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Trask
2016-08-14, 12:03 AM
Often times I find myself glad that the D&D Orc has been rehabilitated somewhat and become more of a noble savage than a mindless monster. But D&D and most fantasy rpgs and settings I've seen rely on monsters that are traditionally "evil". Theyre intelligent humanoids but basically are universally thought of as mindless monsters and pests. This is very convenient for the me sometimes to just have a generic "warband" coming out that attacks the party during travel but I'm starting to think more and more that this can be done better. Orcs, beastmen, bugbears, why should they be different from humans in their motivations? You get attacked by human bandits on the road, does that mean you pass a human village and slaughter all of them because humans are savages? Orcs and other monsters should be treated similarly by the setting I claim. That band of orcs that attacked you on the road doesnt necessarily have to have a correlation with the Orc village you pass. These peasant orcs/tribesman may even be accommodating to a degree. I think that this gets PC's to start thinking about monsters more as real intelligent people rather than obstacles.

However there are flaws to this and I dont claim that this way is the best. This can be somewhat off tone for a gritty, dark campaign with vicious disgusting beasts, and sometimes things just cant be humanized after they have committed atrocities to the PCs. But for a GM that (like me) that doesnt like too many races and monsters, and doesnt like combat to be the answer to everything I like this approach.

So what do you guys think about the concept of thoroughly evil monsters? Do you use them in your game?

mythmonster2
2016-08-14, 12:16 AM
Personally, I only ever have supernatural creatures be Always Evil (or Always Good, for that matter). This can include demons and devils, but it can also account for orcs/whatever else, if an Evil god made them so that they are literally incapable of being good. But most of the time, almost all humanoid races have the potential to fall anywhere on the spectrum.

Trask
2016-08-14, 12:19 AM
I like that concept, supernatural creatures falling in the absolutes is a good idea. With everything else being so much more gray and varied it makes their absolute natures all the more alien and terrifying, or inspiring and worthy of worship (as it should be!)

Vitruviansquid
2016-08-14, 12:46 AM
Most times in my games, there is only one playable race.

Other races are not necessarily evil, but can be difficult to work with and understand due to different ways of life and plain ol' hatred of people being different from them.

Still, I see the appeal of just having an evil race to beat up on. It's good for campaigns that are simpler, bashier in tone.

TheYell
2016-08-14, 12:55 AM
I guess I prefer inhuman monsters perverted by the supernatural for solidly evil characters. Ive got orcs in my setting but they really want to be left alone in what they consider their turf.

Honest Tiefling
2016-08-14, 12:56 AM
Yes, sorta. There might be undead that aren't entirely evil (such as ghosts), but...Well, there's usually lots you can smack around without guilt. Aberrations also tend to fall on the evil side of things, or at least not be evil to get rid of given their goals.

nomotag
2016-08-14, 12:59 AM
I never do any race as totally evil. It just doesn't feel right. If you can think, you can pick your morality. I am a big fan of evil elves though.

Christopher K.
2016-08-14, 01:23 AM
I largely stand by the "only supernatural beings" rule for restrictive alignments, though I let certain races tend to be considered villainous due to cultural differences(halflings in my normal campaign setting, for instance, have different concepts of ownership and territory, and consider themselves free to trap, kill, and loot foreigners in their lands).

Satinavian
2016-08-14, 01:35 AM
Yes, i do it also only for some supernatural beings. Demons mostly. Some things that are more concept than creature.


But then there are creatures where violence is the only feasable option availible but who are not actually evil per se.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-14, 02:57 AM
Yes. They're called humans. Or player characters. :smallamused:

Less facetiously, I can do "objectively evil, can't be negotiated with" with human extremists of some sort. I do not need inhuman species for that role. In fact, I typically subvert expectations my players have of species such as orcs or goblins. Yes, the kobolds in the mines will kill and eat your guts without mercy, but that's because the last player character group killed and ate their guts. (Murder-hoboism from the part of players is pretty normal.)

This said, I am a fan of evil spirits and ghosts and the like. Some ghosts and the like really do exist for nothing but blood and murder. But in these cases, the monster is typically symptom of the problem rather than the root of it. Killing it in the face while feeling righteous about yourself is not a solution. These kinds of creatures exist to reflect on the wickedness of the world, they are, in short, in there for the horror of it.

hymer
2016-08-14, 05:26 AM
I noticed evil outsiders mentioned above. Do undead count? I much prefer them to be all evil, with the occasional innocent ghost exception. And even with them, the goal is to make them die.

The orcs in my 3.5 campaign are pretty nasty. Warlike, brutish, selfish, and even sadistic. But they're not inherently evil, more like culturally problematic and pushed in a certain direction by sinister forces who want to use them. So I don't suppose they count. But they come close enough that the PCs attack and kill them without a shred of remorse or any holding back. That's a good thing, narrative-wise. Faceless mooks you can mow down to show how badass you are; they are a trope for good reason.
When I want something more ambiguous, I go to hobgoblins. They're smarter, more disciplined, and more mysterious.

IShouldntBehere
2016-08-14, 05:40 AM
Yes & No. I certainly cast a couple monsters like Orcs in this role, albeit very different ones than the standard version. They take the appearance (humanoid, muscular, tall, tusks, green/grey skin) and the name but that's about it.

Unlike the standard version you couldn't really fairly call them persons, and they way the experience the world only bears a vague resemblance to human consciousnesses. I once described them as sort of "Rage Elementals" to the players but that isn't wholly accurate. "Rage" implies an emotional completeness they simply do not have sense of self to posses. It'd be more accurate to say that their existence is wholly hostility, and the urge for destruction. They might be compared to something like a primitive AI: Not self aware, but capable of learning and communicating with one another for a purpose and even capable of engaging in or being directed towards other purposes, so long is it ultimately serves to give the right feedback.

To the average observer in the setting the Orcs do appear as a mere evil savage race, like the other races save that whole "always evil" thing. They talk, they walk on two legs, use tools an organize themselves but these similarities don't go beyond that surface level. If a human were to hop into the mind of an Orc for a time and then return, they wouldn't be capable of comprehending or absorbing the experience. When one reflects on the experience one would feel like reflecting on a dream they can't remember only that vaguely in that dream they wanted to destroy.

Orcs also don't reproduce in the traditional sense. They blood can transform certain other creatures into Orcs, transforming them wholly. There are no baby orcs*


Does this count as an "Evil Race"? I dunno.


*(though I suppose the right kind of baby exposed to Orc blood would get turned into a particularly small, if no s substantively "juvenile" Orc.)

LudicSavant
2016-08-14, 07:27 AM
The thing is, pretty much every time that I've seen orcs being used as an "all-evil" race, they act basically like humans who happen to have green skin, and humans act towards them kinda like imperialist Europeans treated natives they encountered. The people who write orcs this way will often vehemently try to rationalize this away if confronted with it, but it's true all the same.

The rationalizations are often shockingly flimsy. For example, we'll be told that orcs lack agency and have to be evil because they're brainwashed by God or something... but does this really hold up to scrutiny? First of all, the idea of considering something without agency to be evil is, in and of itself, rather strange. Do you call hurricanes evil? How about a factory machine that mangles a worker? Of course not, because they don't have agency.

