PDA

View Full Version : Chaotic stupid, random equals funny. Story time!



Mastikator
2016-04-28, 10:37 AM
A player that decides "I'll play a chaotic neutral character" and proceeds to do random and stupid things.

Does that actually happen? I've literally never seen it, not even in my teen years (back then emo and moody was in fashion so evil characters was where it was at).

Please, tell stories of players who've played a chaotic stupid character.

nedz
2016-04-28, 11:42 AM
Well I did once have a guy, years ago, turn up to a session whilst tripping on acid. But that was more Chaotic Strange. He didn't last long.

Mastikator
2016-04-28, 12:00 PM
Well I did once have a guy, years ago, turn up to a session whilst tripping on acid. But that was more Chaotic Strange. He didn't last long.

He didn't last long... in the group or as a functional member of society?

Arbane
2016-04-28, 12:06 PM
One group I was in had a Chaotic Stupid Neutral character in it, whose player's goal seemed to be 'how far can I push my luck before the GM finally brings the hammer down on me?' He did things like go off solo (killed a 2-headed troll solo while it was asleep), ask friendly NPCs what their blood was like, constantly go on about the imaginary knightly order he was in, snort mushroom-creature spores, and try to sneak into a secure room in a friendly castle while tripping on hallucinogenics. This guy's luck was freakish.

OOC he was a lot of fun to watch, even with my certainty that he was going to get us all killed with his idiocy. IC, he was a source of massive aggravation to the two sane(r) characters.
Amazingly, the GM ended up calling off the game not due to his antics, but because it was hard to plan around two level 10+ spellcasters.

Douche
2016-04-28, 12:13 PM
I play chaotic stupid (not evil or "neutral" though)

I'm a low-int half-orc so I basically play the half-orc from OotS. It's pretty fun. I just do what I'm told, it's pretty hilarious.

Our team leader is a super vengeful paladin, claims to be good but threatens to kill people for not being polite when we just burned down their village. I just follow his lead. I whipped a hostage into unconsciousness multiple times over the course of days.

But then last week I got left behind and ended up joining the church of Pelor because the bad influence is gone. Now I am a good man. Praise the sun! Until I rejoin with the party again and probably become evil when the bad influence comes back.


My character is also a great babysitter and had changed factions about 6 times

ellindsey
2016-04-28, 12:19 PM
We have one, maybe two, in a game I'm playing in now. Both are teenagers. One seems to just do the most random and violent thing he can think of, and is currently on his second character after his first was ejected from the party. The other is playing a drow assassin who wants to kill every important NPC we meet and refuses to do anything without being paid. I am very close to dropping this game, the only thing keeping me in it are several good friends who I don't really get to see outside of the game anymore. Also, the two teenagers don't show up for about half the sessions, and the ones without them are quite nice.

Douche
2016-04-28, 12:32 PM
We have one, maybe two, in a game I'm playing in now. Both are teenagers. One seems to just do the most random and violent thing he can think of, and is currently on his second character after his first was ejected from the party. The other is playing a drow assassin who wants to kill every important NPC we meet and refuses to do anything without being paid. I am very close to dropping this game, the only thing keeping me in it are several good friends who I don't really get to see outside of the game anymore. Also, the two teenagers don't show up for about half the sessions, and the ones without them are quite nice.

That does get annoying at times. The whole "mercenary" shtick, it's like... shut up. I don't care how much of a BAMF you think your character is - we're trying to progress the story over here.

Random acts of violence are annoying too. Just don't back them up the next time and watch them get captured/killed. At some points, you gotta ask yourself "Why are we allied with this guy, exactly?"

Geddy2112
2016-04-28, 12:41 PM
My group is full of them.

One player in my group always plays the chaotic something BSF, regardless of class or mechanics. He is there to hit things with a sword, or axe, or whatever is the largest weapon he can get his hands on. If he has magic, he will certainly use it to blast or mind control enemies into attacking each other. He might channel negative energy, just to be sure nothing around him is alive. The good thing is that so long as somebody points him towards the things that needs hitting, he can keep it under control and not burn down taverns or go full murderhobo.

Then there was Dr. Roxxo, the rock and roll clown. A monk based off the Metalocalypse character of the same name. But he took it too far, and died the first session he was played. The party was wandering a hostile desert, and came across a trade caravan. The first thing he did was threaten to kill them unless they gave him all of the cocaine they had. He was killed instantly.

In our last campaign, a relatively sane player was going through some serious work stress and took it out on the game. His first character was an outright insane ranger. He thought chimneys were toilets(and used them as such), separated humanoids into "those who make cheese and those who don't"(the latter were seen as evil) and basically jumped the shark every session with outright insane actions. his death was swift when he tried to befriend a werewolf so he could have it as a mount.

His next character was a tree druid, who did a LOT of drugs. Ran around naked, was always high for no particular reason, and talked to his tree. He had strong opinions about corn and other meaningless things that he would argue from a point of lunacy, but otherwise did not care.

