to have that irrevocably damage the soul. A creature that comes back to get revenge on a cheating lover, is still driven by revenge. Perhaps they've made friends, and one of those friends gets into trouble. The revenant's first thought, no matter how nice or well balanced they try to be, is to strike out at the person that caused that trouble. The mother who came back to protect her child? Sure, she may be able to end the life of the man trying to stalk her child, but now she's back for good, and is protecting her daughter from everything. Even trying to protect her from growing up.

With this model, you can show some undead fighting against these urges; The revenant who KNOWS it's not right to go after the guy who took Bob for all his money in poker last night, but feels that urge anyway. The mother who's been taking care of her child for ten years now, and understands that now that Sally is 18, she ought to be out dating.. but the thought of letting Sally out of her sight is unbearable, and there's a part of mom's mind that will always think of Sally as being 8 years old.

The tragedy comes in when you think.. how long can you go without? It's like an addiction, one that you never get over. The revenant's thirst for revenge, every single day, is as strong as the hardcore alcoholic's craving for a stiff drink the first night he quits cold turkey. Sure, he can put it off, overcome it for a short period of time.. but he's going to screw up. It's not a question of if he will, but when. So the average person, not knowing what's driving that zombie over there, isn't going to want to interact with them because you never know what will set them off. Logically, even the most balanced person understands that these creatures don't mean to be like this, but that they literally cannot help it. Their souls are broken, shattered, a piece of themselves lost forever. And nothing you can do can ever bring that back.

Gabe the Bard
2011-11-01, 08:12 PM
Will undead be a playable race in your campaign? Just to share from personal experience, I'm playing a skeleton character in an undead-heavy game where there are two kinds of undead: the mindless flesh-eating variety, and intelligent undead that have learned to suppress their cravings and basically don't need to eat.

However, most people don't know that there are different varieties, so they're first reaction when they see any sort of undead creature is to either run away or throw stones. This has resulted in our party trying various ways to get people to accept my character as a sentient being. We've had to deal with the kind of discrimination which you mentioned in the OP pretty much on a daily basis. Sometimes it simply involves hiding the fact that there's an undead person in the party. Other times, it requires some eloquent speaking on behalf of their undead companion, or showing through our actions that not all undead creatures are monsters.

hewhosaysfish
2011-11-02, 07:52 AM
That could happen as well, but the undead should keep the levels of "Joy" under careful surveillance. Too much feeding and the town becomes joyless.

Now I'm imagining undead conservationists picketing the tombs of joy-feeders who don't use ecologically (or should that be 'sociologicaly'?) sustainable sources of joy...

There's also an interesting contrast between the ones that feed on positive emotions/phenomena: each will diminish what he feeds on but would have a vested interest in promoting it in the community as well, sowing what he harvests. Which one ultimately provides a net benefit to the community it's in? Do both? Do neither? The answer would depend on on how much it takes to feed one undead, how much of the emotion people would be experiencing without his intervention, how much he works to cultivate the emotion (i.e. does he farm the it or just forage for it?), etc.
And, given the intangible and shifting nature of human emotions, it will be impossible to give a quantifiable, indisputable answer to any of these questions. People can sincerely believe exact opposites...

Shadowknight12
2011-11-04, 01:58 PM
Hey, everyone! Here's the thread I told you about (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221441), where I'll be going over most monster books to handpick undead and give them a cause of death, feeding requirements and making other necessary adjustments. Feel free to check it out if you want.

@Quietus:


There's something I've adopted in my own games, to make the Necromancy, Undead-Making spells earn their [Evil] tag. I know this doesn't apply here, but it might help to justify why some groups would hate undead.

Life is run on positive energy. Undeath is run on negative energy. This is where I started it all from; why is it this fundamental difference? In my games, I decided that creating an undead involved the horrific twisting of the individual's soul, such that it was no longer recognizable. In order to create an undead, you were using dark magics to twist the very nature of what they were, and bind the result into the shell of its former corpse, leaving it in constant, unbearable pain.

To adapt this for your world.. "all undead arise from dying in traumatic circumstances, having powerful emotions tying them to the world, outright refusing to die or due to having some important unfinished business to complete". All these suggest the presence of an overwhelming emotion or drive. My recommendation would be to have that irrevocably damage the soul. A creature that comes back to get revenge on a cheating lover, is still driven by revenge. Perhaps they've made friends, and one of those friends gets into trouble. The revenant's first thought, no matter how nice or well balanced they try to be, is to strike out at the person that caused that trouble. The mother who came back to protect her child? Sure, she may be able to end the life of the man trying to stalk her child, but now she's back for good, and is protecting her daughter from everything. Even trying to protect her from growing up.

With this model, you can show some undead fighting against these urges; The revenant who KNOWS it's not right to go after the guy who took Bob for all his money in poker last night, but feels that urge anyway. The mother who's been taking care of her child for ten years now, and understands that now that Sally is 18, she ought to be out dating.. but the thought of letting Sally out of her sight is unbearable, and there's a part of mom's mind that will always think of Sally as being 8 years old.

The tragedy comes in when you think.. how long can you go without? It's like an addiction, one that you never get over. The revenant's thirst for revenge, every single day, is as strong as the hardcore alcoholic's craving for a stiff drink the first night he quits cold turkey. Sure, he can put it off, overcome it for a short period of time.. but he's going to screw up. It's not a question of if he will, but when. So the average person, not knowing what's driving that zombie over there, isn't going to want to interact with them because you never know what will set them off. Logically, even the most balanced person understands that these creatures don't mean to be like this, but that they literally cannot help it. Their souls are broken, shattered, a piece of themselves lost forever. And nothing you can do can ever bring that back.

That's an excellent idea for why some groups (mainly the non-religious, I think) think undead should be imprisoned/killed/enslaved/heavily controlled/etc. It's not true, of course, but there have been enough cases of undead who couldn't control their emotions and urges (just like there are plenty of living people who can't control their emotions and urges) to justify sustaining such a wrongful assertion.

Thanks for the suggestion! It helps flesh out the campaign a great deal.

@Gabe the Bard:


Will undead be a playable race in your campaign?

They most certainly will.


Just to share from personal experience, I'm playing a skeleton character in an undead-heavy game where there are two kinds of undead: the mindless flesh-eating variety, and intelligent undead that have learned to suppress their cravings and basically don't need to eat.

However, most people don't know that there are different varieties, so they're first reaction when they see any sort of undead creature is to either run away or throw stones. This has resulted in our party trying various ways to get people to accept my character as a sentient being. We've had to deal with the kind of discrimination which you mentioned in the OP pretty much on a daily basis. Sometimes it simply involves hiding the fact that there's an undead person in the party. Other times, it requires some eloquent speaking on behalf of their undead companion, or showing through our actions that not all undead creatures are monsters.

That's exactly the sort of mood I want to invoke in the campaign. Thanks for sharing the anecdote, it's nice to see it can be run so smoothly.

@hewhosaysfish:


Now I'm imagining undead conservationists picketing the tombs of joy-feeders who don't use ecologically (or should that be 'sociologicaly'?) sustainable sources of joy...

:smallbiggrin:


There's also an interesting contrast between the ones that feed on positive emotions/phenomena: each will diminish what he feeds on but would have a vested interest in promoting it in the community as well, sowing what he harvests. Which one ultimately provides a net benefit to the community it's in? Do both? Do neither? The answer would depend on on how much it takes to feed one undead, how much of the emotion people would be experiencing without his intervention, how much he works to cultivate the emotion (i.e. does he farm the it or just forage for it?), etc.
And, given the intangible and shifting nature of human emotions, it will be impossible to give a quantifiable, indisputable answer to any of these questions. People can sincerely believe exact opposites...

That's the sort of dilemma and morally gray area that I want to invoke with undead feeding. It should have a bright side and a down side. Even vampires, who drain Constitution in the form of blood loss, have a positive effect on their victims since the act of feeding is pleasurable. And in other cases (shadows, for example), they can be used to safely debilitate or incapacitate foes without killing them. And in the case of life-draining undead, you can also use them to painlessly execute criminals or enemies, or as stealthy assassins who can cleverly disguise their M.O. under things like disease, asphyxiation or "natural causes" to the untrained eye.

And as you point out, it gets even better with abstract feeding requirements, like emotions.

Cerlis
2011-11-04, 02:13 PM
I didnt see anyone mention it (skimmed) so i thought i'd volenteer this. no one likes to borrow info heavily from others, but i think this is one source that got it right, and one of the few that actually tried making undead a protagonist.

Forsaken
The Horde is leery of the Forsaken's tactics, however, and keeps watchful eyes on them. This caution is justified. Forsaken culture is strange, a perverse combination of the lives they once knew as mortals and the mindless slavery they experienced in the Scourge, colored by white-hot rage toward the Lich King and an almost equally intense devotion to their queen. Never sleeping, eating or falling ill, abandoned by those they once loved, the Forsaken have a brutal set of priorities. A great portion of their efforts focus on dark alchemy, and the Royal Apothecary Society commands great power in Undercity's oily tunnels. The apothecaries constantly send Forsaken on missions to gather odd materials for their twisted experiments. Rumors tell that the undead creatures are working to create a plague that will exterminate the Scourge and every living being on Azeroth. Are the Forsaken evil? At times it can be difficult to tell. Some Forsaken attempt to reclaim their humanity by acting in kind and helpful ways. Others allow hatred to fester into cruelty and rage. All that can be said is that the Forsaken follow their own agendas, and the rest of the world be damned; and if they have their way, it will be. Not all Forsaken are evil, but many are, and other races definitely view them as such. A non-evil Forsaken must work hard to prove his or her neutral (or perhaps, good) intentions. Few good Forsaken exist, but many evil ones do, and their leadership is definitely up to nefarious ends. Most Forsaken are pretty despicable, and their motivations as a race are evil and destructive.[4]

Forsaken , on faith
Even as they believe they have been abandoned by their faith, so have the Forsaken abandoned the faiths of their living days.[4] Some still adhere to their old faiths, such as the Holy Light.[12][13] Many no longer cling to any religion, placing their faith in their queen and their dark science.[4] Most, however, have embraced new philosophies of their own creation: the Forgotten Shadow, the Echo of Life, or the simple value of knowledge.[14] Some have even turned to the Burning Legion as a source of power, believing that only it is potent enough to defeat the Lich King.[4]

The Cult of Forgotten Shadow is largely based out of Deathknell and the warrior quarter in Undercity.[15] Priests of the Forgotten Shadow believe that the faiths they held in life have failed them, and so they instead rely on the power and teachings of the Shadow.[16][17][18] The members of the Cult vary between lawful and chaotic, evil and neutral,[19] and are taught to eradicate anything having to do with the Holy Light — and life in general.[citation needed] It is also a philosophy of divine humanism.