Moreover, when we're told that orcs are brainwashed and forced to be evil, we either aren't told what specific Gruumsh-mandated behaviors are supposedly evil, or when we're shown examples of the behavior of these orcs... they act pretty much just like humans with mostly cosmetic differences, rather than evil-generating machines. Sure they might do bad things, but they don't do inhumanly bad things, and they are shown as having aspects to their lives besides making things worse for everyone everywhere (even if the author may not acknowledge them as such). For example, we'll see these orcs pillaging a human village... and as a result bringing back resources for their orc kin and weakening the enemy who totally attacks them too. They're not just burning things because "hey, @#$% things."

This is a problem. It's not a problem because depicting atrocities and racism and the like in fiction is wrong (it isn't), or because there's a problem with having fictional characters who think they're doing the right thing when they slaughter the orcs for being orcs (also fine). It's a problem because we, the real people playing, are supposed to endorse this behavior as morally correct. It's a problem because the author is nodding and saying things like "yeah, outgroup homogeneity bias seems reasonable enough," and you're expected to do the same.

Cozzer
2016-08-14, 07:36 AM
As most of the others said, the only beings that are inherently Evil in my settings are supernatural creatures that are literally made of Evilness. Basic undead, such as zombies and skeletons, are half-creatures half-tools, so they're Evil if they are being used for Evil reasons or if they were created with Evil intentions (it would be simpler to say they're Neutral because they lack agency, but I need a reason for them to be Evil because I don't want my Paladins to be unable to smite them :P).

There are a few Evil tribes or societies, which means characters can fight them without worrying too much about "is this morally justified?!?!", but they're not related to race. Of course this doesn't mean every single creature in this tribe or society is Evil, it means "they're bad enough that killing a few non-Evil ones to stop the others is still the lesser evil".

OldTrees1
2016-08-14, 07:44 AM
No.

I use alignment as merely a detectable part of morality. Since I believe free will is a necessary condition of being a moral agent, there is no race where an individual can be described as evil and exceptions are impossible.

That said, while devils are not necessarily evil in my world, if you meet a devil in Hell it is probably evil just like finding an Orc in the ocean means it probably can swim.

nedz
2016-08-14, 08:11 AM
No - other than outsiders etc.

I prefer my world to be more interesting than that. This is not to say that individuals don't try to sell this notion - but that's just propaganda.

Satinavian
2016-08-14, 08:20 AM
The thing is, pretty much every time that I've seen orcs being used as an "all-evil" race, they act basically like humans who happen to have green skin, and humans act towards them kinda like imperialist Europeans treated natives they encountered. The people who write orcs this way will often vehemently try to rationalize this away if confronted with it, but it's true all the same.
I've seen a couple of games where this was the case but the players and DM were completely aware of it and those flimsy rationalizations were only ingame and what the PCs told each other about why they are on the right side. Of course this works better in systems where alignments are not objective and magically detectable rule stuff.

LudicSavant
2016-08-14, 08:40 AM
I've seen a couple of games where this was the case but the players and DM were completely aware of it and those flimsy rationalizations were only ingame and what the PCs told each other about why they are on the right side. Of course this works better in systems where alignments are not objective and magically detectable rule stuff.

If the players and DM are completely aware that the orcs aren't really all evil, then it's not a case of them implementing an all evil race, now is it?

Yora
2016-08-14, 08:48 AM
I don't. Not even the demons and ghouls are objectively evil.

Everyone are just doing their things, and a lot of those can be seen as highly objectionable, but it's not like there are any people who are really just after spreading pain and suffering fo its own sake.

Grim Portent
2016-08-14, 09:22 AM
Generally yes, there are usually several races that are more or less evil on average.

I tend to favour very dark settings, so I tend to have races that are cannibalistic, worship dark and malevolent forces, hate civilization for various reasons and so on and so forth. There are always exceptions to the rule though and some members of any race may reject the societal norms that dictate most of them, and not everyone would consider the races evil.

Some beings such as dragons are mortal incarnations of avarice, gluttony and the desire to dominate others, Fey are cruel and unpredictable beings largely because they care only for their own amusement and have no empathy, so on and so forth.

Kitten Champion
2016-08-14, 09:36 AM
The only legitimately Evil race in my games has been an army of Outsiders who consumed magic and viewed other sapient life as something to harvest or liquidated - they are by their very nature incapable of benign interaction with other intelligent life.

Other than that, the only peoples which could be described as uniformly antagonistic is a race of albino Elves led by an insane immortal archdruid who's something between Santa Claus and Bacchus, but they aren't really intrinsically evil. They're more inscrutable from millennia of isolation in a region of near-perpetual night. They believe people from other races who invade their realm aren't, in fact, real. These Elves see these people (the region they live in is rich with precious metals, attracting countless with the prospect of wealth) as the twisted ghosts/spirits of their damned, those over the course of their history who were exiled to the burning lands to die an ignoble and painful death, returned from their death realm. They're ready to "exorcise" these spirits, mostly by stabbing them to death with sanctified weapons and/or burning them alive, feeling duty-bound that these unfortunate beings find peace. A fact that my players still aren't aware of, actually.

RickAllison
2016-08-14, 10:45 AM
Nope, though I do have enemies that fill in that role of "OK to kill!" Instead of being Evil in the more traditional sense, they are formed by the base desires in other lifeforms, their most primal urges without any higher thinking to balance out the caprices of life. Add onto that a hunger for the same desires and primal emotions that created them and you have a set of creatures that aren't evil, but are just... wrong, constantly hunting to turn others into more of these creatures so they have the slightest relief from their constant, gnawing hunger.

NRSASD
2016-08-14, 11:41 AM
In my campaigns, outsiders are always pure incarnations of their alignment since they are literally made out of belief and emotion. Outside of that, technically no, I don't have any races of pure Evil. That being said, I do use goblinoids as a race of Evil, but mostly because of their historical background in the campaign setting.

1250 years before the present day, the goblinoids established a loose confederacy of kingdoms and enslaved anyone non-goblin because they were considered inferior species. 750 years go by, and many goblinoid civil wars, and the ancestors of the modern human kingdom drive the goblinoids from their homes. 500 years later, the humans have forgotten about the goblinoid kingdom but the goblinoids never did. Thus, the goblin tribes wage a war of genocide against humanity to avenge their fallen kingdom, but humanity doesn't really know why goblinoids are so aggressive.

Slipperychicken
2016-08-14, 02:16 PM
Short answer: I really don't care. It doesn't matter for my game's purposes.


Long answer:
I include subhuman monsters like orcs and kobolds and such. I don't really care for alignment or anything of the sort, so the question "is it evil?" is a subjective judgement, much like it is in real life. Ask a merchant who's business is ruined by beastman raids, and he'll tell you they're evil and must be destroyed. If you talk to a mad wizard who worships old cthonic gods and commands a legion of orcs and trolls, he might have a different opinion.

The origins, true moral nature, and potential intellect of such monsters are subjects of debate among the wise. As far as everyone else is concerned, monsters are locked in a seemingly-eternal struggle against civilized people, and slaughtering them is considered a great service to mankind. Orcs aren't exactly lining up to fill out personality questionnaires. Practically speaking, that means I don't have to busy myself with these questions, and I can make monsters as wicked or sympathetic as I desire.

Mastikator
2016-08-14, 02:35 PM
I prefer not to have "good" and "evil" to be objective forces that anyone can be aligned to.

But there can definitely be demons that want to murder all living things and destroy everything beautiful. Whether that is evil is up to the players.