Then there was the kleptomaniac rogue, who thought it was cheeky to steal literally everything he could get his hands on. The swords on the guards belt, everything in the treasure horde, from other PC's, furniture, anything that had value. He eschewed buying other items so he could obtain multiple bags of holding. He also refused to work with the party unless they paid him/promised him all the gold(he would just take it anyways)

The greatest blood may be on my hands, as my con artist bard was constantly blurring the line between thinking outside the box and chaotic stupid. Disguises were a good idea, but a gender bending elven prince(ss) was probably not needed. He cooked and ate a fallen party member(ratfolk), and was capable of diplomancing the party out of almost anything. Had he not been there, the party would not have been in 95% of those situations to begin with. Creating problems that only he could solve, then solving them and proclaiming himself the hero.

CombatBunny
2016-04-28, 12:49 PM
I think chaotic good is the best and more common option among beginner players.

It basically lets you break the rules of society at your will, without being compromised to a specific moral code.

I see Chaotic neutral as pretty standard in most games.

Someone who acts totally random I believe that will tend more to evilness.

Âmesang
2016-04-28, 02:17 PM
The last chaotic-neutral character I can remember probably should have been more chaotic-good; a free-spirited barbarian who wanted to see the world outside of her tribal village; bit of a "survival of the fittest" mindset that made her over-eager for battle (so of a hyper-active rage than an angry rage), but friendly enough and willing to help.


Random acts of violence are annoying too. Just don't back them up the next time and watch them get captured/killed. At some points, you gotta ask yourself "Why are we allied with this guy, exactly?"
Heck, I've a vain, conceited, selfish, self-centered chaotic-evil character with slightly below-average Wisdom and I'd say even she knows that's a bad idea. Being abrasive and domineering is one thing, but random violence? All that's going to do is give you more and more enemies; work with the (clearly-not-plot-reason-villainous) NPCs, trick them into thinking you're on the up-and-up (hooray for Bluff!), and at the very least it could lead them to aiding you… and grow less suspicious of you, making it easier to do criminal acts in private. Theoretically, anyway.

I guess no matter what my character's alignment/attitude I, personally, try to be helpful and "play nice" simply out of a desire to see the party succeed. If I want to go kill crazy, I have plenty of single-player video games to do that with.


His next character was a tree druid, who did a LOT of drugs. Ran around naked, was always high for no particular reason, and talked to his tree. He had strong opinions about corn and other meaningless things that he would argue from a point of lunacy, but otherwise did not care.
Is anyone else reminded of the Jhonen Vasquez comic-in-a-comic, Happy Noodle Boy?

goto124
2016-04-29, 07:20 AM
Disguises were a good idea, but a gender bending elven prince(ss) was probably not needed.

"Elven" already means "gender bending", no need to state both adjectives :smalltongue:

Spojaz
2016-04-29, 08:32 AM
A while ago I played in a fairly straightforward dragonlance campaign with someone who played a chaotic wizard (a gnome with whatever kinds of wildmagic he could his his grubby little hands on) and then would roll to see what his character would do. Rolls a D100 and consults his homemade charts to find out what he does in any and every circumstance. He would lick things (I think that was 1-20), run away, start screaming, try to climb someone or intimidate something at random times. lolrandom. :smallannoyed:

He also had each of his spells mapped to a dice roll. Ooh, will he cast charm person, dancing lights or fireball? And on whom? Nobody knows! Made it very hard for our DM to balance encounters, and he "hilariously" killed a group of hostages we were trying to rescue. What was his reaction to this murder and failure of the mission? I (roll) lick the (roll) front door, then (roll) fall asleep! HaHaHaHA! :smallfurious:

FlumphPaladin
2016-04-29, 09:12 AM
We had one... I'll call this kid "Plucky." Plucky started off good enough, but then he began hanging out with the wrong crowd in a different group. Over time, he went from wide-eyed eager noob to a wannabe Mirdon from Doraleous and Associates. One session he literally used "But I'm Chaotic Neutral!" to justify his shenanigans... I can't think of any good stories, though. What made Plucky really annoying was the fact that unless he was the star (I think his occasional stupid outburst was meant to hijack focus onto him/his character, along with the constant "I'm attacking the darkness!" and "Roll to see if I'm getting drunk!"), he was checked out of the game. One time, while we were getting our asses handed to us on platters in a bandit hideout and all appeared lost, Plucky said "Wait!" Everyone stopped, thinking he had some great plan or power he'd forgotten about, only to watch him turn to the player next to him, look at his character sheet, and ask "Do you have Appraise?" I have never seen our DM come so close to upending the table.

Also, emo was in vogue in Sweden, one of the happiest countries in the world? I learn something new every day!


Dr. Roxxo, the rock and roll clown.
Kuh-kuh-kuh-YEAAAH! Man, that takes me back... where do the years go?

wumpus
2016-04-29, 09:56 AM
If any of these are remotely current, you (hopefully) have the chance to introduce someone to OOTS. Just point out that both Elan and Belkar are both chaotic and stupid (Halley is chaotic smart. I've yet to see any difference in V's "true neutral" and "chaotic neutral", but the official alignment is "TN").