Priests of the Forgotten Shadow teach that there must be a balance between Light and Shadow, and while they should never forget that they are from the Shadow, members of the cult must learn the Light as well.[20][21] Being intelligent undead, the Forsaken fully understand the limitations and vulnerabilities associated with unlife. One of these disadvantages is that they can be turned, rebuked or even commanded by powerful positive or negative energy forces. Naturally, the Forsaken are always on the lookout for ways to limit or negate this vulnerability.[22]

Some Forsaken priests continue to wield the Light.[13][20] Recent information provided by the Blizzard Creative Development team says that, while it is possible for Forsaken with intensely strong willpower to use the Holy Light, it is very painful for them to do so. Holy Light spells can still heal the Forsaken but they must suffer nobly.[23]

Undead Paladin: Leonid Barthalomew
Leonid was a noble hero until he was killed and later resurrected by the Lich King as a mindless undead. He was present at Stratholme when Ras Frostwhisper gained his immortality.[1] He was eventually freed by the Banshee Queen, and became one of the Forsaken. Mistrusting many if not most of the members of the Forsaken he left them and is now loyal to the cause of the Argent Dawn.[2] He was a friend of the Forsaken priest Trevor who aspires to follow after Leonid.[3]

He looks at his undeath as a malady. An illness that merely requires treatment, hence his loyalties. It is also a great advantage for the Argent Dawn. What better weapon to smite the abominations of the Scourge than one of the "redeemed" undead?

He is revered by his colleagues because of the sacrifices he has made, but the accolades mean nothing to him.

The Forsaken vs The Scarlet Crusade
The Scarlet Crusade is a group of maddened zealots so dedicated to the removal of all undead that they commonly attack the living.[2] In the Western Plaguelands, the Scarlet Crusade strikes against the Scourge from Hearthglen.[3] Many Knights of the Silver Hand remained on Lordaeron for several reasons ranging from missing the fleeing boats, to a sense of duty to clear their homeland of the undead. With the destruction of Lordaeron in front of them and the knowledge that Arthas had betrayed them, some knights actually went mad. They hunt the undead in Lordaeron with a zeal that frightens. Many innocent mortals have been killed through misunderstandings, or simply "just making sure". These paladins have a frightening policy: When in doubt, assume the person is undead and kill him. These knights would never admit that they walk the same dark road that led to Arthas’s damnation, but few of them continue to follow the three virtues. Those who question their leaders are assumed to be undead sympathizers and are slain. Many serve the Scarlet Crusade out of fear, as to speak up means instant death.[4]

The Scarlet Crusade is what happens when mad zealots take over a good cause. While the Alliance is in agreement that the Scourge needs to be eradicated from Lordaeron so they can return home, few Alliance members would agree with the methods used by the Scarlet Crusade. The Crusade’s members are mostly soldiers — many are Knights of the Silver Hand — who saw such devastation wrought by the Scourge that they resort to extreme measures to destroy the undead. This includes killing any mortal they assume to be undead, killing mortals to get to undead or killing mortals who may sympathize with undead. “Sympathizing with the undead” is how Crusaders interpret someone arguing that their methods are severe. They are the natural enemies of the Scourge and the Forsaken, but they are also the enemy of anyone who cannot prove that he is alive — usually within ten or so seconds. The Crusade has indeed destroyed several undead encampments on Lordaeron. They may end up alone on the continent — or more likely, die trying.[5] The Scarlet Crusade sees no difference between the Forsaken and the Scourge and battle the Forsaken zealously.[6]

for more info visit wowwiki.com

Calanon
2011-11-04, 05:29 PM
I didn't read the first post... BUT

The Undead ARE always Victims to horrible crimes... including but not limited to:

Racism Necropolitians
Destruction of property Lichs
Home invasion Every Undead Villain
Murder (?) Vampires
Unjust Execution Mohrgs
Burnings Mummies
Murder with bodily fluids Liquid mortality
Wrongful Eviction Death Knights
Murder of Children Undead that reproduce

Shadowknight12
2011-11-06, 03:39 PM
I didnt see anyone mention it (skimmed) so i thought i'd volenteer this. no one likes to borrow info heavily from others, but i think this is one source that got it right, and one of the few that actually tried making undead a protagonist.

Ah, the Forsaken. Great concept, abysmally awful execution.

The problem with the Forsaken is that they're all woefully evil. There's no gray morality, no anti-hero portrayal, they're straight up Villain Protagonists. I know it's done on purpose to attract the type of antisocial player that loves to play Chaotic Evil, but it does very little to remove the stigma of current media portrayal of the undead.

It's not "done right," I'm afraid, and I'll never be convinced otherwise. Sylvanas in particular had the potential to be an excellent character, nuanced and complex (and we see hints of it in the Lament of the Highborne quest), but it was never given the treatment it deserved, and she became another one-dimensional, evil villain that just happens to be allied with the Horde out of convenience. And she's planning to kill everyone with a new Plague. Just like the Lich King did. Yeah, no, the Forsaken are a terrible example of undead as protagonists, though I do admit the original concept for them had the potential to end up differently.


I didn't read the first post... BUT

The Undead ARE always Victims to horrible crimes... including but not limited to:

Racism Necropolitians
Destruction of property Lichs
Home invasion Every Undead Villain
Murder (?) Vampires
Unjust Execution Mohrgs
Burnings Mummies
Murder with bodily fluids Liquid mortality
Wrongful Eviction Death Knights
Murder of Children Undead that reproduce

In standard D&D and pretty much every other game I've seen, all those things are actually justified because undead are portrayed as being irrevocably evil and destroying them is always the right choice. So those aren't really "crimes" and the undead aren't really "victims" because, as it was mentioned before in this thread, undead being evil, predatory, and an all-around abomination of nature and blight upon the world is usually objectively true.

So my intention is to make them objectively just like the living, so that all the things you mention are actual unjust crimes.

Calanon
2011-11-06, 04:52 PM
In standard D&D and pretty much every other game I've seen, all those things are actually justified because undead are portrayed as being irrevocably evil and destroying them is always the right choice. So those aren't really "crimes" and the undead aren't really "victims" because, as it was mentioned before in this thread, undead being evil, predatory, and an all-around abomination of nature and blight upon the world is usually objectively true.

So my intention is to make them objectively just like the living, so that all the things you mention are actual unjust crimes.

I remember once upon a time I did an undead game where my players were trying to defend a village of Undead... They didn't need to eat anything due to a magical red stone that glows in the center of the city and they just tried to live there unlife without harming anybody. The village was founded by a Lich who wanted his now Undead Brethren to have a place they could call home.

The players had to defend the village from the assult of Paladins, Clerics and other Undead slayers... Ultimately the party lost and we all learned a valued lesson "Don't judge a vampire by the size of his/her fangs" :smallfrown:

The Paladin's justified there actions as they were Undead Abominations and needed to be crushed, but in reality the Undead never harmed anyone or did anything, they just "lived" and tried to make there lives in the world

One day I wanna have a re-do of that game and have the Undead win :smallsmile:

hamishspence
2011-11-06, 06:08 PM
Some 3.0 and onward books tend to make it clear that not all undead are "irrevocably evil"- still, it does seem to be the default assumption in a lot of games.

Reluctance
2011-11-06, 11:43 PM
Actually, one of the bigger problems in most games is that undead are meant almost entirely as monsters. And more generally, that there's little to no rules support for encouraging monsters to act appropriately. The only nod 3.5 made towards the idea of player controlled "monsters" having some mechanical basis is the Control Shape skill. White Wolf is really the only big-name player where your monsters are properly rewarded for being monstrous.

One more thing that jumps out at me. You imply that the kingdom the PCs hail from borders on theocratic, and that's a large part of why they're so reflexively anti-undead. Even if other kingdoms are creeped out by the undead, it might help to think who other powers in the region are.

Cerlis
2011-11-07, 07:57 PM
Ah, the Forsaken. Great concept, abysmally awful execution.

The problem with the Forsaken is that they're all woefully evil. There's no gray morality, no anti-hero portrayal, they're straight up Villain Protagonists. I know it's done on purpose to attract the type of antisocial player that loves to play Chaotic Evil, but it does very little to remove the stigma of current media portrayal of the undead.

It's not "done right," I'm afraid, and I'll never be convinced otherwise. Sylvanas in particular had the potential to be an excellent character, nuanced and complex (and we see hints of it in the Lament of the Highborne quest), but it was never given the treatment it deserved, and she became another one-dimensional, evil villain that just happens to be allied with the Horde out of convenience. And she's planning to kill everyone with a new Plague. Just like the Lich King did. Yeah, no, the Forsaken are a terrible example of undead as protagonists, though I do admit the original concept for them had the potential to end up differently.



In standard D&D and pretty much every other game I've seen, all those things are actually justified because undead are portrayed as being irrevocably evil and destroying them is always the right choice. So those aren't really "crimes" and the undead aren't really "victims" because, as it was mentioned before in this thread, undead being evil, predatory, and an all-around abomination of nature and blight upon the world is usually objectively true.

So my intention is to make them objectively just like the living, so that all the things you mention are actual unjust crimes.

And leonid and the other members of the Argent Crusade? (2 of the 4 leautenants you get daily quests from in Zul'drak seem to be honest to goodness good forsaken using their skill and knowledge of the undead and alchemy to fight the scourge, not get vengance).

Indeed a majority of the forsaken quickly abandon the concept of morality , but i think your race of undead wouldnt spend a long time being constantly murdered by the living without becoming exceedingly paranoid and biased against them.

Unless they are oblivious.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-11, 08:46 PM
@Calanon:


I remember once upon a time I did an undead game where my players were trying to defend a village of Undead... They didn't need to eat anything due to a magical red stone that glows in the center of the city and they just tried to live there unlife without harming anybody. The village was founded by a Lich who wanted his now Undead Brethren to have a place they could call home.

The players had to defend the village from the assult of Paladins, Clerics and other Undead slayers... Ultimately the party lost and we all learned a valued lesson "Don't judge a vampire by the size of his/her fangs" :smallfrown:

The Paladin's justified there actions as they were Undead Abominations and needed to be crushed, but in reality the Undead never harmed anyone or did anything, they just "lived" and tried to make there lives in the world

One day I wanna have a re-do of that game and have the Undead win :smallsmile:

*claps* Excellent.

I want them to win too. :smallbiggrin:

@hamishspence:


Some 3.0 and onward books tend to make it clear that not all undead are "irrevocably evil"- still, it does seem to be the default assumption in a lot of games.

I'd like to see proof of that, because the very best I can find on the matter is ambiguity. Not "making it clear" in the slightest. And Deathless don't count, since they are one of the worst inventions in D&D.

@Reluctance:


Actually, one of the bigger problems in most games is that undead are meant almost entirely as monsters.

That's pretty much what I've been saying all along.


And more generally, that there's little to no rules support for encouraging monsters to act appropriately. The only nod 3.5 made towards the idea of player controlled "monsters" having some mechanical basis is the Control Shape skill.

Add RDH and LA to the mix and you'll see that the designers actively discouraged players from playing "monster" characters.


White Wolf is really the only big-name player where your monsters are properly rewarded for being monstrous.

That is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to achieve. I don't want monsters being rewarded for being monstrous. Human nature already takes care of that. I want undead being just like every other race out there. Just as monstrous and just as humane.


One more thing that jumps out at me. You imply that the kingdom the PCs hail from borders on theocratic, and that's a large part of why they're so reflexively anti-undead. Even if other kingdoms are creeped out by the undead, it might help to think who other powers in the region are.

Firstly, the PCs may well hail from the undead kindgom. Secondly, there are plenty of kingdoms out there. Thirdly, not all of them are theocratic or bordering on it (just the ones that cling the tightest to the good ole ways). Plenty of them are embracing the birth of capitalism and pay only lipservice to the major religions, venerating only gold. I have a pretty good idea of what the other powers in the region are.