Der_DWSage
2016-08-14, 06:18 PM
Short answer:No.

Long answer:I don't like the mental shortcut of 'Always evil -> Safe to murder' that 'Always Evil' races encourage. Even demons and devils are a maybe to me, as (In my setting) they're less 'Made out of the literal energy of evil' and more 'Their life depends on them doing what others see as evil, such as torture, molest, and murder. This normalization of these activities makes them inclined towards evil, but it's more a case of Blue and Orange morality.'

Not to mention that Good Vs. Evil is boring. Evil is always the bad guy that you want kicked out. Good is always the scrappy underdog with the Power of Heart. How about Law vs. Chaos, which really does deserve more of the limelight? Or Stability vs. Progress? Maybe Life vs. Death? Something besides 'Welp, these are clearly the bad guys, time to kill 'em all.'

The closest I come to 'Always Evil' (Aside from Demons/Devils) is 'Aggressive.' It's hard to reason with zealots who feel that your very presence in their area is an affront to their deity, or that immediately go for the spear-to-your-face method.

VoxRationis
2016-08-14, 06:45 PM
My current campaign settings...

"Roman" setting: No, everyone's got their own ups and downs. Most of the factions are pretty evil in some regards and noble in others. There's some not-well-elaborated upon demons that are pretty hostile, but they're represented by only a few individuals, so who knows what's going on with them?

Canrelanth: The orcs are intentionally meant to be a retreat from the trope of "orcs as noble savages," and they tend to attack and brutally destroy all in their path. They're more of a force of nature than beings with moral agency, though. Tieflings are also inclined to certain psychological traits not thought well of (such as sadism and spitefulness), but that doesn't make them evil, or deserving of the persecution they've received, necessarily. Outsiders can be evil by most standards. Drow aren't evil per se, but their economic climate tends to promote selfishness, and they're the primary driving force behind the slave trade. High elves (I feel like including them because these days, settings are more likely to have them be evil than drow) are reasonably varied in personality, but they have a society that amply provides for all of their needs, so it's rare to see them do anything like raiding, thievery, or conquest. The setting doesn't really go for objective "good" and "evil," but there are definitely forces at work that would generally be agreed upon as not against the interests of the common good.

Four Rivers: Nope. Not in the slightest. Most of the setting focuses on a human population, anyway.

Thrudd
2016-08-14, 07:31 PM
I present goblinoids and beastmen races as being essentially incompatible with human civilization. They may have their own society and hierarchies and traditions, but those traditions usually involve opportunistically killing and eating humans and other sentient beings and raiding settlements for plunder. Lizardmen are likewise alien to human civilization. They see all mammals as potential meals. Is it objectively evil? No, but they are dangerous beings that would eat your family. So how should they be treated?

Malimar
2016-08-14, 08:04 PM
I use demons and devils and undead for evil races, mostly, with a bit of sahuagin and kuo-toa thrown in. Orcs and goblinoids and gnolls and so on are mostly extinct, and rarely much of a threat. Most conflicts between land-dwellers are political or religious, not some fundamental incompatibility of civilization versus barbarism.

Darth Ultron
2016-08-14, 08:37 PM
To me an ''evil'' race is a race of beings that at least 50% of them choose to be evil, though it's often more like 75%. So they are not ''all evil'', but ''most are''.


Though it's really impossible to have a game like D&D without foes to fight. It's one of the core points of the game: fighting foes that oppose the characters. Now good and evil make this straight forward, simple and easy. Now you could ''just say'' whatever and whoever you want is a ''foe'' and just ''do whatever you want''. But, of course, if you do that, you might as well just keep good and evil. When your just going to say ''they are foes we can kill over there'', that is exactly the same as saying ''we can kill the evil people over there''.

And if your not ''just going to say something or someone is a foe'', then you fall in to the impossible lawyer problem. How will you define a foe? Well, the only way to do it would be to spend countless real hours working out the details in a very real legal sense....and chances are you might not even then get a definite answer. And if you do that, your not playing the game anymore.

2D8HP
2016-08-14, 08:57 PM
I a big fan of evil elves though.
Fey are cruel and unpredictable beings largely because they care only for their own amusement and have no empathy, so on and so forth.


Elves/Fey

An Elf is just a Drow bleached by the sun..
Drow the original Elves (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?475794-Drow-the-original-Elves)
:smallfrown:
I combine the worst sterotypes of the French and Russian Nobility of the "Ancien Regime" with the savage kidnapping "Indians" of old western. They have vampire-like hypnotic powers and vulnerability to iron


Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.

Yet most of my current PC''s in other DM's "world's" are Elves....

Jay R
2016-08-14, 09:07 PM
When the raiders attack the village intending to kill all the men and abduct all the women, then they are evil. I don't care, and I don't see why any player character should care, whether they do this because they are orcs, or drow, or vikings, or pirates, or whatever.

In my current game, goblins are generally attacking the PCs and inoffensive NPC villages. That's because the goblins are semi-bestial and easily cowed, and will always follow an alpha leader. The PCs have not yet put together that they have always been led by ogres, or gnolls, or humans, or somebody.

The party has been attacked by goblin wolfriders, using tactics they'd never used before. They tried to separate a wounded PC from the rest of the party and drag him off alone. That's because they weren't following the goblin leader, but the alpha wolf, so they were using wolf pack tactics.

Trask
2016-08-15, 01:17 AM
Mind that I'm not saying that they're shouldn't be people that the players come into conflict with. Maybe even whole tribes or kingdoms. But just as humans dont just go to war with the entire dwarven race if they get pickpocketed by some dwarven thieves, I dont like to treat a race like Orcs (mammals, humanoid, intelligent) as just ok to genocide. If a race is to be truly evil through and through and thoroughly irredeemable I like for there to be some reason behind it. Like beastmen twisted by chaos that are slaves of some more sinister force, like another poster said reptilians that see mammals only as meals, perhaps extremely alien bug men or hiveminds. All these are ok to me because they just just become different colored/ear shaped/shorter humans that are just mindlessly aggressive for no other reason than to provide a guiltless punching bag for PCs. They are truly different due to real biological/supernatural factors and are realistically capable of possessing entirely alien mindsets to that of normally evolved creatures with empathy and sense of self preservation.

weckar
2016-08-15, 02:49 AM
Mind Flayers and Elves are my go-to Evil races. Every now and then I also drop Doppelgangers in there, but only because in my world they actually associate quite closely with Mind Flayers...

Coidzor
2016-08-15, 03:21 AM
Mutated members of otherwise varied races tend to be crazy and/or evil. That's largely geography and exposure to too much of the wrong kinds of magic, though. Stuff in deep sea trenches or that lives near magma vents on the ocean floor? Probably mutated and evil in addition to being utterly alien and weird to begin with.

Like the mentally and physically twisted magical crossbreed soldier servitors of mad wizards are pretty skewed towards being evil. Or the inhabitants of the areas where gods died and their deaths tainted the land, they have a tendency to become monsters on the outside or inside if not both.

Kobolds with chromatic dragon features are slightly more likely to be evil than good, but most of them are neutralish.

Kuo-Toa and Sahagin are pretty inimical to other sapient life.

There are spirits and fey that are just straight up made of evil or that are hostile to all life or all intelligent life that isn't a spirit.

It's not really a world with lots of evil hordes, though, at least in the current era. In the past there were some, especially during the war of the gods, but several species got genocided into extinction.