I'm pretty sure that this was all created with the intention of pointing this out when Rich first created a D&D comic. The focus may have changed but the characters (and alignments) have not.

The Fury
2016-04-29, 11:50 PM
A while ago I played in a fairly straightforward dragonlance campaign with someone who played a chaotic wizard (a gnome with whatever kinds of wildmagic he could his his grubby little hands on) and then would roll to see what his character would do. Rolls a D100 and consults his homemade charts to find out what he does in any and every circumstance. He would lick things (I think that was 1-20), run away, start screaming, try to climb someone or intimidate something at random times. lolrandom. :smallannoyed:

He also had each of his spells mapped to a dice roll. Ooh, will he cast charm person, dancing lights or fireball? And on whom? Nobody knows! Made it very hard for our DM to balance encounters, and he "hilariously" killed a group of hostages we were trying to rescue. What was his reaction to this murder and failure of the mission? I (roll) lick the (roll) front door, then (roll) fall asleep! HaHaHaHA! :smallfurious:

I've been Chaotic Stupid before and I... I just can't compete with that.

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-30, 12:01 AM
You have not encountered this phenomenon? I weep for your lost innocence as you gaze into the stupidity contained within these stories. No longer shall you be blissfully ignorant of such lolrandom.

Most of the types I've seen basically attacked the closest NPC on sight, so tended to get booted out or bored quickly enough.

goto124
2016-04-30, 10:34 AM
Also, emo was in vogue in Sweden, one of the happiest countries in the world? I learn something new every day!

To be honest, I think that makes perfect sense.

Traab
2016-04-30, 11:41 AM
What you do with people like this is, you get a computer print out that says nothing but,

Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!
Chaotic Neutral doesnt mean stupid and crazy!

Then you attach it to his forehead with a soldering iron. Repeat as needed till the rest of the players in your group understand this basic rule.

Nifft
2016-04-30, 11:46 AM
In my games, I've changed Chaos to be more like "Individualist", and Lawful to be more like "Collectivist".

Madness is a different thing altogether -- and insanity is a plague for either Ethic.

This seems to curtail most of the Chaotic Stupid archetypes.

Âmesang
2016-04-30, 05:44 PM
I can agree with that. Or as an alternative, "chaotic" = "freedom/free spirt" // "lawful" = "community-minded?"


To be honest, I think that makes perfect sense.
Honestly doesn't most death metal come from Northern Europe?


https://www.schadenfreudestudios.com/backup/pictures/sigs/4y-records2.gif (http://www.illwillpress.com/)

Traab
2016-04-30, 08:08 PM
Oh man, I thought the drawing style was familiar, thats the foamy the squirrel site!

GreatWyrmGold
2016-04-30, 09:33 PM
That does get annoying at times. The whole "mercenary" shtick, it's like... shut up. I don't care how much of a BAMF you think your character is - we're trying to progress the story over here.
Random acts of violence are annoying too. Just don't back them up the next time and watch them get captured/killed. At some points, you gotta ask yourself "Why are we allied with this guy, exactly?"

He also had each of his spells mapped to a dice roll. Ooh, will he cast charm person, dancing lights or fireball? And on whom? Nobody knows! Made it very hard for our DM to balance encounters, and he "hilariously" killed a group of hostages we were trying to rescue. What was his reaction to this murder and failure of the mission? I (roll) lick the (roll) front door, then (roll) fall asleep! HaHaHaHA!
If Belkar would roll his eyes at your character's murderous antics, you're doing something wrong.


[H]is death was swift when he tried to befriend a werewolf so he could have it as a mount.
Geez, at least take it out to dinner first.


Then there was the kleptomaniac rogue, who thought it was cheeky to steal literally everything he could get his hands on. The swords on the guards belt, everything in the treasure horde, from other PC's, furniture, anything that had value. He eschewed buying other items so he could obtain multiple bags of holding.
If your kleptomania would make a kender gasp—whether in envy or horror—you're doing something wrong.


The greatest blood may be on my hands, as my con artist bard was constantly blurring the line between thinking outside the box and chaotic stupid. Disguises were a good idea, but a gender bending elven prince(ss) was probably not needed. He cooked and ate a fallen party member(ratfolk), and was capable of diplomancing the party out of almost anything. Had he not been there, the party would not have been in 95% of those situations to begin with. Creating problems that only he could solve, then solving them and proclaiming himself the hero.
Okay, that's kinda awesome. Probably not that much fun to play with, though.

goto124
2016-05-01, 02:37 AM
his death was swift when he tried to befriend a werewolf so he could have it as a mount.

At least he didn't try to do this (http://www.elfwood.com/u/andersson2/image/75594300-2718-11e4-9ecf-d547aae57bd2/the-bard-less-pressure)!

Nifft
2016-05-01, 10:55 AM
I can agree with that. Or as an alternative, "chaotic" = "freedom/free spirt" // "lawful" = "community-minded?"

The trouble with that is that when you get into philosophical debate, it's quite easy to find the position that only within a stable ("lawful") society can one truly be free.