There is a loose alliance of small kingdoms and city-states that are thoroughly mercantile (think Venice) and they're bordering the undead nation. They don't like the undead, but they will trade with anyone, and the undead are pretty good at selling cheaper, higher quality goods and getting things that are too dangerous for the living to obtain regularly.

Then you have a couple of die-hard theocratic kingdoms that oppress undead because their religions say so. Then you have a whole lot of not-quite-as-religious nations where there's just enough religion for people to have a few "official" justifications to shun undead, but the true reasons behind the hatred are along the vein of fear, envy, anger, greed and the like. In short, the majority of the antagonist nations use religion and folklore as excuses to hide behind, while their true motivations are far more human than that.

@Cerlis:


And leonid and the other members of the Argent Crusade? (2 of the 4 leautenants you get daily quests from in Zul'drak seem to be honest to goodness good forsaken using their skill and knowledge of the undead and alchemy to fight the scourge, not get vengance).

Those are exceptions that stand out precisely because of how rare they are. As a whole, the Forsaken are an exceedingly awful example of undead protagonists. I'm not saying that they're all the same, only that an overwhelming majority are.


Indeed a majority of the forsaken quickly abandon the concept of morality , but i think your race of undead wouldnt spend a long time being constantly murdered by the living without becoming exceedingly paranoid and biased against them.

Unless they are oblivious.

I don't think people are that easy to categorise. I think that as a people, undead would have very diverse opinions and reactions on the subject, particularly because not all of them have suffered the same way. Some of them have been merely socially shunned. Others have been hunted down and barely escaped with their unlives. Others have been enslaved and tortured. Others left their loved ones out their own volition. It varies too much to make generalisations.

hamishspence
2011-11-14, 06:24 AM
Archlich, Baelnorn, Revenant and Curst. Archlich & Baelnorn are nonevil lich variants, Revenant is always True Neutral, Curst is always Chaotic Neutral.

All are in Monsters of Faerun, and several reappear in later books.

Savage Species has the "emancipated spawn" prestige class, for spawned undead that were freed by killing their creator, and go on to become adventurers.

Libris Mortis has the Necropolitan (any nongood) and monster class progressions for various undead. It discusses the proportion that are nonevil:

Ghoul/Ghast: Ghouls are traditionally chaotic evil, although this restriction can be relaxed in a campaign that features undead player characters. Even so, most ghouls tend toward chaos and/or evil. Lawful or good ghouls are extremely rare.

Mohrgs: Mohrgs are traditionally chaotic evil, although this restriction can be relaxed somewhat in a campaign that features undead player characters. Even in such cases, most mohrgs lean strongly toward chaos and evil. Good-aligned mohrgs are virtually unknown.

Mummy: Mummies are usually lawful evil, but exceptions to this alignment are much more common than for most undead creatures. In fact, of all the undead monster races presented here, the mummy is the most likely to follow the path of good. Most retain their lawful tendency, as befits their typical role as guardians.

Vampire Spawn: Vampire spawn are traditionally evil, although a DM may relax this restriction in a campaign that features undead player characters. The innate selfishness of a typical vampire spawn makes a good alignment difficult to uphold.

Wights: Wights are traditionally lawful evil, although this restriction can be relaxed in a campaign that features undead player characters. Even so, most wights lean strongly toward evil. Good-aligned wights are exceedingly rare, and even neutral wights are rare.

And in the MM, Ghosts can be of any alignment.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-14, 01:31 PM
@hamishspence: Wow, I wasn't expecting you to take what I said so literally. Allow me to preface everything I'm about to say with the fact that you claimed that there was a "trend" and I said I'd like to see proof of it. I meant the trend. Isolated cases are not proof of a trend. They can well be anomalies or exceptions (which they are), so at no point you are actually providing proof to your claims. If you had said "exceptions" rather than "trend," I would have most definitely agreed with you. Secondly, I am familiar with every single example you cite, and I classify them as exceptions.


Archlich, Baelnorn, Revenant and Curst. Archlich & Baelnorn are nonevil lich variants, Revenant is always True Neutral, Curst is always Chaotic Neutral.

All are in Monsters of Faerun, and several reappear in later books.

Archlich and Baelnorn are specifically defined as exceptions to the ordinary lich. The other two are explicitly designed to put players in a moral dilemma, so their Neutral alignment isn't there so that they can be portrayed in a better light, but simply for the sake of cheap drama.


Savage Species has the "emancipated spawn" prestige class, for spawned undead that were freed by killing their creator, and go on to become adventurers.

Specifically says that returning to the previous alignment is a choice, not a fact.


Libris Mortis has the Necropolitan (any nongood) and monster class progressions for various undead. It discusses the proportion that are nonevil:

Ghoul/Ghast: Ghouls are traditionally chaotic evil, although this restriction can be relaxed in a campaign that features undead player characters. Even so, most ghouls tend toward chaos and/or evil. Lawful or good ghouls are extremely rare.

Mohrgs: Mohrgs are traditionally chaotic evil, although this restriction can be relaxed somewhat in a campaign that features undead player characters. Even in such cases, most mohrgs lean strongly toward chaos and evil. Good-aligned mohrgs are virtually unknown.

Mummy: Mummies are usually lawful evil, but exceptions to this alignment are much more common than for most undead creatures. In fact, of all the undead monster races presented here, the mummy is the most likely to follow the path of good. Most retain their lawful tendency, as befits their typical role as guardians.

Vampire Spawn: Vampire spawn are traditionally evil, although a DM may relax this restriction in a campaign that features undead player characters. The innate selfishness of a typical vampire spawn makes a good alignment difficult to uphold.

Wights: Wights are traditionally lawful evil, although this restriction can be relaxed in a campaign that features undead player characters. Even so, most wights lean strongly toward evil. Good-aligned wights are exceedingly rare, and even neutral wights are rare.

"Can be." Not is, but "can be." It is an option for the DM that is already covered by Rule Zero. It does not say "There are good vampires," is says "if your DM approves, good vampires may exist and you can perhaps play one of them." The most positive paragraph there is the Mummy, which explicitly says that exceptions to the alignment are much more common than other undead creatures. Something I would classify as an exception.


And in the MM, Ghosts can be of any alignment.

Exception.

hamishspence
2011-11-14, 01:40 PM
The point being, that the examples all make the statement "Undead are irrevocably evil" false-

showing evidence that some undead are capable of alignment change, and that some don't have to start as evil in the first place.

The fact that there are "exceptions to the rule" proves that the rule, if taken as an absolute, is a false rule.

One could say that "in general undead tend to be evil"- but not that they "are irrevocably evil"

Shadowknight12
2011-11-14, 01:43 PM
The point being, that the examples all make the statement "Undead are irrevocably evil" false-

showing evidence that some undead are capable of alignment change, and that some don't have to start as evil in the first place.

The fact that there are "exceptions to the rule" proves that the rule, if taken as an absolute, is a false rule.

One could say that "in general undead tend to be evil"- but not that they "are irrevocably evil"

Is that so?


ir·rev·o·ca·ble   [ih-rev-uh-kuh-buhl] Show IPA
adjective
not to be revoked or recalled; unable to be repealed or annulled; unalterable: an irrevocable decree.

I don't see the words "without exception" anywhere. I never said that there were no exceptions (in fact, I think I said the opposite, even). I said that undead being evil is the norm and that fighting that preconception is almost impossible (hence the 'irrevocable' part).

hamishspence
2011-11-14, 01:48 PM
If it means "cannot be changed" -

then the implication of the phrase "undead are irrevocably evil" would be "undead are evil and this cannot be changed"

That is- there's no such thing as an undead that's changed alignment.

Not "The perception of undead as evil cannot be changed".

But then, we may be interpreting the phrase differently.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-14, 01:52 PM
But then, we may be interpreting the phrase differently.

I think that is the case, yeah. I meant that undead are seen as evil (with the statistical exceptions that accompany every declaration, because no declaration is absolute) and that this could not be changed. I mean, granted, I am trying to change it, but it's by pure Rule Zero that I'm doing it, and Rule Zero doesn't count.

hamishspence
2011-11-14, 02:44 PM
Lords of Darkness (oddly, for a villain-centric book) went out of its way to mention, at the start, that undead have done heroic things (and that some paladins have come back as heroic undead).

4E's Open Grave discusses the various levels of tolerance some cities have for undead- ranging from "tolerated, but with a duty to prove themselves innocent when trouble starts" to "same rights as the living (Sigil) to "undead are in charge" (Nocturnus).

Shadowknight12
2011-11-30, 02:54 PM
Lords of Darkness (oddly, for a villain-centric book) went out of its way to mention, at the start, that undead have done heroic things (and that some paladins have come back as heroic undead).

Oh ew. Now duty compels me to read a book that offends me in a personal way. Bah. The things I do for my... not, art, no. Hobbies?


4E's Open Grave discusses the various levels of tolerance some cities have for undead- ranging from "tolerated, but with a duty to prove themselves innocent when trouble starts" to "same rights as the living (Sigil) to "undead are in charge" (Nocturnus).

I think a friend of mine has that book. I thought it was a pile of dumb (what with its 'undead are meant to be foes and trash mobs!' general outlook), but I suppose it might be worth a look.

hamishspence
2011-11-30, 03:04 PM
What was especially offensive about it? I thought it was simply a list of Evil Organizations (with PRCs for several), + characters?

Shadowknight12
2011-11-30, 03:29 PM
What was especially offensive about it? I thought it was simply a list of Evil Organizations (with PRCs for several), + characters?

Good, you have accurately identified the offensive aspect of it.

The polarisation of campaigns into good and evil offends me greatly. I know it's the easy way out when you just want to kill stuff without worrying your pretty head with moral dilemmas, but that can always be an option. Look at the real world. We don't have an objective force of Good and Evil and yet that doesn't stop us from saying "that group of people is evil! And we're good! So let's kill them!". What's stopping you from doing the same in your campaign if moral complexity isn't your thing? Just say undead and orcs are evil and slaughter them mindlessly. There's no RPG Police to write you a ticket if you do that.

This goes back to the topic of Terrible Game Design Decisions. They went for the cheapest, easiest, laziest way out (pandering to stereotypes) and a significant portion of their audience has to actively contradict established fluff or rules to tell more complex stories. It may not seem like a big deal, but every time a DM has to change a lich's alignment from "Evil" to "Good" to give the players a moral dilemma, that's a mistake on the designers' part.

hamishspence
2011-11-30, 03:51 PM
It's a common trope of the fantasy genre- the assumption that evil is a real, active force, and must be opposed by the protagonists. Even nonfantasy setting often have villains and heroes.

Even then, "kill without worrying about the moral dilemmas" isn't necessarily valid.

Lords of Darkness page 3:


No roleplaying game would be complete without enemies, and Faerun has a plethora of them. Take the basics presented in this book and build your campaign around them. Give your antagonists depth and breadth. Allow them some presonality. Let them care. Good villains are no less right and justified in their actions than the heroes, from their point of view. Treat each villain as the protagonist of his or her own story, and not simply antagonists that confront the heroes at dramatically appropriate points.
...

Most of the organizations describes in this book have evil intentions, and the majority of their members share that alignment. This may not always be the case, however, since there are exceptions to every rule. Sometimes good people do bad things for good reasons. You, the DM, must determine the alignments of your NPC antagonists and establish their motives for the things they do.