Monsters like manticores are pretty much always evil, along with cursed things like werewolves or things made of evil like demons.

nrg89
2016-08-15, 03:30 AM
Undead are under the control of it's creator, but you need sorcery for that and in my setting sorcerer's are somewhat amoral. Not always immoral, but to get the powers one needs to make a pact with a demon and in my setting rakshasa are the demons.

They were created with self interest as their number one priority by the gods because the gods noticed that altruism, compromise and community made humans really strong and could one day maybe challenge the gods. In a desperate attempt they created the rakshasa, beings of complete self indulgence to suppress the humans. It backfired horribly.

But players are free to play a sorcerer if they want, but there's a lot of suspicion and prejudices against sorcerers in the world.

Misereor
2016-08-15, 05:24 AM
The party has been attacked by goblin wolfriders, using tactics they'd never used before. They tried to separate a wounded PC from the rest of the party and drag him off alone. That's because they weren't following the goblin leader, but the alpha wolf, so they were using wolf pack tactics.

*Thumbs up*
Like it!

Logosloki
2016-08-15, 08:39 AM
Only Deities, Outsiders and Outliers have alignments in my world so, not really. Mortal servants have an aura that exudes the alignment of their patron (the more favoured, the more powerful the aura) but they themselves do not normally have an alignment (having an alignment would make them an Outlier).

Creating Undead does not normally make a mortal an outlier, it depends on the type of undead they make. Husk-Undead are beings created by disjointing the soul of a body and then sealing the body so that the soul cannot return. This does make you Evil, even if you do it to yourself.

Creating or Summoning something automatically makes a mortal into an Outlier. They shift either to the alignment of their patron or if they do not have a patron then they become Virtuous or Chaotic depending on the context of their creation/summon.

TheFurith
2016-08-15, 10:44 AM
I personally would never really have an evil race. Unless you want to count demons or devils, the sort of evil outsider that's malevolent for the same reason a fire elemental is hot. It just is and you aren't going to change it. No amount of philosophy and rationale will change what they are.

As far as races like orcs. The entire idea behind them was so that you could straight up murder a hundred of them and have nobody morally question it because they're just evil faceless things. That's just how they are and they all deserve to die for it. Now that idea is absurd of course. But it depends what you want out of the game really.

Do you want gritty realism where almost everyone is mostly decent but just have conflicting motives and ways of life and put them at odds? Or do you want to play "heroes" ridding the world of anything "evil" because it has a different language, culture, and skin color? Or maybe you play with people aren't okay with killing anything that even resembles humans and will make the entire game a total pain? In which case you need a new player.

Either way, human like races that are evil for evils sake just don't make any sense.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-15, 10:54 AM
Depends on what one means by "evil".

In terms of a capital-E cosmological force or power dubbed "Evil", I'm not a fan of the concept.

In terms of "Evil for the Evulz", even less of a fan.

However, if you mean "naturally and or culturally predisposed to a mentality inimical to the rights and wellbeing of others" or "alien to the point of very likely mutual hostility", then I can go with that.

So yes, in my settings, there are sometimes species and cultures that -- due to their very nature -- most others are not likely to have a productive or peaceful relationship with, and those others are likely to view them as evil.


The Broo (https://www.google.com/search?q=glorantha+broo) (Glorantha)... without going into detail, there's a species that's pretty much objectively evil as a whole.

Or Illithids, who literally cannot live without eating other intelligent beings -- even if they weren't also culturally arrogant and domineering in the extreme, they can't live in peace with other species.

LudicSavant
2016-08-15, 12:16 PM
I generally agree with your post, but...


Or Illithids, who literally cannot live without eating other intelligent beings -- even if they weren't also culturally arrogant and domineering in the extreme, they can't live in peace with other species.

This is one generalization I can't get behind. Humans themselves often practiced human sacrifice... including many cases where it was voluntary. It's not a stretch to imagine a culture willfully sacrificing people to powerful, superintelligent creatures rather than going to war with them, or even a case where the humans doing the sacrificing think of it as a mutually beneficial relationship.

I recall a particularly interesting example posted by Hiryuu somewhere on these boards.

Let's talk about Illithids, this'll be fun. According to The Illithiad (shush, bear with me), a mind flayer needs one brain of a month to stay alive - that's bare minimum - and it needs to be from an intelligent creature with the ability to reason (no using Int 4 critters, the mind flayer needs meat). Smart and clever brains taste better. We are told they keep slaves for this, or make raids.

This means one mind flayer, at minimum, needs to kill 12 people a year. Now, since the brains have to be adult brains, they need a maturation period of 16-17 years or more. That means the minimum brain input a mind flayer needs to get to a given brain is about 150 brains. That's a lot of raiding or slave raising. Illithiad also says there's ~100 or more illithids in a given city or town run by them, on top of what the elder brain eats (we'll ignore it for a moment). That's 15,000 brains over the course of 16 years, which may not seem like much, but that's the bare minimum - it's like forcing your entire population to live on unseasoned instant ramen for a decade and a half. In order for your population to maintain that level of consumption, you should probably have about ten times that - you need breeders and educators (you want your brains smart, they need to be tasty) and then you need to keep up their maintenance - feeding them and pumping away their waste is a big job. You also need to house them, can't keep them in cages, it makes for horrible food.

Basically what this means is that you might have a small group of illithids in charge of a huge city-cult devoted to them and devoted to producing smart, intelligent members of the populace who might even petition to be eaten, on top of the rabble-rousers and troublemakers (this is probably why the ancient Gith had high enough numbers to stage a coup and win). Welcome to the city of mind flayers, where health care is free, education is robust and fun, but hey, don't break the law.

And one of my own comments on the subject


I like the idea of aberrations and non-aberrations having to overcome crazy obstacles like "we need to eat the live brains of your species" in order to achieve relatively peaceful co-existence... and actually seeking to do so! Perhaps to the horror of other humanoids and aberrations alike (kinda like how the elves and dragons alike were horrified by half-dragons in Eberron).

I can totally imagine people petitioning to have their brains eaten, too. After all, they may believe that they live on as a component part of a greater being instead of wasting away in old age, or even that this is a sort of way of being "elected to the governmental mind." Also, it could come with honors, influence (such as giving political voice to a dying wish), or pecuniary rewards.

Arutema
2016-08-15, 01:14 PM
The campaign I'm working on has the only humans in the setting as the invading racist imperialist race. So yeah, I'd guess they're the "evil" race of the setting.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-15, 01:14 PM
I know it's not a particularly popular thought to express any more, but I do think it's possible to have a human culture that's actively evil -- and to have the victims of that evil be willing participants in it.

I can't really give present-day real-life examples without pushing the limits on forums rules AND potentially starting a threadfire. Historically, I'd say that most human sacrifice counts.

LudicSavant
2016-08-15, 01:25 PM
I know it's not a particularly popular thought to express any more, but I do think it's possible to have a human culture that's actively evil -- and to have the victims of that evil be willing participants in it.

I can't really give present-day real-life examples without pushing the limits on forums rules AND potentially starting a threadfire. Historically, I'd say that most human sacrifice counts.

Uhm, what? What the heck does that have to do with anything?


Or Illithids, who literally cannot live without eating other intelligent beings -- even if they weren't also culturally arrogant and domineering in the extreme, they can't live in peace with other species.

The point I disagree with here isn't about whether it's evil or not, it's about whether or not a creature that must consume sapient species can hypothetically live in peace with another sapient species.