For example:



Sure, nobody likes paying taxes, but taxes are how you buy civilization -- and without the Six Legions on the border and the Kingsguard patrolling the granite paveway, you'd likely get murdered by Hobs, or caught by some Akkuan slaver, or eaten by a fire-bear, or worse.

Those so-called free spirits are only able to enjoy the freedom from slavery (or worse) because of the large, stable society in which they choose to avoid contributing and instead beg, borrow, or steal to survive.

In a way, it's like they remain children -- wards of the state, living off the largess of their productive neighbors or relatives. And that's fine, for a while. We do want to support our children, so that they can join the ranks of productive society some day. It does not trouble me if some take longer than others to find themselves, and to find where they can contribute.

What does trouble me is the idea that this phase of development, this unproductive stage of growth, is somehow a thing worthy of emulation and perpetuation.

Seriously, consider what it would mean to perpetuate this state of "free-spirit"-ness. How would you avoid the obligations that fall upon every member of society? You'd either become a criminal, or you'd leave society.

What would it mean if everyone left society? Every man would need to become entirely self-sufficient: a soldier, a priest, a hunter, a stonemason, a surveyor, a farmer, a wainwright, a weaver, a tailor, a shepherd, a falconer, a stallion-breaker, a hound-trainer, a carpenter, and a potter. And what would he gain from such a departure, assuming he could indeed fill all of those roles?

He'd gain nothing but poverty. He would have no time for the higher culture that is the milk of a stable civilization: no art, no wine, no music, no dances, no poetry, no theater, no circus, no carnival, no temples nor pagodas nor cathedrals -- nor would he have anyone to share this culture with, if by some miracle he did find time to pen a verse or strike a tune in some lonely meadow.

We have the freedom to pursue the higher arts specifically because we each shoulder some of the burden of bare survival for each other.

There is no freedom without Law.

daremetoidareyo
2016-05-01, 11:45 AM
The trouble with that is that when you get into philosophical debate, it's quite easy to find the position that only within a stable ("lawful") society can one truly be free.

Chaotic Intellectual wildmage demon replies:

One gripe with this line of argument: It presupposes agriculture and an environment that doesn't supply the whole of a population's needs. A foraging society of people using adobo/thatch/ceramics can be free as ****. The average workday in the modern world for foraging peoples maxes out at about 4.5 hours of work a day. That leaves the rest of the day devoted to pure freedom and coalition building. Once a society exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, that is when they tend to develop agriculture. With agriculture comes property rights. With property rights comes direct trade and capitalism based on arbitrage of inequalities. To make any of that work you need laws that force compliance for the good of the many at the expense of the individual.

The pernicious side effect of this trend is that once population invents agriculture and property rights, it also invents other things like alphabets and writing and then records and history. Agreements become compulsory laws. A population under the duress of exceeding the carrying capacity of its environment becomes war-like to alleviate the friction and pain of having to work excessive hours just to survive. And thus war is invented. And to wage those wars in ways that guarantee that these unfree societies will survive to wage all future wars, they make rules of war to at least protect the reproductive abilities of the population.

Rules are what allows people from keeping themselves in check and thus laws beget war, slavery and misery. Is the progress still worth it? Is there an end goal, or do you just extract every bit of life from the land like a giant mold with a distributed consciousness and then move on to new resources to repeat the cycle of destruction?

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-01, 11:48 AM
This discussion only gets more hilarious if the theory that most people flocked to early cities because of beer. Chaotic Stupid, making the first civilizations. Yay beer!

Nifft
2016-05-01, 01:25 PM
A foraging society of people using adobo/thatch/ceramics can be free as ****. The average workday in the modern world for foraging peoples maxes out at about 4.5 hours of work a day. That leaves the rest of the day devoted to pure freedom and coalition building. Lawrence McPaladin: "Sure, you can abide by the Law of your tribe, and rely on their support, and support their community. You won't survive a bad drought, nor a visit from Thesirral's plague-crows, and your history shall perish like words scratched in beach-sand -- but there is no particular sin in living as part of such a small community."


Once a society exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, that is when they tend to develop agriculture. With agriculture comes property rights. With property rights comes direct trade and capitalism based on arbitrage of inequalities. To make any of that work you need laws that force compliance for the good of the many at the expense of the individual. Or vise-versa: it might be that only agricultural societies have low enough infant mortality that they start to put a strain on the environment.

Also, it's interesting to note that agriculture allows a society to create a mobile army, which they can then use to displace (or enslave) any happy-go-lucky hunter-gatherers they come across. Without agriculture, you're making yourself vulnerable to enslavement by a neighboring agricultural civilization (unless you are the Mongols (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9)).


This discussion only gets more hilarious if the theory that most people flocked to early cities because of beer. Chaotic Stupid, making the first civilizations. Yay beer!

Lawrence McPaladin: "Therefore, beer was the result of careful planning, stationary dwellings, and the labor of a whole community. Enjoy the cold, frothy mug of deliciously hoppy Law, citizen."