Something makes the members of those groups commit evil deeds. They're undoubtedly done despicable things, though they may have done them in the name of justice, love, or ignorance. Maybe they simply lashed out like injured animals and then couldn't escape the mess they made. Did they choose an evil path, or end up there through accident or bad choices. Can your heroes help them change their ways? Was one of your heroes responsible for the antagonist's downfall? By determining these facts in advance, you can create complex antagonists that add roleplaying flavor to your game.

EDIT:
Turns out it was the 2nd edition Lords of Darkness that had the quote- the book was a collection of undead-related adventures, unlike the 3rd ed book which was organizations:


But vampires have helped travelers and battlefield survivors. Liches have trained, advised, or chatted amiably with adventurers. Skeletons have marched out of crypts in besieged cities to snatch up children — their descendants — and bear them to safety. The great paladin Ralgorax, the "Sword of Tyr"...

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 10:45 AM
Well, Personaly I don't like the "just make a standard evil villian not evil" trope.

I get making balanced Ork, Kobold, and Goblin races-duh.

But you have to think reason first, happening later (as in create a reason why people fear undead first - THEN you can try to create themes around it) if you want a balanced and realistic undead.

The reason why everybody fear and hate undead is because they are dangerous and horrible monsters.

But if they aren't, then why do people hate them? You have to give reasons. Or are the gods just one sidedly racist or something?

Make sure that this conflict is not one sided. Characters will notice this and go "Your just inverting the Evil/ Good switch" and then all originality is lost.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 10:49 AM
If you want a great example of how to do your undead concept wrong, read DD.

The author pretty much goes "I want good orcs and evil humans!"

Its lazy and dull creating Strawmen characters with no depth.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 01:32 PM
It's a common trope of the fantasy genre- the assumption that evil is a real, active force, and must be opposed by the protagonists. Even nonfantasy setting often have villains and heroes.

Whenever someone says "X is commonly found in media!" with the implication that its popularity alone makes it valid, I enjoy citing "Racism, Sexism And Other Forms of Discrimination" as a counter-example. Just because something has been prevalent since ancient times and continues to exert a firm hold to this day, doesn't mean one cannot see its flaws and actively fight it.


Even then, "kill without worrying about the moral dilemmas" isn't necessarily valid.

Most of the design decisions in practically all RPGs (including Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem, where you actually play as a member of the undead) actively contradict that.


Lords of Darkness page 3:

It really does try to encourage moral complexity, I will give them that much. However, it still reasserts the fundamental pillars that A) there must be villains; B) those villains must be performing evil actions; and C) the heroes must try to stop them.

Still painfully obvious black-and-white morality, even if I can grudgingly admit it's a step in the right direction.


EDIT:
Turns out it was the 2nd edition Lords of Darkness that had the quote- the book was a collection of undead-related adventures, unlike the 3rd ed book which was organizations:

Ah, no wonder I couldn't find it. To be honest, that sounds exceedingly hard to believe. That right there actively contradicts the main policy of D&D in general when it comes to undead. So either the writer had a sudden fit of magnanimity towards diverging playstyles or they put the wrong guy in charge of writing one of the many black-and-white morality books.


But if they aren't, then why do people hate them? You have to give reasons. Or are the gods just one sidedly racist or something?



If you want a great example of how to do your undead concept wrong, read DD.

The author pretty much goes "I want good orcs and evil humans!"

Its lazy and dull creating Strawmen characters with no depth.

I don't mean to insult your intelligence at all (I'm just saying this because you might honestly not be aware of it), but in the real world, we don't have "dangerous and terrible monsters," yet you don't see that stopping people from committing horrible acts of torture and genocide against certain groups, do you? Just look at any act of cultural violence and tell me if either side was a "dangerous and terrible monster" (unless you consider humanity in general to be a 'dangerous and terrible monster,' which is a completely different subject).

And also, I appreciate the warning, but I'm always campaigning for moral complexity around here (this thread is an example of such a tendency), and so I don't really do the whole 'good and evil' thing. That's not to say that I don't treat all my races with a fair eye for balance and depth, but that's not really the point of the thread at all.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 01:35 PM
"Moral complexity" can coexist with "There is good and there is evil, and evil must be opposed".

Indeed, how can "prejudice" be condemned at all, except by classifying it as "evil" in at least some sense?

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 01:45 PM
Exactly, Im warning you about a trap. Its called stitcheroonie syndrome.

Simply making the undeads the good guys (Which you kind of blatantly are) and the humans the bad guys you are left with the exact same thing.

"Lets make HUMANS the evil racists and Orcs peacefull kind vegatarians!"

You have the exact same moral complexity as

"Lets make ORCS the Evil racists and HUMANS peacefull, kind vegatarians"

I treat undeads, demons and angels as exceptions to the morality rule. Thats what makes them scary. You cannot permanatky destroy them and their very existence brings death and corruption. A lich is like taking magic drugs.

While it makes you smarter and more powerful it also ****s with your brain, and removes important components of your humainty resulting in you slowly loosing your mind.

Ancient elder abominations are most fun when completely evil. Thats what makes them scary.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 01:45 PM
"Moral complexity" can coexist with "There is good and there is evil, and evil must be opposed".

Moral complexity is not an on-off switch. It's a sliding scale. You can have low amounts of moral complexity under such a setup, sure, and maybe a masterful stortyteller can reach (at the very most) moderate amounts of moral complexity, but for as long as 'good and evil exist as objective forces' exists as a truth in the setting, high levels of moral complexity can never be reached, because such a setup limits a great deal of potential scenarios, thereby preventing a truly morally-complex story (which is not to say that the story can't be complex in other areas).


Indeed, how can "prejudice" be condemned at all, except by classifying it as "evil" in at least some sense?

Uh. No. That's just... no. There are many ways of fighting harmful behaviours without resorting to labels. It's called logic. It's called thinking.

We don't need to classify "smoking" as "evil" to rationally recognise that it's harmful for the health of those involved (whether they're first-hand or second-hand smokers), and we don't need to label 'acting like a jerk' as 'evil' to rationally recognise that it's detrimental for both the jerk and the people they interact with.

Every single thing you can label as 'evil' can either be rationally sustained by pure logic as a valid thing to oppose, or does not need to be opposed in the first place (like how quite a great deal of people consider certain cultures/religions/lifestyle choices to be 'evil' without a firm logical backup to sustain it, and therefore such misanthropic and bigoted ideas fall apart at the slightest analytical glance).

EDIT:


Exactly, Im warning you about a trap. Its called stitcheroonie syndrome.

Simply making the undeads the good guys (Which you kind of blatantly are) and the humans the bad guys you are left with the exact same thing.

Okay, you're just clearly not listening to me now. I said that's not what I'm doing. I'm not making anyone the good guys or the bad guys because I am opposed to the notion of good guys and bad guys in the first place.


I treat undeads, demons and angels as exceptions to the morality rule. Thats what makes them scary. You cannot permanatky destroy them and their very existence brings death and corruption. A lich is like taking magic drugs.

While it makes you smarter and more powerful it also ****s with your brain, and removes important components of your humainty resulting in you slowly loosing your mind.

Ancient elder abominations are most fun when completely evil. Thats what makes them scary.

I rather disagree with you on all counts, but thankfully that's not really relevant to this discussion. YAY.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 01:54 PM
I'm not making anyone the good guys or the bad guys because I am opposed to the notion of good guys and bad guys in the first place.

Well you pretty much are. The title of the thread is "making the undeads the victims".

You also mention of human kingdom attacking the Undead kingdom for "slaves".

You also make undead hatred stupidly irrational.

So it becomes a "Oh this is totaly moraly complex....Its just the story of undead beings being oppressed by the living for no other reason then because of a confused religion that may be even false".

Its sort of a huge SMACK towards "UNDEADS ARE THE GOOD GUYS!"

You could take the Grimdark aprouch though. Making BOTH sides bad guys.

Thing is that bad guys do exist. Whether through motivation or mindless reanimation there are bad people.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 02:06 PM
Well you pretty much are. The title of the thread is "making the undeads the victims".

Victims =/= good guys. Victims do terrible, terrible things. I should know, I work with plenty of them every day. They lash out at their loved ones, they harm themselves, they seek vengeance, they change their outlook to victimise others and perpetuate the cycle, they engage in harmful behaviour to avoid their realities, they choose dangerous methods for coping with their trauma and so on.

Victims are people. They're neither good nor evil. They're just like everyone else, only more damaged.


You also mention of human kingdom attacking the Undead kingdom for "slaves".

Pick up a history book and read up on how common slavery was in past times. Slavery is only seen as 'wrong' from our current worldview. Back when it was actually practised, nobody cackled and twirled their mustaches, rejoicing in how evil they were by enslaving others. They rationalised it in many, many ways, and very few people actually considered it 'wrong' or 'evil.'


You also make undead hatred stupidly irrational.

Do provide an example of when hatred (especially culture-wide hatred) is not stupidly irrational.


So it becomes a "Oh this is totaly moraly complex....Its just the story of undead beings being oppressed by the living for no other reason then because of a confused religion that may be even false".

Yes, I am removing the comfortable certainties that are common when it comes to fantasy settings, fantasy religions and undead. If that bothers you, I don't really know what to say. It's not going to change.


Its sort of a huge SMACK towards "UNDEADS ARE THE GOOD GUYS!"

So the part about them preying on the living and engaging in the harmful victim behaviour I outlined above are just typical of what you term 'good guys' then?


You could take the Grimdark aprouch though. Making BOTH sides bad guys.

I hate Grimdark with a passion.


Thing is that bad guys do exist. Whether through motivation or mindless reanimation there are bad people.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe in that. I believe that people are just people. We are all capable of 'good' and 'evil' if we're given sufficient motivation to do either. Labelling someone 'good' or 'evil' because of their actions strikes me as rather impractical, since actions are the result of an incredibly complex network of motivations, inner processes, cultural and biological backgrounds and external stimuli, all of which can vary in greater or lesser ways.

I much prefer to dispense with terms such as 'good' or 'evil' and simply tell stories about people. You may disagree. That's fine. That's the beauty of the internet, we don't have to come to an agreement if we don't want to. :smallwink:

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 02:29 PM
Victims are people. They're neither good nor evil. They're just like everyone else, only more damaged.

So why are you making them more damaged then?


Pick up a history book and read up on how common slavery was in past times. Slavery is only seen as 'wrong' from our current worldview. Back when it was actually practised, nobody cackled and twirled their mustaches, rejoicing in how evil they were by enslaving others. They rationalised it in many, many ways, and very few people actually considered it 'wrong' or 'evil.'

Alright then. So why kidnap undeads (And start wars with soul devouring monsters) when corpses are much easier to animate? If they hate undeads then why do they have undead slaves (Who pose a serious health and safety risk)?


Do provide an example of when hatred (especially culture-wide hatred) is not stupidly irrational.

Nazis. There where always exceptions but Nazis are a worldwide hated thingy.


Yes, I am removing the comfortable certainties that are common when it comes to fantasy settings, fantasy religions and undead. If that bothers you, I don't really know what to say. It's not going to change.

I don't get what your saying here.


So the part about them preying on the living and engaging in the harmful victim behaviour I outlined above are just typical of what you term 'good guys' then?