And my answer to that is: Of course they can, through a wide variety of means, such as (but not limited to)...

- Sapient-eating creatures only eat some sapient species and spare other ones, with whom they are on good terms.
- Sapient-eating creatures only eat creatures that are going to die anyways.
- Sapient-eating creatures only eat volunteers.

KarlMarx
2016-08-15, 01:29 PM
In my campaign, Orcs--the main "enemy"--aren't innately evil, but their culture--nomadic, predatory behavior towards other groups due to a crippling lack of resources, and fairly meritocratic--is incompatible with the urbanized, relatively peaceful, hierarchical Human empire.

Therefore, the human leaders consciously or unconsciously label the other culture as evil to prevent it from dissolving their own. It's essentially a case of us vs. them, used by the humans to cement their control(our system is the only good, so those who oppose it are evil!).

Eventually my PCs are going to discover this--and discover how devils(who are incarnations of the mortal races domineering desires) have been using it to create a "perfect" society for them to take over.

So the mortal races aren't evil, just different and the victims of xenophobia. However, their culture does promote activities seen as evil--raiding, pillaging, etc.--that can be seen as evil. However, this behavior is simply seen as necessary for survival in the world that the orcs have created.

BWR
2016-08-15, 01:45 PM
I have no problem with the concept. 'All [specific mortal race] are evil' is little different from 'all demons are evil' in anything but where they live and how powerful they are on average. Fantasy racism is fine by me because once you have defined the world as being a certain way you have already determined right and wrong in that setting. If this includes making one or more of the traditional humanoid races into 'always baddies', I'm perfectly fine with it.
As for what I do in my games, it's more like 'mostly bad' rather than 'always bad' and much of that is cultural rather than inherent.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-15, 01:49 PM
Uhm, what? What the heck does that have to do with anything?

----

The point I disagree with here isn't about whether it's evil or not, it's about whether or not a creature that must consume sapient species can hypothetically live in peace with another sapient species.


Ah, OK -- I misunderstood that part of the disagreement.

LudicSavant
2016-08-15, 01:50 PM
Ah, OK -- I misunderstood that part of the disagreement.

NP, glad it's cleared up :smallsmile:

Edited previous post slightly to make it clearer that that is what I was disagreeing with.

Kid Jake
2016-08-15, 04:24 PM
In a setting that I've put a lot of time into but not gotten to play in yet, pretty much all the races are horrible monsters. The elves are murderous cultists, sacrificing hundreds of sentient creatures a day to prevent their gods from waking up and eating them. The dwarves are near emotionless cogs in an ever expanding empire built on the backs of enslaved races. Trolls are simple brutes on the brink of extinction that lash out at anything that gets too close. Unicorns are basically the Immortals from Highlander. The humans are trying to cleanse the world with fire, with a large subset even attempting to kill the 'gods' themselves; even though that would cause the entire world to stagnate and eventually die.

Everything is an unpleasant mess(I pitched it to my players as Warhammer as performed by the Kids in the Hall), but most of them at least have some reasoning as to why they want to kill everything.

[i]Most]/i] things do anyway...but not gnomes. Gnomes are, pretty much to a man, a bunch of manic monsters that fall into the "Rape, murder, arson and rape." school of a-holery. Their diet consists of 90% hallucinogenic mushrooms, 9% terrified travelers and some filler. They do nothing but scream profanity at the top of their lungs, trip balls and attempt to sate every impulse that enters their heads without empathy, remorse or fear of consequences.

They don't have sinister plans, they get no particular pleasure from causing pain and generally don't even want what you have; but in their permanent drug fueled haze they're prone to suddenly wondering what your eyes might taste like/what color smoke your house will make as it burns/how many gnomes can fit inside a human chest cavity... and they will not rest until they know.

Cluedrew
2016-08-15, 05:35 PM
Sometimes, but there are usually not a races of biological beings. Things like demons, nightmares given flesh or biological weapons that got free. The idea of a naturally occurring race being A) stable in characteristics that you can say "always" and B) evil. So I guess I have issues with both the always and the evil. I mean if the setting was literally created by the hand of god (or gods) recently then that changes the rules. But otherwise the races would have gotten to its current point by some path and a lot of the "they are evil" explanations really forget about that and they just... don't make internal sense.

If you have some supernatural malevolent force, that plays by its own rules and depending on what the rules are, that can make sense.

To Kid Jake: That sounds like something you would do. The campaigns I know of yours would fit right in.

Telonius
2016-08-15, 09:32 PM
If something lacks the intelligence to be Good or Evil, it's more like Neutral Hungry. It can still be a threat, can't be negotiated with, and is an acceptable target. A lot of Aberrations and many Undead fall into this. If it's smart enough to make moral decisions, it's generally not Always Good or Always Evil.

Even things like Vampires don't have to be Evil. In a more comedic campaign I'm preparing, they've been allowed to live in the Big City as long as they promise not to make spawn. There's even a volunteer group of Incarnates with Strongheart Vests calling themselves the "Blood Bank" that help them out.

NovenFromTheSun
2016-08-16, 04:15 AM
Sort of:

The "slayers" are, to make a long story short, robots built by demons. Calling them a "race" is a bit of a misnomer.

Wendigos have had their will stripped from them and can only follow the directions of certain other being, but the person they once were is still in there, just unconscious. (These ones don't come from cannibals, which is why I'm thinking of changing the name. On the otherhand I've heard of some wendigo legends that don't have that aspect.)

The people of Noma were once people supernaturally mutated to be weapons. Making war on the people of Lina and Yula is ingrained in their psyche as much as the desire to keep living. However, amongst each other their lives are pretty normal. They have families, make art, and pursue hobbies. They were exiled to Noma because the early secret-keepers decided they weren't worthy of death.

Gastronomie
2016-08-16, 04:27 AM
The orcs in my 3.5 campaign are pretty nasty. Warlike, brutish, selfish, and even sadistic. But they're not inherently evil, more like culturally problematic and pushed in a certain direction by sinister forces who want to use them. So I don't suppose they count. But they come close enough that the PCs attack and kill them without a shred of remorse or any holding back. That's a good thing, narrative-wise. Faceless mooks you can mow down to show how badass you are; they are a trope for good reason.
When I want something more ambiguous, I go to hobgoblins. They're smarter, more disciplined, and more mysterious.This fits my image about "monster races".

I consider the idea stupid that something can be "born evil", unless it's a supernatural entity like a demon or a devil. While the orcs may be savage and the drow nazi-racist, they're simply so because they were educated to be that way, in a closed society where that way of thinking was part of "common sense". If a drow orphan grows up educated by a benevolent human family, sure, he'd become generous and kind. The same would actually apply to other races like goblins or kobolds too (and if taught in school, while they may not grow to be "highly" intelligent, they will still be able to be as smart as the average man).

That being said, most of the monster races which the party comes across are the "evil" ones, so they're not gonna be subject to mercy.

But, once in a while, it's fun to throw in a non-evil monster race guy or two.

I once introduced in my short campaign an orc family that's opened up a portable restaurant on the streets. The family consists of the father, the mother, two grown-up children, and two small children. The wife is stronger than the husband in terms of authority, mainly because of her fierce temper - the husband seems a bit afraid of his wife, and the small children try to cheer him up, while the grown-up children just shake their heads.