Arbane
2016-05-01, 05:51 PM
Also, it's interesting to note that agriculture allows a society to create a mobile army, which they can then use to displace (or enslave) any happy-go-lucky hunter-gatherers they come across. Without agriculture, you're making yourself vulnerable to enslavement by a neighboring agricultural civilization

That's not exactly a _moral_ argument in favor of agriculture, though.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-01, 05:54 PM
Also, it's interesting to note that agriculture allows a society to create a mobile army, which they can then use to displace (or enslave) any happy-go-lucky hunter-gatherers they come across. Without agriculture, you're making yourself vulnerable to enslavement by a neighboring agricultural civilization (unless you are the Mongols (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9)).

I thought it was usually the opposite problem, since all of the hunter gatherers are trained in combat (or skills that can be applied to hunting and combat) and are in way better health then the guy on an all-grain diet. Not to mention, the valuables are all usually outside of the walls, so that isn't going to help with raiders.

nedz
2016-05-01, 07:03 PM
Chaotic Intellectual wildmage demon replies:

One gripe with this line of argument: It presupposes agriculture and an environment that doesn't supply the whole of a population's needs. A foraging society of people using adobo/thatch/ceramics can be free as ****. The average workday in the modern world for foraging peoples maxes out at about 4.5 hours of work a day. That leaves the rest of the day devoted to pure freedom and coalition building. Once a society exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, that is when they tend to develop agriculture. With agriculture comes property rights. With property rights comes direct trade and capitalism based on arbitrage of inequalities. To make any of that work you need laws that force compliance for the good of the many at the expense of the individual.

The pernicious side effect of this trend is that once population invents agriculture and property rights, it also invents other things like alphabets and writing and then records and history. Agreements become compulsory laws. A population under the duress of exceeding the carrying capacity of its environment becomes war-like to alleviate the friction and pain of having to work excessive hours just to survive. And thus war is invented. And to wage those wars in ways that guarantee that these unfree societies will survive to wage all future wars, they make rules of war to at least protect the reproductive abilities of the population.

Rules are what allows people from keeping themselves in check and thus laws beget war, slavery and misery. Is the progress still worth it? Is there an end goal, or do you just extract every bit of life from the land like a giant mold with a distributed consciousness and then move on to new resources to repeat the cycle of destruction?

There are plenty of examples of war like hunter gatherers even today. These often occur where the resources are finite.

Cluedrew
2016-05-01, 07:53 PM
I played with one "CS", I made up that name to protect the ... not guilty of anything terrible. But CS (which is an acronym) did some very chaotic stupid things. The culmination of this was a scene that played out like:

CS: "I take my pants off and but them on [the unconscious girl we found]."
Me: "I still have your pants [from the last time you took them off to do something random]."

Yeah.

On Lawful vs. Chaotic: Have thought about it lot and I eventually realized... it is really hard to pin down that axis. And Good vs. Evil is no cake walk but "moral" is a pretty good approximation. I put Lawful vs. Chaotic as part of ones personality, "planning vs. improvisation" is part of it but... so are a lot of things. Lawful people seem to enjoy consistency, chaotics seem to enjoy change. I could go on for a lot of opposing pairs of traits that connect to the axis, but I'm never quite sure how to bring it all together.

GreatWyrmGold
2016-05-01, 10:29 PM
One gripe with this line of argument: It presupposes agriculture and an environment that doesn't supply the whole of a population's needs. A foraging society of people using adobo/thatch/ceramics can be free as ****. The average workday in the modern world for foraging peoples maxes out at about 4.5 hours of work a day. That leaves the rest of the day devoted to pure freedom and coalition building. Once a society exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, that is when they tend to develop agriculture. With agriculture comes property rights. With property rights comes direct trade and capitalism based on arbitrage of inequalities. To make any of that work you need laws that force compliance for the good of the many at the expense of the individual.
Putting aside how putting this into play in any post-agriculture society would require killing nearly the entire population...
Hunter-gatherer societies can only exist on the level of individual bands (save for a few very fruitful lands where stationary villages can be supported on the immediate area).
This might not seem like a problem, but consider this. Everything we think of as civilization requires three things, to some extent or another: Labor, skills, and tools. Small bands have neither the raw labor capacity to create most aspects of "civilization," nor sufficient population to have the experts to create many of them. (After all, a skilled—for instance—winemaker or author or smith needs to study for a significant portion of their life to be any good at it. This wouldn't be a problem, if hunter-gatherers didn't need a similar time commitment to learn how to hunt fauna and what flora to gather.) Worse, many of these require not merely small hand tools that a nomad can carry with without much trouble. Smiths require anvils and hammers and forges; anything written requires facilities for producing parchment or paper (or chiseling it out on stone tablets, which also isn't practical for nomads); and so on.
Now, those rare areas where food is plentiful enough for permanent villages can, in fact, raise societies large and stationary enough for most of those things. However, they will be hampered by not having the manpower a larger civilization could, and the majority in poorer lands would be SOL. Which brings me to my next point.
You claim that property rights and war can only exist with agriculture. While it's technically true that nomadic bands can't declare war on one another the way large nation-states do, they can—and often do—fight over the best territory. These wars have death tolls much smaller in absolute terms than the struggles between nations, but it's entirely possible for most of the losing band to be killed if they don't get the hint quickly enough. War may change, but men stay the same.