So then nothing really changes. I would kill undeads simply to put them out of thier misery. Their a danger to themselves and others. It is more moraly complex but at the end of the day I would symapthise more with teh guy getting his brains eaten then of of the zombie.


I hate Grimdark with a passion.
Why? Its exacty the same thing as your doing.

Crazy religous Zealots fight Ravenous undead.



I'm sorry, but I don't believe in that. I believe that people are just people. We are all capable of 'good' and 'evil' if we're given sufficient motivation to do either.

True. But actions can be labeled good or evil the majority of the time (And there is ALLOT of grey area)


Labelling someone 'good' or 'evil' because of their actions strikes me as rather impractical, since actions are the result of an incredibly complex network of motivations, inner processes, cultural and biological backgrounds and external stimuli, all of which can vary in greater or lesser ways.

I cannot really counter that but if your opening that can of worms your also opening up the question of whether or not we have free will at all.

Actions become meaningless other then for self preservation and the whole thing gets REALY muddled up.


I much prefer to dispense with terms such as 'good' or 'evil' and simply tell stories about people.:smallwink:

I just realised. You have the exact same thing just under different labels.

If I retitled Evil as: Person who is constantly doing acts that hurt others for personal gain

Then evil exists. People try to stop evil. All you have realy done is remove labels but kept the exact same ideals behind the whole things.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 02:33 PM
Uh. No. That's just... no. There are many ways of fighting harmful behaviours without resorting to labels. It's called logic. It's called thinking.
...
Every single thing you can label as 'evil' can either be rationally sustained by pure logic as a valid thing to oppose, or does not need to be opposed in the first place (like how quite a great deal of people consider certain cultures/religions/lifestyle choices to be 'evil' without a firm logical backup to sustain it, and therefore such misanthropic and bigoted ideas fall apart at the slightest analytical glance).

That's the thing- all the things we "rationally" label as "negative" work just fine in a D&D type setting as "evil acts".

"Acts of misanthropy" "Acts of bigotry" "Acts of genocide" "harmful acts done for profit".

In the same fashion, the person who actively works to reduce the incidence of such acts, opposing those who commit them at some cost to themselves- is, in D&D terminology, a "Hero".

Everything the same- just the label put on it, is different.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 02:35 PM
That's the thing- all the things we "rationally" label as "negative" work just fine in a D&D type setting as "evil acts".

"Acts of misanthropy" "Acts of bigotry" "Acts of genocide" "harmful acts done for profit".

In the same fashion, the person who actively works to reduce the incidence of such acts, opposing those who commit them at some cost to themselves- is, in D&D terminology, a "Hero".

Everything the same- just the label put on it, is different.

Pretty much that.

Ultimate evils are those that are just created for these acts.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 02:50 PM
Open Grave continues the tradition of Undead being "normally evil" but does allow for exceptions:


Of all the undead fashioned through necromantic ritual and chance, the vast majority are indeed evil. Someone who claims that undead are at heart unaligned might be hiding something.

That said, if considered in isolation and without context, some undead are not necessarily evil. Mindless undead in particular have no moral leanings one way or the other. But in truth agencies willing to dishonor the remains of living creatures by animating them into walking corpses are usually up to no good.

But with every rules, exceptions exist. Everyone has heard tales of apparitions that warn the living of hazards and impending disasters. Epic stories speak of skeleton armies marching up out of crypts in besieged cities to snatch away children and bear them to safety. Whether such creatures acted of their own accord or were compelled by an unseen controller's magic, none can say.
and discusses the issue of undead as open members of society- a paladin who kills an undead citizen of such a society will find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

There's also Heroes of Shadow, which has undead player races.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 02:57 PM
I always view as the necromantic energy used by necromancers to be simply the same type of energy given off by "evil" acts. Thats why thier usualy evil.

A time of undeads doing good acts will wear off the evil energy surrounding them

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 03:00 PM
Strictly, by PHB, it won't. All undead, even good aligned undead, detect as evil.

Same applies to Neutral clerics of evil gods, or redeemed fiends, for that matter.

"negative energy" may actually be seperate from "evil energy" and if it requires both to bring back even a skeleton, this might explain why they always ping as evil.

In the same way, when a Neutral person becomes a cleric of an evil god, even if their own alignment doesn't change, they might be "suffused" with the same evil energy.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 03:05 PM
"negative energy" may actually be seperate from "evil energy" and if it requires both to bring back even a skeleton, this might explain why they always ping as evil.

In the same way, when a Neutral person becomes a cleric of an evil god, even if their own alignment doesn't change, they might be "suffused" with the same evil energy.

Exactly. That way my charters can have thier undeads or be evil clerics with Good alignments....

But the way you structured your statement it made it seem that that was the way its supposed to be.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 03:09 PM
Only in Eberron can you have an Evil cleric of a Good deity, or vice versa- still, the point, that "not everything that pings on Detect Evil, is Evil" needs to be remembered.

I got the impression that WoTC did this on purpose, to discourage the "detect=smite" attitude.

Eberron just went a little further, as well as stressing loud and clear that even when something is evil, rather than just Detecting as such, it still isn't necessarily OK to kill them.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 03:46 PM
So why are you making them more damaged then?

Who says I'm making them more damaged? Undead as portrayed almost universally are not damaged. They're not victims, or tragic heroes or regular people. They're Designated Villains for the protagonists to defeat without having to wrestle with those pesky moral quandaries.


Alright then. So why kidnap undeads (And start wars with soul devouring monsters) when corpses are much easier to animate? If they hate undeads then why do they have undead slaves (Who pose a serious health and safety risk)?

I established in the OP that there's no animation of corpses. Necromancy as a school of magic still exists, but it's mostly full of spells like Vampiric Touch, Energy Drain, Trap The Soul, Gentle Repose, Cure Wounds, Inflict Wounds, True Resurrection and the like.

Undead slaves are the dream of every mercantile state. They don't rest, they don't need housing or accommodations, they don't become ill or die of old age, they don't lose their vigour and need to be replaced, and if you pick your type of undead carefully, feeding them can be exceedingly cheap.

A single undead slave can easily out-perform a human in terms of labour capacity and work all day and night, for a greatly less amount of gold (in terms of food, housing, etc).


Nazis. There where always exceptions but Nazis are a worldwide hated thingy.

I see. I don't think we can discuss this any further due to the rules of the boards.


I don't get what your saying here.

I'm removing a lot of the staples of the genre that make things comfortable and easy for players. If you prefer your games to be laid-back and cozy, that's fine, nobody's gonna fault you for that. We just have different preferences.


So then nothing really changes. I would kill undeads simply to put them out of thier misery. Their a danger to themselves and others. It is more moraly complex but at the end of the day I would symapthise more with teh guy getting his brains eaten then of of the zombie.

There you go. Now you understand the rationale of the humans, thereby proving that I'm not making them out to be "bad guys." Now I counter that with "no undead *needs* to kill anyone, and even the ones that have more dangerous feeding requirements (like vampires) can still leave their victims alive or feed on criminals and enemies of whatever nation they're in" to further muddy the issue.

I am doing my very best to avoid having an easy answer and an obvious side to take. Players will obviously still take sides, of course, but I'll do my damnedest to make it as hard as possible.


Why? Its exacty the same thing as your doing.

Crazy religous Zealots fight Ravenous undead.

Hahahaha oversimplifications are hilarious.


True. But actions can be labeled good or evil the majority of the time (And there is ALLOT of grey area)

We disagree.


I cannot really counter that but if your opening that can of worms your also opening up the question of whether or not we have free will at all.

Actions become meaningless other then for self preservation and the whole thing gets REALY muddled up.

And why are you assuming that 'free will' isn't part of the complex network I mentioned above? Like when you have two different paths to take, free will dictates which one you follow.

But yes, that is rather offtopic.


I just realised. You have the exact same thing just under different labels.

If I retitled Evil as: Person who is constantly doing acts that hurt others for personal gain

Then evil exists. People try to stop evil. All you have realy done is remove labels but kept the exact same ideals behind the whole things.

Would you mind stopping your constant oversimplifications of everything I say? It's rather tedious to spend time typing out extensive responses and thinking carefully about what I'm saying and then have everything reduced to simplifications that aren't even true.

Where have I said that anyone is constantly doing acts that hurt others? And when have I said that all evil acts were for personal gain? And where have I said that both of these were in play?

I didn't. I said that everyone (undead or not) is capable of all sorts of acts, and I wanted to portray a situation where a certain cultural group is placed in a certain position, something which has been very common throughout history. And to further flesh out the issue, I gave both sides reasons for their actions, and rational responses to each side's motivations.

It's also telling how you keep flipflopping between "the humans are evil!" and "the undead have to be killed!" and keep trying to force your personal views on the matter.

If you disagree with my intentions, then nobody's forcing you to read the thread. Don't keep exposing yourself to things you know you aren't going to like.


That's the thing- all the things we "rationally" label as "negative" work just fine in a D&D type setting as "evil acts".

"Acts of misanthropy" "Acts of bigotry" "Acts of genocide" "harmful acts done for profit".

In the same fashion, the person who actively works to reduce the incidence of such acts, opposing those who commit them at some cost to themselves- is, in D&D terminology, a "Hero".

Everything the same- just the label put on it, is different.

If you need to label things good and evil, nothing I say or do will actually stop you from doing so. I can write you a treatise on different philosophical approaches, all based on rationality, which actively contradict themselves on what is 'negative' or not because they take different things into consideration.

So I'm not going to try. Do you enjoy labelling things good and evil? Go ahead, knock yourself out. I don't share that enjoyment, so I'm not going to partake on that activity.


Open Grave continues the tradition of Undead being "normally evil" but does allow for exceptions:

and discusses the issue of undead as open members of society- a paladin who kills an undead citizen of such a society will find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Actively contradicts the oft-repeated paladin tenet that paladins must ignore the Law when it conflicts with what they know is "Good," like fighting slavery in places where slavery is sanctioned by law. If a paladin 'knows' that slaying undead is 'good' (and there's plenty of material that actively backs that up), then most books on the matter actually support the paladin ignoring the Law to take matters into his own hands in that case.

Another reason why this whole 'label' thing falls apart when things get off the beaten path.


I always view as the necromantic energy used by necromancers to be simply the same type of energy given off by "evil" acts. Thats why thier usualy evil.

A time of undeads doing good acts will wear off the evil energy surrounding them

Negative energy is a hotly debated subject when it comes to alignment. Long story short? WotC hosed up. See below for more information.


Strictly, by PHB, it won't. All undead, even good aligned undead, detect as evil.

Same applies to Neutral clerics of evil gods, or redeemed fiends, for that matter.

"negative energy" may actually be seperate from "evil energy" and if it requires both to bring back even a skeleton, this might explain why they always ping as evil.

In the same way, when a Neutral person becomes a cleric of an evil god, even if their own alignment doesn't change, they might be "suffused" with the same evil energy.

Please, don't defend WotC's idiotic take on negative energy in this thread. Seriously, it just makes everyone look bad. The facts are that there is mutually contradicting information on negative energy and how it relates to alignment. For the sake of avoiding a senseless argument, I'm going to leave it at that, but I think you're smart enough to understand that it's one of those debates where nothing positive can possibly be gained.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 03:52 PM
When playing an existing D&D setting, it makes sense to accept at least some of the basic assumptions for the purposes of games in that setting.