The family sells grilled meat, hunted fresh in the morning. Stab them with sticks, and sells them to the travellers and adventurers. They also sell potions and medicine crafted from plants that they harvested in their path.

The family carries the old orc ways of travelling and hunting in the wild, but in their case they do it as a favor for the villages which they come across. They may hunt down a Bulette that's been plaguing the lands... and grill it. They may slay the Owlbear that's been a problem for the farmers... and grill it. They know how to live in the wild, including how to cook these bizzare monsters without getting your stomach hurt, and they're making the most out of their knowledge.

The adventurers bought some grilled Bulette from them (soaked in beer and wrapped up in special herb-leaves before grilling to soften the hard meat and add it flavor), as well as some herb ointment (HP recovery) and antidote.

Mechanic-wise, they weren't much more than a normal "potion seller", but the players absolutely loved this family of orcs. After the campaign ended, told me they were their favorite NPCs - an opinion I shared with them. These sorts of stuff can be really fun if done right.

Pugwampy
2016-08-16, 07:28 AM
I never cared much for Gnolls . "Mein Kamph" is directed towards the Gnoll menace .

veti
2016-08-16, 07:56 AM
They're called humans.

I honestly find it hard to imagine any "monster" race doing nastier things to humans than we have, at various times in history, done to one another. To me, halflings are small, shy humans; dwarfs are small, aggressive humans; elves are skinny, mystical, long-lived humans; orcs are angry, bloody humans. None of them are inherently "better" than the others, they've all got the potential to be as nasty as you like.

Oh sure, there are demons and whatnot as well, but they're not a "race", more of a manufactured thing.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-16, 08:33 AM
True -- just about any "mortal race" that is inherently evil is going to be a story-device reflection of purely human evil from the real world.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-16, 08:49 AM
NP, glad it's cleared up :smallsmile:

Edited previous post slightly to make it clearer that that is what I was disagreeing with.


Many a speculative fiction story has been written with a setting like those detailed, with an "evil peace" in place.

mikeejimbo
2016-08-16, 09:48 AM
I have a setting where pretty much everyone is neutral at best, and the more xebophobic and ruthless species are the most economically successful.

Well I guess giants tend toward good, and one tiny human empire is good. But the giants are slaves and the human empire is hemorrhaging money and in danger of being overrun.

Being good sounds like it's weakness in my world, but in truth the premise is that it takes strength to be good in the face of such serious adversity. Anyone good is fighting an uphill, losing battle. Do you give into evil to survive, or die nobly?

Fayd
2016-08-16, 10:54 AM
Honestly, depends on the world. One of mine sort of does, insofar as they have been enslaved by the forces of evil so long and through so many other worlds that they have picked up the Evil and Extraplanar subtypes by this point and are functionally indistinct from their masters, HD aside. Another setting I ran did not. Another game only had the distinctly Evil creatures be undead and... the gods, actually. All of them.

Coidzor
2016-08-17, 04:47 AM
They're called humans.

I honestly find it hard to imagine any "monster" race doing nastier things to humans than we have, at various times in history, done to one another. To me, halflings are small, shy humans; dwarfs are small, aggressive humans; elves are skinny, mystical, long-lived humans; orcs are angry, bloody humans. None of them are inherently "better" than the others, they've all got the potential to be as nasty as you like.

Being human makes it difficult to think of things that other humans could not or would not, yes.

The fact that we find such things objectionable from time to time even when it doesn't affect us at all should remind you that the glass isn't completely empty, though.

veti
2016-08-17, 07:05 AM
The fact that we find such things objectionable from time to time even when it doesn't affect us at all should remind you that the glass isn't completely empty, though.

No, of course not. I didn't mean to say that humans are particularly evil. Merely that they're as evil as you need them to be.

I think what I"m trying to say is, I don't really see the point in having alignments attached to races at all. You can get all the evil you could reasonably need just from the PCs' own races.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-17, 07:53 AM
True -- just about any "mortal race" that is inherently evil is going to be a story-device reflection of purely human evil from the real world.

Nah. There are plenty of animal evils and natural evils in the world that you can turn into evil fantasy species. Such as hurricanes or ducks.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-17, 08:37 AM
Nah. There are plenty of animal evils and natural evils in the world that you can turn into evil fantasy species. Such as hurricanes or ducks.

There's no will, no intent, no possible moral awareness, in a hurricane. It has no capacity for evil, or good, or anything of the sort. It's no more evil than gravity or light or a rock.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-17, 08:43 AM
So?

Take a wikipedia refresher course on "natural evil" and realize you're adding nothing to the discussion.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-17, 09:03 AM
So?

Take a wikipedia refresher course on "natural evil" and realize you're adding nothing to the discussion.


Really? Nice attitude you have there.

/plonk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet))

Meanwhile, we'll get back to discussing things that don't involve theological gobbledygook.

mikeejimbo
2016-08-17, 09:06 AM
Ducks, however. You gotta admit he has a point about ducks.

Cluedrew
2016-08-17, 09:18 AM
No, of course not. I didn't mean to say that humans are particularly evil. Merely that they're as evil as you need them to be.You can do a lot with humans. In many fantasy & sci-fi stories the total variation across the races is less than the variation you can find in humans. In most fantasy (because it is slightly more consistent) you have a 2-3 human cultures, 1-2 elven cultures, 1 dwarf culture and then maybe an undetailed barbaric culture for the villain race if there is one. I can find that many different "cultures" in a big city here on earth.

Now, that is hardly all stories, but the point is... yeah, you can easily get away with just using humans if you want.

LudicSavant
2016-08-17, 09:34 AM
So?

Take a wikipedia refresher course on "natural evil" and realize you're adding nothing to the discussion.

The problem with bringing up "natural evils" is that D&D pretty clearly doesn't acknowledge this philosophy. A lack of intelligence is their existing rationale for why animals such as ducks (*shudders*) aren't Evil, for instance. Protection from Evil doesn't block out hurricanes or ducks. Either way you slice it (agency-based or natural evils), the way D&D is handling alignment is broken.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-17, 09:46 AM
The problem with bringing up "natural evils" is that D&D pretty clearly doesn't acknowledge this philosophy. A lack of intelligence is their existing rationale for why animals such as ducks (*shudders*) aren't Evil, for instance. Either way you slice it (agency-based or natural evils), the way D&D is handling alignment is broken.


I think the problem is that "evil" in D&D is not based on any philosophical starting point, but simply as "evil because we said so" and "evil things are evil".

See also, "detect evil".

LudicSavant
2016-08-17, 10:13 AM
I think the problem is that "evil" in D&D is not based on any philosophical starting point.

I don't think that's the case, so much as that I think different authors had different philosophical starting points, and even with individual authors their starting points were often muddled or poorly thought out.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-17, 10:17 AM
The problem with bringing up "natural evils" is that D&D pretty clearly doesn't acknowledge this philosophy. A lack of intelligence is their existing rationale for why animals such as ducks (*shudders*) aren't Evil, for instance. Protection from Evil doesn't block out hurricanes or ducks. Either way you slice it (agency-based or natural evils), the way D&D is handling alignment is broken.

And?

The peculiarities of one iteration of the alignment system is immaterial to the truth value of my statement.

Grey Watcher
2016-08-17, 10:19 AM
I noticed evil outsiders mentioned above. Do undead count? I much prefer them to be all evil, with the occasional innocent ghost exception. And even with them, the goal is to make them die.