Rules are what allows people from keeping themselves in check and thus laws beget war, slavery and misery.
Wrong. Rules are what keep the worst elements of humanity in check. Laws only allow a new kind of war to exist, not war in general. Laws can allow slavery to be legal, but de facto slavery usually exists where the laws don't stop them. And while you may feel "miserable" by being forced to listen to The Man, I assure you that you would feel more miserable if you lived in a world where nothing stopped the cruel from taking advantage of the kind, where no one protected the weak from the strong. Laws aren't perfect, but they're better than nothing.

—Your friendly neighborhood Pragmatic Good dragon


I thought it was usually the opposite problem, since all of the hunter gatherers are trained in combat (or skills that can be applied to hunting and combat) and are in way better health then the guy on an all-grain diet.
Three things.
First, hunting isn't war. While throwing a spear is the same no matter what the target, war requires skills other than just fighting. (So does hunting, for that matter.)
Second, stationary agricultural nations can build defenses beyond the ability of nomads. (To say nothing of the advantages granted by expert craftsmen and large workshops.)
Third, ten malnourished farmers will beat one healthy hunter-gatherer in any fair fight. (If a 10-on-1 fight can ever be considered fair.)
And for the record, it is roughly a 10:1 ratio for early farming techniques. Obviously, it varies from place to place, time to time, and by agricultural technology, but that's a good rule of thumb.



I could go on for a lot of opposing pairs of traits that connect to the axis, but I'm never quite sure how to bring it all together.
"Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's contradictory. The gods say so, now focus on the game."

Morrandir
2016-05-01, 10:55 PM
I'll admit to being guilty of this once, but it actually went over pretty well.

First off, the campaign was not of a particularly serious bent to begin with; if it was I'd have played a different character.

Secondly, the character was actually capable at his role. I've noticed elsewhere that a lot of these "wacky and zany" types often drag down the party even when they aren't licking tables or murdering NPCs for the lols, increasing their annoyance levels.

Finally, I knew when to keep things in check so he didn't overstay his welcome. Comic relief can be a valuable thing, but it's easy to cross the line into being irritating as many of us seem all-too-aware of. Usual deal of letting everyone have a turn in the spotlight. After all, comedy often has a straight-man to play off of anyway.

Most of his antics centered around his intelligence, which was on par with a dog. Seriously, I ended up with a 3 in Intelligence in 3.5 D&D. Thanks to the lighthearted nature of the campaign, I played it like he simply didn't know enough about the laws of physics to actually obey them. Kept everything in his pants pockets (which I had properly statted out as bags of holding), including his weapons, a large greatclub he would bonk people with to say hello (And only one person wasn't smart enough to discourage this particular action, and was critted for her lack of effort), and a maul, which was primarily used to crack open walnuts that would mysteriously vanish when he hit them.

Other items included a set of completely ordinary rocks which he would use to play Rocks with. "It easy. Take rock, and put rock, then take other rock, and... aw. Gromp lose again."

It also helped to roll a freakish number of natural 20s when it was important for a gag. Party flew off on a dragon and left him behind? 3 nat 20s later, he's using a greataxe like a helicopter blade and zooming right on past them.

He's ended up being a bit of a legend among my group, up to the point I've actually gotten requests to bring him out again, or let him cameo as a GM character in other campaigns. Still, I know he's got his place, and that isn't every single session.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-01, 11:04 PM
Wrong. Rules are what keep the worst elements of humanity in check. Laws only allow a new kind of war to exist, not war in general. Laws can allow slavery to be legal, but de facto slavery usually exists where the laws don't stop them. And while you may feel "miserable" by being forced to listen to The Man, I assure you that you would feel more miserable if you lived in a world where nothing stopped the cruel from taking advantage of the kind, where no one protected the weak from the strong. Laws aren't perfect, but they're better than nothing.

Well, if you want to be technical, for most of human history, rules have existed not to keep the worst elements of humanity in check, but to keep undesired aspects of humanity in check. After all, most agricultural societies is when you start to get social stratification coming in, which means that some people starve and nearly exhaust themselves while others don't and you always need a way to keep yourself in the right category. Rules are a great way to keep pesky weapons out of their hands and to get some hired thugs on your side.



Three things.
First, hunting isn't war. While throwing a spear is the same no matter what the target, war requires skills other than just fighting. (So does hunting, for that matter.)
Second, stationary agricultural nations can build defenses beyond the ability of nomads. (To say nothing of the advantages granted by expert craftsmen and large workshops.)
Third, ten malnourished farmers will beat one healthy hunter-gatherer in any fair fight. (If a 10-on-1 fight can ever be considered fair.)
And for the record, it is roughly a 10:1 ratio for early farming techniques. Obviously, it varies from place to place, time to time, and by agricultural technology, but that's a good rule of thumb.