Indeed "There's no such thing as good and evil" makes little sense in a setting full of fiends and celestials.

as to "labelling things as good and evil" I find it hard to understand the viewpoint that:

"It is wrong to label genocide as evil- because it was regularly practiced in the past and no-one practicing it thought of themselves as evil"

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 04:03 PM
When playing an existing D&D setting, it makes sense to accept at least some of the basic assumptions for the purposes of games in that setting.

Evidence, please. Why does it make sense? If that was the case, we wouldn't have Eberron, for example, a setting that actively subverts many of the D&D staples (elves are savage barbarians and orcs are peaceful druid-y types, for example), Planescape, Dark Sun and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.


as to "labelling things as good and evil" I find it hard to understand the viewpoint that:

"It is wrong to label genocide as evil- because it was regularly practiced in the past and no-one practicing it thought of themselves as evil"

I never said "it was wrong" (see? That's you labelling things again), I just said I wasn't going to do it because it's not an activity I'm interested in partaking. I think that it limits my storytelling abilities and diminishes my enjoyment of the game. It's not wrong to put salt on your coffee, but I find that it diminishes my enjoyment of it.

See, there's this thing some people do, where they put their own feelings, thoughts and beliefs aside when it comes to telling a story for the sake of fairness. It's what journalism should ideally do, rather than trying to influence its audience to adopt a certain viewpoint. Science still does that... to a point. Sort of. It tries. Most of the time.

So yeah, I actively prefer not to pass judgement over actions and motivations, and simply let the players decide for themselves. Is genocide really evil when D&D has cheerfully endorsed it under the excuse of "it's evil! It's okay to kill it!"? I mean, I have my own views about the whole thing, but I don't have the presumption to assume I'm the be-all, end-all when it comes to morality.


Indeed "There's no such thing as good and evil" makes little sense in a setting full of fiends and celestials.

Why? I already explained their existence just fine and how they fit in a setting without objective morality. They are exactly what their faith makes them up to be. If a faith says celestials are good, most of them will behave in accordance to that religion's idea of good. That doesn't mean that an objective good exists, only that maybe faith or belief has the power to create life and influence its thoughts (and hey, magic can do that too, so there's a precedent).

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 04:07 PM
I don't get your hatred for anything that isn't morally neutral.

Do you make golems out to be a big moral deal? Do you make the characters standing on grass (killing it) to be a big deal?

I get the point of your campaign, but I don't like it.

Your making a big deal of Undeads. Your making a big deal of adding moral neutrality to a game that already has moral nuetrality. It just happens to have beings that are alien in morality to our standard code.

EI: What do you do with beings that are hardwired to kill, destroy and corrupt?

The game does not remove moral choices from characters when they are fighting everything else, just undeads and demons.

Whatever I think were done here.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 04:12 PM
This goes back to the topic of Terrible Game Design Decisions.

What makes it such a "terrible design decision"?

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 04:27 PM
I don't get your hatred for anything that isn't morally neutral.

I am fed up with objective morality. Blame Ayn Rand.


Do you make golems out to be a big moral deal? Do you make the characters standing on grass (killing it) to be a big deal?

Yes and no. One is sentient, the other one isn't, guess which is which!

Yes, golems are sentient in D&D. Also with varying levels of intelligence, depending on type.


I get the point of your campaign, but I don't like it.

You don't have to. You can still help me (I've offered help to people whose ideals I did not share), but it's not necessary.


Your making a big deal of Undeads. Your making a big deal of adding moral neutrality to a game that already has moral nuetrality. It just happens to have beings that are alien in morality to our standard code.

So... uh... every thread in this forum is making a big deal out of something? "I want to optimise a paladin!" "You're making a big deal out of paladins and optimisation." "I want to create a setting with blue elves!" "You're making a big deal out of elves and the colour blue."

Uh... yeah. Strange.


EI: What do you do with beings that are hardwired to kill, destroy and corrupt?

I don't think such beings exist. What with free will and all that.


The game does not remove moral choices from characters when they are fighting everything else, just undeads and demons.

And... wait. Are you saying that you *agree* with me about the game removing moral choice from undead and demons? Because if you do, then guess what? I'm trying to add moral choice back for undead. If you disagree, that's fine, but don't tell me that the game already offers high moral complexity when the very best storyteller could only bring it up to moderate at best.


Whatever I think were done here.

All right.


What makes it such a "terrible design decision"?

The fact that it adds nothing to the table while removing options from it.

Writing black-and-white morality is ridiculously easy. Just slap an "Evil" label on the things you dislike and a "Good" label on the things you like, stick a fork in it and it's done. Writing books about it adds nothing to the table because amateur storytellers naturally do that before they acquire more experience and practice.

Furthermore, making black and white morality the standard approach effectively prevents highly morally complex campaigns unless the DM decides to spend a significant amount of time houseruling.

In contrast, making gray and gray morality the standard approach does not remove any options (black and white morality fans can still slap good and evil labels on whatever they want without actually houseruling anything) while it adds plenty of alternatives for everyone at the table.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 04:34 PM
As it currently stands, all shades are available- black, gray, grey, white, and everything in between.

Saying "It's a bad design decision for black to exist" "It's a bad design decision for white to exist" seems to miss the point, to me- it's only a bad decision if they're all that exists.

WOTC seems to have had no trouble including neutral and good fiends, neutral and good undead.

EDIT:

It's the difference between Morality Kitchen Sink:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralityKitchenSink

and Grey and Gray morality on its own:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreyandGrayMorality

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 04:42 PM
Pff I hate Ayan Ryan as well. Yeah, things will really work out that way if we adopt her system of belief...Not a cluster**** like Bioshock.


But my point is that Undeads and Golems are a tool.

Do you add moral dilemas when a enemy throws a stick at your PCs and they smash it?

Because its as aware as golems/ Undeads are (Do you make a moral quandry of deleting Programs on your computer?). Enemies with more sentience are treated with more moral neutrality.

Evil is a label for generally bad people. A abusive businessman taht exploits every good will thing applied to him. We call that evil. Does it mean he is not redeamable? Of coarse not, its a possibility. Does that make killing him simply because of that label OK as well? No. Its just a label for a type of person.

Like sports fan.

If you want a more morally focused campaign I would REMOVE undeads and fiends. Since their point is to be automatons just programmed that way.

For example: There is an empire of humans intruding on Orcs.

But the Orcs generaly attack human towns, roads and raid everything and are generaly nasty. But humans are also leading offensives at the Orcs and generaly taking over their land (Unlike the Orc raiders).

No side remembers who started the conflict and it doesn't matter by this point since both sides have already started committing horrible war crimes against each other.

Essentialy Undeads are Robots. Mindless robots. If you want a campain based on morality, use living beings, and not trying to reconfigure rotting brain eating corpses into morality issues.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 05:01 PM
As it currently stands, all shades are available- black, gray, grey, white, and everything in between.

Saying "It's a bad design decision for black to exist" "It's a bad design decision for white to exist" seems to miss the point, to me- it's only a bad decision if they're all that exists.

WOTC seems to have had no trouble including neutral and good fiends, neutral and good undead.

And here we disagree, because I do believe that it is all that exists, which is why it's a terrible design decision. WotC has not encouraged or deviated from its design decisions in any way, and any individual exceptions you can cite me are just that, fringe exceptions.


Pff I hate Ayan Ryan as well. Yeah, things will really work out that way if we adopt her system of belief...Not a cluster**** like Bioshock.

Right.


But my point is that Undeads and Golems are a tool.

Do you add moral dilemas when a enemy throws a stick at your PCs and they smash it?

Because its as aware as golems/ Undeads are (Do you make a moral quandry of deleting Programs on your computer?). Enemies with more sentience are treated with more moral neutrality.

Now I just know you're not really paying attention to anything going on in this thread.

There are no mindless undead in my setting. All undead are as intelligent and self-aware as they were in life. They are not mindless, brain-eating zombies. Even the simplest kind of undead is just like a human.


Evil is a label for generally bad people. A abusive businessman taht exploits every good will thing applied to him. We call that evil. Does it mean he is not redeamable? Of coarse not, its a possibility. Does that make killing him simply because of that label OK as well? No. Its just a label for a type of person.

Like sports fan.

And I think morality labels are restrictive when it comes to storytelling. Besides, what gives you the authority to decide what is evil and what isn't? I certainly don't consider myself that presumptuous.


If you want a more morally focused campaign I would REMOVE undeads and fiends. Since their point is to be automatons just programmed that way.

Essentialy Undeads are Robots. Mindless robots. If you want a campain based on morality, use living beings, and not trying to reconfigure rotting brain eating corpses into morality issues.

See above, re: no, undead are intelligent.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 05:04 PM
And here we disagree, because I do believe that it is all that exists, which is why it's a terrible design decision. WotC has not encouraged or deviated from its design decisions in any way, and any individual exceptions you can cite me are just that, fringe exceptions.


This statement is internally contradictory- the presence of even "fringe exceptions" is enough to demonstrate it's not "all that exists".

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 05:06 PM
This statement is internally contradictory- the presence of even "fringe exceptions" is enough to demonstrate it's not "all that exists".

Welcome to statistics, where we actively disregard exceptions precisely because they deviate too much for the norm, in order to make categorical statements such as "all" and "is."

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 05:08 PM
The reason i ask is: WHY.

Your jumping through hoops in order to make this concept work (And Im not realy feeling it). Why do you specificaly want to make this morals campain with specificaly undead.

Undead make a certain feel and are more like a moving plauge then anything. Their horror comes from infection and being outnumbered. Why remove that? All your left with then is a rather generic.

Again, you also seem to think that evil means irrevocable... It doesn't. I can call Hitler evil with all the acts he has done, just as I can call a person who defeated his fears a hero.

By your logic we have no right to call anything anything then.

And I also don't get this logic:


And here we disagree, because I do believe that it is all that exists, which is why it's a terrible design decision.

You say that thats what you think only exists...even though thats not true. Seriously I can have moral quandries in a campain with Demons and Devas just the same. Just because extremes exist greys can coexist with them.

If you disagree on that then, whatever. Do whatever you want. Make Rocks sentient and make it a moral dilema to throw them for all i care.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 05:22 PM
As to "WOTC not deviating from its design decisions in any way"

this design and development quote might help provide clues as to what those design decisions actually were:

Worlds and Monsters: page 52

From shambling corpses to life-stealing spirits, undead are as much a part of the fantasy genre as dragons and goblins. In earlier editions of the D&D game, undead relied on the Negative Energy Plane, a place antithetical to life. The Positive Energy Plane was the Negative's counterpart in the balancing act that was the older editions' Great Wheel cosmology. Although that structure seemed philosophically sound, it created a number of conceptual problems that made undead harder to work with. Enter the Shadowfell, radiant energy, necrotic energy, and new and simpler possibilities.

The problems of the negative energy connection become clear on a close examination of its use in older editions. Most undead are evil, and the reason they're evil is because they're infused with negative energy, so they hunger for life force. Evil clerics wield negative energy. But exceptions, such as the ghost, make this "negative energy as evil" idea problematic. In a slight nod to this problem, the Negative Energy Plane is described as unaligned. We even acknowledged the need for good and unaligned undead with the deathless monster type in the Book of Exalted Deeds supplement. But these solutions were simply kludges.