The orcs in my 3.5 campaign are pretty nasty. Warlike, brutish, selfish, and even sadistic. But they're not inherently evil, more like culturally problematic and pushed in a certain direction by sinister forces who want to use them. So I don't suppose they count. But they come close enough that the PCs attack and kill them without a shred of remorse or any holding back. That's a good thing, narrative-wise. Faceless mooks you can mow down to show how badass you are; they are a trope for good reason.
When I want something more ambiguous, I go to hobgoblins. They're smarter, more disciplined, and more mysterious.

Y'see, I read something like this and my mind instantly goes to subverting the whole "evil mortal race" thing. Like, the PCs have been killing Orcs remorselessly all along, only to eventually uncover the Horrible TruthTM about what's driving the orcs and have a big What Have I Done MomentTM. (Assuming your PCs are inclined to such things; many might just shrug and say "Oh well, sucks for them.")


TI once introduced in my short campaign an orc family that's opened up a portable restaurant on the streets. The family consists of the father, the mother, two grown-up children, and two small children. The wife is stronger than the husband in terms of authority, mainly because of her fierce temper - the husband seems a bit afraid of his wife, and the small children try to cheer him up, while the grown-up children just shake their heads.

The family sells grilled meat, hunted fresh in the morning. Stab them with sticks, and sells them to the travellers and adventurers. They also sell potions and medicine crafted from plants that they harvested in their path.

The family carries the old orc ways of travelling and hunting in the wild, but in their case they do it as a favor for the villages which they come across. They may hunt down a Bulette that's been plaguing the lands... and grill it. They may slay the Owlbear that's been a problem for the farmers... and grill it. They know how to live in the wild, including how to cook these bizzare monsters without getting your stomach hurt, and they're making the most out of their knowledge.

The adventurers bought some grilled Bulette from them (soaked in beer and wrapped up in special herb-leaves before grilling to soften the hard meat and add it flavor), as well as some herb ointment (HP recovery) and antidote.

Mechanic-wise, they weren't much more than a normal "potion seller", but the players absolutely loved this family of orcs. After the campaign ended, told me they were their favorite NPCs - an opinion I shared with them. These sorts of stuff can be really fun if done right.

I love this family too. I want an Orc Food Truck in my next campaign.

LudicSavant
2016-08-17, 10:21 AM
I love this family too. I want an Orc Food Truck in my next campaign.

+1. Itinerant monster slayer cooks are awesome. :smallbiggrin:

nrg89
2016-08-17, 11:24 AM
I think the problem is that "evil" in D&D is not based on any philosophical starting point, but simply as "evil because we said so" and "evil things are evil".

See also, "detect evil".

It's not perfect but a vast impovement is the color wheel from Magic The Gathering that Lord Gareth wrote a good post on (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?157001-Alignment-Replacement-The-Color-Wheel-3-5-PEACH). In this case, you would find ducks with "detect green" and classic D&D demons with either "detect black" or "detect red". My rakshasa are completely black, for example, but the vast majority of people have color combinations and maybe one dominant.

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 12:04 PM
It's not perfect but a vast impovement is the color wheel from Magic The Gathering that Lord Gareth wrote a good post on (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?157001-Alignment-Replacement-The-Color-Wheel-3-5-PEACH). In this case, you would find ducks with "detect green" and classic D&D demons with either "detect black" or "detect red". My rakshasa are completely black, for example, but the vast majority of people have color combinations and maybe one dominant.

Uh?

The MtG color wheel is, for the most part, consistent in its writing. So if you were using it as an example of consistency then that is a fair point. The color wheel is more consistent than WotC's writing of the alignment system.

However the MtG color wheel is a projection of a 5 axis system onto a 2D image. The colors themselves are the result of the projection and are not part of the axis system itself. To demonstrate this, if I flip White around the Y axis I will sunder Red and Black and get 2 new colors (Amoral+Impulse & Chaos+Parasitism). So to reach completeness one has to step back from the color wheel and look at the 5D system.

However that degree of incompleteness is fine for an allegiance system, albeit not for a value system. The color wheel being an Amoral system should go without saying, so if you want to have the system cover morality then the 5D system is insufficient.

Coidzor
2016-08-17, 12:07 PM
No, of course not. I didn't mean to say that humans are particularly evil. Merely that they're as evil as you need them to be.

I think what I"m trying to say is, I don't really see the point in having alignments attached to races at all. You can get all the evil you could reasonably need just from the PCs' own races.

Oh, then yes, I agree completely.

I like a nice horde of demonically infused barbarians that sold their souls for a shot at conquest or a conspiracy of alien entities that should not be able to exist seeking to make all intelligent life into the chattel so they can force their lost timeline back into existence, deleting the one that currently exists every now and then, though, because it's just more obviously fantastical than a bunch of corrupt businessmen and politicians that abuse their power and can't be touched by conventional law enforcement or an ordinary military threat that half-competent governments would be able to deal with to some extent.

nrg89
2016-08-17, 12:21 PM
However the MtG color wheel is a projection of a 5 axis system onto a 2D image. The colors themselves are the result of the projection and are not part of the axis system itself. To demonstrate this, if I flip White around the Y axis I will sunder Red and Black and get 2 new colors (Amoral+Impulse & Chaos+Parasitism). So to reach completeness one has to step back from the color wheel and look at the 5D system.

However that degree of incompleteness is fine for an allegiance system, albeit not for a value system.

It's not meant to be a scale, as in more or less black, but rather "which of these set of values do you pick the most values from". That's why you have combinations, wanting the state to have a monopoly on violence is white but total freedom of speech is red.
WotC admits that these philosophies have many internal conflicts (why would two white planeswalkers duel if not?) and that they shouldn't be a scale.

For gameplay purposes I think it's fine for a value system if the alternative is the nine alignments in D&D. It's very hard for me to envision a conflict between paladins, unless one of them falls for temptation, when both are lawful good. If they're both white, one could be a straight up fascist and the other could be a missionary.

Satinavian
2016-08-17, 12:33 PM
I have no problems with conflicts between paladins at all. Let them be bound to (mostly lawful) orders/churches/kingdoms waging war for example. There also needs to be no clear side in the wrong but that is most often the case.

I can see use of the color wheel.

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 12:55 PM
It's not meant to be a scale, as in more or less black, but rather "which of these set of values do you pick the most values from".That's why you have combinations, wanting the state to have a monopoly on violence is white but total freedom of speech is red.
WotC admits that these philosophies have many internal conflicts (why would two white planeswalkers duel if not?) and that they shouldn't be a scale.

For gameplay purposes I think it's fine for a value system if the alternative is the nine alignments in D&D. It's very hard for me to envision a conflict between paladins, unless one of them falls for temptation, when both are lawful good. If they're both white, one could be a straight up fascist and the other could be a missionary.

A) Colors vs Values
As I detailed, the 5 colors are merely an illusion resulting from the projection of the 5 value axes onto a 2D ring. As such the MtG system can either be used as a color scale, or as a 5D value system. Your specific example takes the Order vs Chaos axis and then chooses to adopt portions of each extreme. I suppose that is an area where even the 5D model is incomplete.