Hunting isn't fighting, no, but it's a lot closer then farming since grain doesn't put up much of a fight typically. (It might in Australia, however...) And yes, some agricultural societies could build defenses, but not early on in the iron age so great. And third, you forgot epidemics, which occur more frequently when you have a tightly packed, malnourished population that is often pooping near their water source. Also, you assume that the city and the hunter gatherers have the same area of land. If the hunter gatherers have gotten to the point of raiding, they probably control a decent chunk of land by the time they're looking at the likes of Sumer and wondering what the harvest is like this time of year...

FlumphPaladin
2016-05-02, 07:11 AM
Welcome back to "Fun D&D Stories," where Hobbes and Rousseau have just dropped by for a visit!

Seriously, this is why I love this forum.

GreatWyrmGold
2016-05-02, 07:18 AM
Well, if you want to be technical, for most of human history, rules have existed not to keep the worst elements of humanity in check, but to keep undesired aspects of humanity in check. After all, most agricultural societies is when you start to get social stratification coming in, which means that some people starve and nearly exhaust themselves while others don't and you always need a way to keep yourself in the right category. Rules are a great way to keep pesky weapons out of their hands and to get some hired thugs on your side.
You hardly need rules or money to get thugs. For that matter, thugs are perfectly capable of springing up all on their own, without any leaders at all. You need a ruler's "hired thugs" to keep the other thugs in check—and other thugs will exist. It's not like laws are required for people to be *****.
And yes, people starve and exhaust themselves in agricultural societies. People starve and exhaust themselves in pre-agricultural societies, too. It's not like agriculture has this magical effect of making everything worse...and if it does, that's an argument against agriculture, not law.


Hunting isn't fighting, no, but it's a lot closer then farming since grain doesn't put up much of a fight typically. (It might in Australia, however...) And yes, some agricultural societies could build defenses, but not early on in the iron age so great. And third, you forgot epidemics, which occur more frequently when you have a tightly packed, malnourished population that is often pooping near their water source. Also, you assume that the city and the hunter gatherers have the same area of land. If the hunter gatherers have gotten to the point of raiding, they probably control a decent chunk of land by the time they're looking at the likes of Sumer and wondering what the harvest is like this time of year...
1. Shockingly, farmers don't spend all of their time farming. They have time to pick up other skills, like driving off wolves and bears. Besides, numbers really do matter.
2. Even a TL 0 farming society can throw up some basic wooden palisades.
3. Plagues are nasty when they happen, but they don't hurt civilizations in the long run. Nomads, though...how'd that work out for North America, hm?
4. It's hard to get ten thousand nomadic hunter-gatherers to attack the same place at the same time. And for the record, the Elamites which destroyed Sumer were also urbanized people, and they were only able to do so because salinization destroyed the local agricultural productivity. I found this with two minutes of research. Of course, since you assume "short workday == utopia," I'm not surprised you failed to Google anything.

—Your eye-rolling neighborhood Pragmatic Good dragon



Welcome back to "Fun D&D Stories," where Hobbes and Rousseau have just dropped by for a visit!
Seriously, this is why I love this forum.
You should see Bay12.

FlumphPaladin
2016-05-02, 07:29 AM
You should see Bay12.

Friend, do not tempt me with talk of dwarven glory, lest I should lose a day or more in productivity to Histories of Avarice and Resourcefulness.

The Fury
2016-05-02, 11:34 AM
On Lawful vs. Chaotic: Have thought about it lot and I eventually realized... it is really hard to pin down that axis. And Good vs. Evil is no cake walk but "moral" is a pretty good approximation. I put Lawful vs. Chaotic as part of ones personality, "planning vs. improvisation" is part of it but... so are a lot of things. Lawful people seem to enjoy consistency, chaotics seem to enjoy change. I could go on for a lot of opposing pairs of traits that connect to the axis, but I'm never quite sure how to bring it all together.

I agree with some of your points and disagree with others, (Hey, alignment discussion. What do you expect?) However for the purpose of this thread, defining Lawful vs. Chaotic is actually very simple: Chaotic= "Woo-hoo! RANDOM! Whee!" Lawful= "Boring stick in the mud that needs to lighten up."

Max_Killjoy
2016-05-02, 12:00 PM
Chaotic Intellectual wildmage demon replies:

One gripe with this line of argument: It presupposes agriculture and an environment that doesn't supply the whole of a population's needs. A foraging society of people using adobo/thatch/ceramics can be free as ****. The average workday in the modern world for foraging peoples maxes out at about 4.5 hours of work a day. That leaves the rest of the day devoted to pure freedom and coalition building. Once a society exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, that is when they tend to develop agriculture. With agriculture comes property rights. With property rights comes direct trade and capitalism based on arbitrage of inequalities. To make any of that work you need laws that force compliance for the good of the many at the expense of the individual.

The pernicious side effect of this trend is that once population invents agriculture and property rights, it also invents other things like alphabets and writing and then records and history. Agreements become compulsory laws. A population under the duress of exceeding the carrying capacity of its environment becomes war-like to alleviate the friction and pain of having to work excessive hours just to survive. And thus war is invented. And to wage those wars in ways that guarantee that these unfree societies will survive to wage all future wars, they make rules of war to at least protect the reproductive abilities of the population.