For the new edition, instead of working around these problems, however minor, we rethought undead. By formulating them to work in various ways from the beginning, we allowed them to maintain their prominent position as horrifying monsters. Cosmological elements- the Shadowfell, the Raven Queen, Vecna, and Orcus, allowed us to come at undead from many angles. Metaphysical elements- body, soul and animus- allowed us to explain how undead tick, with several possible variations. Making "undead" a keyword instead of a type completed the picture of how undead work while leaving open the possibility of undead that vary from the norm.

In the end, undead still fit what we wanted and what veteran D&D players expect. Only the little inconsistancies got left behind, making way for undead that range from the noble ghost to the soul-sucking wraith. Now we can all use undead as we wish, without sweating over inconsistencies.

EDIT:

Welcome to statistics, where we actively disregard exceptions precisely because they deviate too much for the norm, in order to make categorical statements such as "all" and "is."

When someone uses "statistics" as a reason why they made an "All" statement that can be proven false, it seems to me a little disingenuous.

Especially when it comes to making claims about what a company's policy is.

Better to say that "in general" and "it tends to be the case that" - when exceptions exist.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 05:35 PM
The reason i ask is: WHY.

Your jumping through hoops in order to make this concept work (And Im not realy feeling it). Why do you specificaly want to make this morals campain with specificaly undead.

Because I'm a huge undead fan and I'm sick and tired of seeing them geting the exact same treatment everywhere. I want to portray them as being just like humans, only in a different cultural position. What's your problem with that?


Undead make a certain feel and are more like a moving plauge then anything. Their horror comes from infection and being outnumbered. Why remove that? All your left with then is a rather generic.

All right, this is just completely arbitrary. Look, I get it, you see things a certain way, but it honestly wouldn't kill you to show some respect towards the fact that people may disagree with the way you view things, and that doesn't make them wrong. I completely disagree with the way you view undead, so please, stop trying to force your views on me. It's not going to get us anywhere.


Again, you also seem to think that evil means irrevocable... It doesn't. I can call Hitler evil with all the acts he has done, just as I can call a person who defeated his fears a hero.

By your logic we have no right to call anything anything then.

I never said that evil means irrevocable and I have no idea where you got that from. I'm just saying that I disagree with your need to label things good and evil. I don't call Hitler "evil," I merely feel personally disgusted by his actions on an emotional level, and intellectually believe that he acted against the best interests of our species. If you feel the need to label him evil, that's fine, go ahead. Just don't try to force that need on me.


And I also don't get this logic:



You say that thats what you think only exists...even though thats not true. Seriously I can have moral quandries in a campain with Demons and Devas just the same. Just because extremes exist greys cannot coexist with them.

I'm not saying that you can't, I'm saying that I can't. You can enjoy drinking coffee with tons of salt. I can't. It's not a matter of right or wrong, it's a matter of personal preference. I don't like my games with objective morality. It's fine if other people do, it's just not my thing.


As to "WOTC not deviating from its design decisions in any way"

this design and development quote might help provide clues as to what those design decisions actually were:

Worlds and Monsters: page 52

That makes my brain hurt. Like, seriously, I have a migraine now from trying to deal with so much butt-covering. "WE DIDN'T HOSE UP, I SWEAR. IT WAS ALL PLANNED, SEE! HERE'S SOME SHAKY LOGIC TO JUSTIFY IT!"

Urgh. Undead are evil because negative energy is evil... but wait! Negative energy is not evil! The Negative Energy Plane is neutral-aligned and spells like Inflict Wounds are explicitly channelling negative energy without the [Evil] tag! And we explicitly say in several books that negative energy is NOT evil! Oh for the love of...


But exceptions, such as the ghost, make this "negative energy as evil" idea problematic.

UNDERSTATEMENT.

Argh. Everything else in that paragraph is just... ugh. So much understating the dumb, contradicting mess that was negative energy before 4e.

The rest of the quote sounds like they've realised their errors and are trying to make amends, but I don't trust them one little bit, especially after Open Grave being so undead-as-monsters-centric.

I'll remain skeptic until I find further proof, I think.


When someone uses "statistics" as a reason why they made an "All" statement that can be proven false, it seems to me a little disingenuous.

If you want to use exceptions and anomalies as a way to prove statistical statements false, then go ahead and try. I don't know of a single study that didn't have at least one anomaly, and was subsequently disregarded as per usual statistical protocols.

EDIT:


Better to say that "in general" and "it tends to be the case that" - when exceptions exist.

How about 'almost always' and 'overwhelmingly so'?

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 05:42 PM
[QUOTE=Shadowknight12;12318581]Because I'm a huge undead fan and I'm sick and tired of seeing them geting the exact same treatment everywhere. I want to portray them as being just like humans, only in a different cultural position. What's your problem with that?

Well its that undead usualy are made to evoke a specific emotion and feal but If you like them in a different way then alright. Its just that they are pretty much completely different things by then. So whatever. You just seem to be outright COMPLAINING that undead are generally portrayed in that fashion and are annoyed at the very idea that they are mindless.


I never said that evil means irrevocable and I have no idea where you got that from. I'm just saying that I disagree with your need to label things good and evil. I don't call Hitler "evil," I merely feel personally disgusted by his actions on an emotional level, and intellectually believe that he acted against the best interests of our species. If you feel the need to label him evil, that's fine, go ahead. Just don't try to force that need on me.

Im not, but your also counter arguing on your point why its wrong to label stuff. As a result I also counterargue my point as well.


I'm not saying that you can't, I'm saying that I can't. You can enjoy drinking coffee with tons of salt. I can't. It's not a matter of right or wrong, it's a matter of personal preference. I don't like my games with objective morality. It's fine if other people do, it's just not my thing.

Then don't complain about WOTC making bad design decisions.

You say "OMG those guys are TOTALY wrong for doing this this and this" but then say that you don't like me shoving my opinion in your face even though your doing the same thing.

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 05:43 PM
The point is, this isn't a "statistical study" - it's an assessment of various statements made by WoTC- so it's misleading to say things like "all undead in WOTC sources are evil".

From Heroes of Shadow, there's an class (vampire) and two races (vryloka, revenant) all of which count as undead.

And in 3.5 there was Libris Mortis and Savage Species, both of which had rules for playing as undead.


How about 'almost always' and 'overwhelmingly so'?

Might be interesting to go through the list of Undead-related morality statements in 3.5 and see how many there are for each.

Megaduck
2011-12-03, 05:59 PM
Because I'm a huge undead fan and I'm sick and tired of seeing them geting the exact same treatment everywhere. I want to portray them as being just like humans, only in a different cultural position. What's your problem with that?

Ok. I do get the feeling though that you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole mainly because there are a lot of reasons for Undead and Humans to be hostile to each other so I think it's going to take a lot of work to balance this.

One thing I have not seen mentioned in this thread is the personal angle. Right now it feels like everyone is looking at this from a high level view and not the individual view. What happens when your Mother/Son dies and comes back as a zombie? If you can think through the implications of that you'll start having your world take shape.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 06:04 PM
Ok. I do get the feeling though that you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole mainly because there are a lot of reasons for Undead and Humans to be hostile to each other so I think it's going to take a lot of work to balance this.


Exactly. (10 Chars)

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 06:14 PM
Which is not to say it can't be entertaining when done right (Tim Burton's Corpse Bride seems to me like a good movie example of smart zombies and skeletons with no moral difference from their living counterparts).

But even that doesn't chuck morality out entirely- there's still a clear "villain" in the story.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 06:17 PM
Those undead where awesome! But the role they played in the movie is different from the role Shadow wants them to be.

On a random not, they are releasing Paranorman. Yay!

hamishspence
2011-12-03, 06:18 PM
Yes. Van Helsing Hate Crimes, seems to be the defining point- undead as a persecuted minority.

TheArsenal
2011-12-03, 06:24 PM
Thing taht I would do Is remove their infectious ability and make it a random occurrence.

There is a random chance of the undead being intelligent or not. Sometimes it may be intelligent for a century and sometimes for a week.

Makes the Prosecution make more sense.

Shadowknight12
2011-12-03, 07:05 PM
Well its that undead usualy are made to evoke a specific emotion and feal but If you like them in a different way then alright. Its just that they are pretty much completely different things by then. So whatever. You just seem to be outright COMPLAINING that undead are generally portrayed in that fashion and are annoyed at the very idea that they are mindless.

All right, I tried to be nice and respectful but you're not getting it. You have a viewpoint. That's fine. Stop assuming it's the right one. Stop telling me that undead are "completely different things" if I diverge from your views. Stop telling me that undead are made to evoke a specific emotion and feel, because they aren't. That's just plain wrong. Every author uses undead as they see fit, to provoke whatever emotions they want. Just because you've been consuming media where they've all been used in the same way doesn't make it some sort of law or standard.

Seriously, it's incredibly annoying.


Im not, but your also counter arguing on your point why its wrong to label stuff. As a result I also counterargue my point as well.

But it doesn't need to be conter-argued. It's a matter of personal taste. We don't need to fight over it.


Then don't complain about WOTC making bad design decisions.

You say "OMG those guys are TOTALY wrong for doing this this and this" but then say that you don't like me shoving my opinion in your face even though your doing the same thing.

I never said it was wrong! I said that it was a terrible design decision because of the explanations I gave before. It's got nothing to do with your opinion in the slightest.


The point is, this isn't a "statistical study" - it's an assessment of various statements made by WoTC- so it's misleading to say things like "all undead in WOTC sources are evil".

But you CAN make a statistical study out of it, even an informal one. Or you can apply the same notion of disregarding anomalies because they make you lose sight of the bigger picture.


From Heroes of Shadow, there's an class (vampire) and two races (vryloka, revenant) all of which count as undead.

I could blame the Twilight phenomenon. But I don't want to open that can of worms.


And in 3.5 there was Libris Mortis and Savage Species, both of which had rules for playing as undead.

As a part of a more general "monsters as playable characters" idea, and preserving the notion that undead are almost always evil (only offering the option to relax alignment as a possibility, not the official stance).


Might be interesting to go through the list of Undead-related morality statements in 3.5 and see how many there are for each.

I personally don't really care, since I have no use for that information. I still have to houserule the crap out of everything because the established design decision goes very much against the type of stories I want to tell.


Ok. I do get the feeling though that you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole mainly because there are a lot of reasons for Undead and Humans to be hostile to each other so I think it's going to take a lot of work to balance this.

Sigh. I honestly wonder why people find it so hard not to post on a thread they strongly disagree with.


One thing I have not seen mentioned in this thread is the personal angle. Right now it feels like everyone is looking at this from a high level view and not the individual view. What happens when your Mother/Son dies and comes back as a zombie? If you can think through the implications of that you'll start having your world take shape.

If you read my OP, you'll see that's exactly what I want input on. Rationally, I'd have the rejection take precedence, but I can see how that might not be the norm, so I posted this thread to gather more opinions.


Yes. Van Helsing Hate Crimes, seems to be the defining point- undead as a persecuted minority.

Pretty much.


Thing taht I would do Is remove their infectious ability and make it a random occurrence.

Did you read this thread at all? I actively say that undead cannot, as a general rule, create spawn (save for a few specific exceptions) and that most undead arise when certain circumstances come to happen.


There is a random chance of the undead being intelligent or not. Sometimes it may be intelligent for a century and sometimes for a week.

Makes the Prosecution make more sense.

No, mindless undead are out of the question.

TheArsenal
2011-12-04, 01:52 AM
Since you continue to insult MY opinions whilst being annoyed at me defending them I have nothing to say.

banthesun
2011-12-05, 08:31 PM
Ok, here's my thoughts.

Firstly, I know this isn't this thread's intention, but a few notes on how you're intending to run this campaign would help allay some of my fears. A single big morality question could be good for a session or two with a philosophy group, but a roleplaying campaign should call on all the themes and formulas of dramatic pieces. Things like escalation, and clear protagonists and antagonists.

I once ran a campaign with similar themes (a vampire/undead army was invading the lands of the living, but only because by gathering enough new undead soldiers could anyone hope to survive an even bigger threat), and it's not the morally grey characters my players remember, but on the downright evil for the sake of it antagonist they had gunning after them (who was another player). At first, I was disappointed at how much his character lacked motivation, but after hearing how other players reactions to him, I began to come round. On a similar note, many of Sir Terry Pratchett's books contain a villain with no motives readers can sympathise with. Characters like Teatime in Hogfather are really simple from a moral scale, but incredible from a narrative scale. I can get fearful of these characters even just reading about them, think about what it must do to players who have something on the line. Further, such characters help cast morally grey protagonists in a heroic light. Carter in Night Watch is a great example, since so much of that book is dark. Vimes is not a nice man, nor is he quite as 'enlightened' as the readers can be expected to be, but his valuing of life makes him a clear protagonist in contrast to Carter. This in turn allows his flaws to be examined in greater depth, and in a more sympathetic light. I hope you keep the interesting moral questions, but if you introduce a well run truly villainous character, I'm sure your players will thank you for it.

Finally, before I get on to specifics, you mightn't believe in objective morality, but do your players? If they don't share your beliefs pretty closely, they will quickly break it down into right and wrong. I'll have a few notes on what I think is a problem in the specifics, but you should definitely consider your audience's reaction. Also, in character and out of character division is an issue here. Your players could love the questions you're posing them, but if they're playing a bunch of clerics and paladins, the only question they're going to be asking is whether to smite with magic or weapons. Making a couple of them undead would be putting them on the other side from character creation too. You should definitely consider a way to place them in either a more neutral context, or a more complicated spot at the beginning of your campaign.

Ok, on specifics, I just can't see your 'undead kingdoms' idea working. Except for the types that need to stay out of sunlight or rest in coffins, they're no reason for the undead to even build permanent structures. They don't need rest, warmth, or shelter (unless the weather is particularly bad in your campaign world). Food sources cannot adequately be provided my other undead, clothing is irrelevant to those without warmth (or carnal desires, if you think clothing innately serves a purpose there), and most goods would be wasted on an undead (why would a ghoul need pottery?). Without a need for these services, the only thing left of a kingdom would be the army (and it's support services, though even that varies greatly depending on the type of undead). That's a big difference from an actual kingdom.

Also, who's to say that the undead would actually seek to band together. If a paladin dies hunting a particularly powerful vampire he's spent years chasing, or is infected by a bit or similar, isn't it likely he would continue to hunt the undead even after his own reanimation? Eventually he might come to terms with what undeath actually means, but by that point he's a murderer, and what undead would take him? On a more common scale, if the guy who yesterday was leading the mob with pitchfork and brand comes to you today to say he needs your help and understands now, would you (or more importantly, your players) welcome him with open arms? Even if the undead were particularly understanding (or if just the local group was) would the newly raised undead seek them out? They've spent their entire lives believing the undead were vicious monsters, how are they to know they're not the exception? And if they do accept that the undead are just like the living, would they really expect sympathy from a group they were hunting just the night previous? Aspects of guilt would make it even harder for the recently reanimated to join up with their new undead brethren; even if the local undead population has come to terms with these issues centuries ago, there’s no way the recently revived can know they'd be so accepting.

To me, all of this points towards the 'undead ghetto' idea. Obviously, these ghettos would be nothing like historical ghettos, due to the unique needs of the undead. Instead of shanties and houses, sewers and catacombs would be a common form for such ghettos. Now I see that this would cause great trouble for your actual plot, so I'm going to propose an alternative, hopefully there's something in this you can use.

After thousands of years of being marginalised by the mortal population, a new hope has sprung up for the undead. Rumours spread of a temple situated high in the unforgiving peaks of a blasted realm, far from the reach of those who would hunt them, where a mysterious preacher promises safety and brotherhood for all of his undead kin, and absolution from the sins they may have committed on the road to becoming undead. As more and more of the rerisen make their pilgrimage to this temple, the mortals begin to hear stories of a massive undead army gathering in the distant peaks, unmatched by anything they've ever seen before. As kidnappings and incursions grow in the neighbouring lands, the mortals decide that something must be done. If they do not wipe out this undead threat before it grows too big they could all be doomed themselves.

Some of the main things to note here, is it deals with the foundation of what could theoretically become the first undead kingdom. By putting it at this point of conflict it makes the mortals decision to attack the undead seem reactive. One of the major concerns I had about your initial idea was that if the mortals and the undead have coexisted for years then the decision to attack now would only be seen as aggression. The presence of a strong charismatic figure such as the preacher was deliberate too. It serves to focus the attention on a personal level. Instead of having to consider the reasoning of the undead as a group, they only have to consider the reasoning of a specific person, as an example of the undead's mindset. Most likely, said preacher would not be 'evil' as such, just considering the needs of the undead higher than the needs of humans or if you want him to be a little lighter in morality, not fully considering the needs of the undead in relation to humans. It could well be the undead under him performing the kidnappings and such, since he doesn't directly control his population, only preaches to them. Such a campaign, presuming the PCs don't belong to one side or the other, would involve the players having to carefully consider where they throw their might in every engagement, and potentially have the entire campaign leading to a question you don't have an answer for, how to protect both sides. Such a question, if orchestrated properly, would provide an amazing mental challenge to your players, hopefully one they'd remember fondly as long as they play.

Sorry about the massive wall of text, I hope it was helpful in some way.

hamishspence
2011-12-06, 12:27 PM
Sorry about the massive wall of text, I hope it was helpful in some way.

I like it. I like it a lot.

While I believe that objective morality fits D&D settings best- I tend to be fairly supportive of the notion that "respect for life" (one of the fundamental principles of Good- and with undead and sentient constructs being included within "life") demands treating them with the same respect as "player races".

This quote from Savage Species

With Malice Toward None
(Chaotic/Accepting)

In this campaign model, the prevailing opinion holds that monsters, no matter how foul and evil they may look, are free sentient beings with all the inalienable rights that humans, elves, and every other humanoid species are heir to. The denizens of this campaign are not foolish- they know that many monsters are evil and nefarious. Just the same, they are loath to reject monsters simply because of their origins. The philosophical leaders of this land realize that no medusa or troll really had a choice in how it came into this world, and indeed as oppressed as its upbringing may have been, it is deserving of more sympathy and consideration, not less.

In this world, evil among monsters is largely perceived to be a psychological condition rather than an absolute or genetic one. Most monsters are thought to become creatures of evil or destruction not because of any infernal or diabolic tie, but because of a fear of rejection, loneliness, or some other understandable psychological condition. Even the foulest tanar'ri may in truth be the victim of its own psychoses, and the enlightened people of this world hold out hope that with openness, respect, and even love, the darkest of souls can be redeemed. And who knows? Perhaps they are right.

is fairly close to the way, IMO, Good characters should strive to be thinking.

Beleriphon
2011-12-06, 07:19 PM
Also, thanks for the X-men suggestion, but that's really not my thing. The entire point is presenting undead in a way that hasn't (to my knowledge) been portrayed before, and exploring the ramifications of such a change on a standard fantasy setting. The entire point is to explore aspects such as discrimination, hypocrisy, mindless hatred and victimisation, from the point of view of creatures that blur the line between victims, heroes and villains.

See Discworld, zombies are freewilled. One even works for The Watch.

hamishspence
2011-12-07, 02:22 PM
Discworld is pretty good about "monsters are people too".

Trolls, orcs, goblins, werewolves, vampires, etc.

Mewtarthio
2011-12-08, 02:32 PM
I've got a bit of a question about the "eating emotions" bit. If incorporeal undead can restrict themselves to getting rid of negative or painful emotions, then it doesn't really make sense for them to be universally despised (not if they've been around forever, at any rate). They don't spread disease or anything, and everyone likes feeling good. If the earliest societies know that you can pay a visit to the local wraith (or whatever it is that eats emotions) and make the pain go away, then cultures are going to evolve that consider wraiths to be spirits of comfort. Granted, they can decide to eat love and happiness instead, but my pharmacologist can decide to poison me instead of filling my perscription; if undead are basically human, you'd expect them to generally not go around torturing and killing people for no reason.

There are a few obvious fixes, of course. You could say that feeding exclusively on negative emotions is unhealthy for the undead. Perhaps despair is merely part of a balanced breakfast: If they don't siphon a bit of hope away from people, too, they're going to get sick after a while, just a like a human who tries to live entirely off of chocolate cake. Maybe the emotions they take in have some effect on the emotions they give out: A wraith who runs around draining joy from children is going to wind up extremely cheerful all the time, while a wraith that solely alleviates sorrow and despair will lead a wretched, joyless existence.

Of course, it's possible I'm misinterpreting it. I'm reading "eats emotions" as "can eat any emotions." If the undead can only eat one particular emotion, it's perfectly reasonable to be mistrustful of them. A creature that consumes pain might be able to make you feel better, but he's still got a vested interest in making sure you continue to produce as much pain as you can.

Either way, though, I'd still expect to see these pain-eating spirits end up with a few junkies following them around. Such addictions might not be considered socially acceptable, but people really like feeling good.

Deploy
2011-12-13, 12:08 AM
Another tool you could use in justifying an undead prejudice could be that humans are more likely to encounter the undead who must directly feed on humans. This barren land far away could be home to most of the undead population, but most of those that must harm humans won't live their. So just because only a few undead absolutely have to interact with humans those are the ones humans will more likely think of when forming a generalization. In this thinking, the average undead is a zombie making an unliving in an environment that harms no one, but a human's average image will be bloodsucking vampires and cannibalistic ghouls. And while you've provided ways to make these creature's appetites more acceptable, people are more likely to hear about and remember the ghoul that brutally ravaged a young family in their home than the one that sneaks into crypts and eats quietly. All of this can be used to justify why humans might be prejudiced even if their not religious zealots, in fact it might be interesting to have an atheist kingdom that is also under constant attack from their godcrazy neighbors, but will also kill a skeleton walking to market without giving it a second thought.
~just my two cents

hewhosaysfish
2011-12-13, 10:26 AM
Another tool you could use in justifying an undead prejudice could be that humans are more likely to encounter the undead who must directly feed on humans. This barren land far away could be home to most of the undead population, but most of those that must harm humans won't live their. So just because only a few undead absolutely have to interact with humans those are the ones humans will more likely think of when forming a generalization.

I don't mean to be too negative but why would the non-anthropophagic undead leave the lands where they lived, died and arose to go to this far-off barren land? It can't be because they're persecuted because that would beg the question.
If anything, people would be see friendly undead more than predatory ones: ghouls and vampires would be driven off with pointy sticks while three generations of skeletons could be tilling the fields alongside their living descendants.