Rules are what allows people from keeping themselves in check and thus laws beget war, slavery and misery. Is the progress still worth it? Is there an end goal, or do you just extract every bit of life from the land like a giant mold with a distributed consciousness and then move on to new resources to repeat the cycle of destruction?

You know the study that came up with that "hunter-gatherers barely had to work" result turned out to be very tainted by the presence of the researchers... for example, they had given the village a gift of metal utensils and tools...

But at least they weren't blatant hypocrites like the "civilization is evil, we should go back to the natural hunter-gatherer state" nitwits who post their screeds from their computers, in their modern homes, with water and sewer and power and garbage service, while eating their store-bought food...

Nifft
2016-05-02, 09:20 PM
Welcome back to "Fun D&D Stories," where Hobbes and Rousseau have just dropped by for a visit!

Seriously, this is why I love this forum.

The posts are nasty and brutish, but only a select few are clever enough to also be short.

illyahr
2016-05-02, 10:17 PM
How about a character I played who was so Chaotic Stupid that he ascended to godhood (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=16543073&postcount=38)?

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-03, 01:26 AM
How about a character I played who was so Chaotic Stupid that he ascended to godhood (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=16543073&postcount=38)?

Did he ever try to hump a dead enemy? If not, he's not exactly as bad as examples here and on other threads.

illyahr
2016-05-03, 11:14 AM
Did he ever try to hump a dead enemy? If not, he's not exactly as bad as examples here and on other threads.

Random was ADD personified. A group of baddies once took him out of the fight by offering him a plate of cookies.

wumpus
2016-05-03, 12:52 PM
3. Plagues are nasty when they happen, but they don't hurt civilizations in the long run. Nomads, though...how'd that work out for North America, hm?

Nope. Other way around.

The nomads in North America survived. The civilizations either fell or were falling so badly that 30 some guys were able to conquer an empire. The pilgrims simply helped them selves to the previous villagers' cleared fields and any grave goods buried with them (pretty much proof that they didn't squat on former nomad lands). Plagues follow an exponential function. The more sicked folk nearby, the more likely you are going to get the disease. Nomads have few people nearby to even get the plagues while settled populations have many. It is possible that some nomad bands would have to merge, but it would hardly have the same effect on people. Also note that many/most diseases are spread via domestic animals: diseases that spread by horses would finish off the mongols and similar, but pretty much any other nomad would be fine (smallpox and VD are the exceptions: which is why smallpox wiped out North America and syphilis and gonorrhea were assumed for so long to come from there).

Also if you are claiming that a few gadgets from a researcher will suddenly turn life easy for modern hunter/gatherers (who tend to live in areas that nobody else could possibly want), I'd really wonder how easy life might have been for hunter/gatherers on a planet with 1000 times less people. Modern hunter/gathers tend to live on the edge of a desert, and tend not to work "modern" hours, just imagine what it must have been like in a river valley. While this means less time working on food, it hardly means no other troubles. Exponential growth being what it is, assume that such hunter gathers eventually hit the limits for hunting/gathering in all areas (and hit it within a few generations): presumably after that they would have to fight to maintain any territory. Modern hunter gatherers live in the areas nobody is willing to fight them over.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-03, 12:57 PM
Random was ADD personified. A group of baddies once took him out of the fight by offering him a plate of cookies.

Complaint retracted. And I'm glad he achieved Chaotic Stupid without humping dead bodies. That's not a sentence I thought I'd ever type, huh.

Nifft
2016-05-03, 07:37 PM
Complaint retracted. And I'm glad he achieved Chaotic Stupid without humping dead bodies. That's not a sentence I thought I'd ever type, huh.

Thanks to vampirism and lichdom, D&D is a place where a dead body could give informed consent to such an act.

(Personally, I'd prefer the plate of cookies, but I don't judge.)

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-03, 07:41 PM
Thanks to vampirism and lichdom, D&D is a place where a dead body could give informed consent to such an act.

(Personally, I'd prefer the plate of cookies, but I don't judge.)

I am totally okay with these types of beings remaining asexual.

Khedrac
2016-05-04, 03:29 AM
I had one this weekend which was a very different form of chaotic stupid - but definitely funny!

Our 3rd level party (D&D 3.5, low optimisation) was fighting a hill giant at a doorway with the giant's cave bear pet growling and obviously wanting to get into the fight but stuck behind the giant.

The goliath Barbarian/Ranger and the dwarf Paladin of Tyranny were doing OK-ish with support from the coerced NPC cleric (of Heironeous) 5 while the Death Master and my Spirit Shaman dealt with some advanced ghouls (a skeleton is great as a tank against ghouls - cannot be paralysed).
Anyway because the fight was dragging (no one doing huge amounts of damage to the giant) the Death Master got fed up with the bear just growling at the back and told it to attack the giant.
The DM said to roll and D20 and the player got upper teens I think, the DM in the meantime rolled a '1' so the cave bear did indeed attack (and grapple) the giant!
(The goliath promptly performed a coup de grace on the giant and we managed to convince the bear not to attack us as well.)

Moral of the story - always let your ferocious pets into combat first so they don't turn on you!