B) Internal Conflicts
You can see the internal conflicts within White (fascist vs missionary). Would it surprise you if I said I can see such internal conflicts under both the MtG system and the nine alignment system? Paladin threads are surprisingly great places to see all sorts of different virtues being championed and how those prime virtues both shape the Paladins and put them into internal conflict.

c) Amoral
If you look at the detailed color wheel(the one with the visible 10 values) you will see that White and Black fall on the Moral vs Amoral value axis. This axis is not about who is right, but rather about how they see the world. Those that side with Moral believe in good & evil and seek to be good. Those that side with Amoral don't believe in good & evil. As a result there is nothing in the color wheel to address morality. Honestly this was a great choice for creating an allegiance system, however if one is looking for a system to describe moral judgements then it is not a good fit.


The Color Wheel is a great system, that does not work for everything.

nrg89
2016-08-17, 02:14 PM
I have no problems with conflicts between paladins at all. Let them be bound to (mostly lawful) orders/churches/kingdoms waging war for example.

Sure, that works, but how would you for example explain internal conflicts? That's what I have a lot of problems with under the nine alignments (not saying it's impossible) but if both are white, no problem. A color is only a collection of values, just like an ideology, but there is a lot of debate within the ideologies of which values win when they come into conflict. The old "does the ends justify the means" argument for example, but also what's practical and who to cooperate with. Orzhov (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/playing-their-own-rules-2006-03-27) is no doubt white, even though they are also black.




A) Colors vs Values
As I detailed, the 5 colors are merely an illusion resulting from the projection of the 5 value axes onto a 2D ring. As such the MtG system can either be used as a color scale, or as a 5D value system. Your specific example takes the Order vs Chaos axis and then chooses to adopt portions of each extreme. I suppose that is an area where even the 5D model is incomplete.

There can be some scales within the colors, such as "how free speech are we really?" and "how much control are we really comfortable giving to our government?" but the directions are somewhat consistent. Never said it was perfect, I only compare it to the nine alignments.


B) Internal Conflicts
You can see the internal conflicts within White (fascist vs missionary). Would it surprise you if I said I can see such internal conflicts under both the MtG system and the nine alignment system? Paladin threads are surprisingly great places to see all sorts of different virtues being championed and how those prime virtues both shape the Paladins and put them into internal conflict. Sure, but they're far less flexible. A paladin who's good aligned authority issues a new law that goes against, for example, the missionary mindset will be enforced without much questioning by a missionary paladin. It depends a lot on how much flexibility you allow, the color wheel assumes flexibility and even combinations.


c) Amoral
If you look at the detailed color wheel(the one with the visible 10 values) you will see that White and Black fall on the Moral vs Amoral value axis. This axis is not about who is right, but rather about how they see the world.

Exactly, and that's why I like it. A lawful good paladin of Pelor would fight a lawful evil cleric of Nerull but they are both fanatics, in my honest opinion. The difference is which boss they're taking orders from. "I was just following orders" have been said to humble oneself when called a hero but also to excuse genocide. What's morally right though is up to the players, not the color wheel, it makes the assumption that there is no one arbiter of morality. So...

Those that side with Moral believe in good & evil and seek to be good. Those that side with Amoral don't believe in good & evil. As a result there is nothing in the color wheel to address morality. Honestly this was a great choice for creating an allegiance system, however if one is looking for a system to describe moral judgements then it is not a good fit.

This is not what I'm advocating the color wheel for. It describes outlook, not morals.



The Color Wheel is a great system, that does not work for everything.

Completely agree.

Piedmon_Sama
2016-08-17, 02:29 PM
Nah, that sounds too simple/boring for me. I like my races to have complex relationships with room for historical emnities but also unlikely alliances, periods of truce, peaceful migrations, etc. For example, you might have one orc tribe in a given region allied with some local human farmers, acting as their protectors against other orc tribes in exchange for a regular tribute of livestock and produce, or orc exiles acting as mercenaries in a big city. You might have human arms merchants selling weapons to various competing orc tribes, or an exiled elven sorcerer joining with a tribe of orcs for protection while acting as an adviser/walking artillery platform for their chief. I don't really worry about alignment in my games unless it comes up as I find it simplifies things too much for my liking.

TheYell
2016-08-17, 02:50 PM
Orca dolphins kill baby whales for sport. Only eat the tongue and leave the rest to rot. I think they know what they're doing.

hamishspence
2016-08-17, 02:55 PM
That's an overstatement - they eat the tongue first, because it is the softest exposed part. That doesn't mean they never eat other parts, or that "sport" is the entire motivation. Or, that they only eat baby whales - the mammal-eating orca variant (transients) eat sick adult whales as well.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-17, 02:59 PM
That's an overstatement - they eat the tongue first, because it is the softest exposed part. That doesn't mean they never eat other parts, or that "sport" is the entire motivation. Or, that they only eat baby whales - the mammal-eating orca variant (transients) eat sick adult whales as while.


Wait, it's the transient orcas that hunt other cetaceans?

...

So they're orca murder-hobos?

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 03:07 PM
Sure, that works, but how would you for example explain internal conflicts? That's what I have a lot of problems with under the nine alignments (not saying it's impossible) but if both are white, no problem. A color is only a collection of values, just like an ideology, but there is a lot of debate within the ideologies of which values win when they come into conflict. The old "does the ends justify the means" argument for example, but also what's practical and who to cooperate with. Orzhov (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/playing-their-own-rules-2006-03-27) is no doubt white, even though they are also black.

Sure, but they're far less flexible. A paladin who's good aligned authority issues a new law that goes against, for example, the missionary mindset will be enforced without much questioning by a missionary paladin. It depends a lot on how much flexibility you allow, the color wheel assumes flexibility and even combinations.

Wait, why wouldn't the Missionary Paladin object to the seemingly erroneous law passed by a fallible superior? What about if the seemingly erroneous law was passed by someone not above the Paladin? I have seen LG Paladins have conflict over what objective was important, it seems trivial to imagine conflicts between valid means of achieving an objective.

I don't mean to be rude, but I think the lack of flexibility might be on your end.



There can be some scales within the colors, such as "how free speech are we really?" and "how much control are we really comfortable giving to our government?" but the directions are somewhat consistent. Never said it was perfect, I only compare it to the nine alignments.
I am not sure if I got my message across. Take the color wheel:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/taste/mc3_pie.jpg

Now look at that outer wheel. Notice that it is 5 pairs of opposites in the shape of a 5 pointed star?
(Order-Chaos, Impulse-Logic, Technology-Instinct, Interdependence-Parasitism, Amorality-Morality)
What would happen if those 5 lines were arranged differently in another 5 pointed star? This is what I meant when I said the Color Wheel is a projection of a 5D object onto a 2D surface.

However your are responding with pointing out even further detail within one of those 5 axes.


Completely agree.
:)

nrg89
2016-08-17, 04:22 PM
Wait, why wouldn't the Missionary Paladin object to the seemingly erroneous law passed by a fallible superior?

It admittedly depends on what's prioritized the highest for this paladin; law or good. D&D acts like they are two orthogonal axis, but they're not, and once that's apparent you scratch your head wondering what happens. Whatever action the person takes has to be decided upon as a lawful, chaotic, good, evil or neutral action because it mechanically matters. Someone might throw down a "holy word" after many of these decisions have been made, and then it's up to the DM to judge you.
The color wheel offers more player empowerment because it's more consistent and it assumes inner conflicts and pragmatism to some degree, and combinations.


I don't mean to be rude, but I think the lack of flexibility might be on your end.

And that's the problem; how flexible am I, the DM with these alignments and what's my basis for them? If I think respecting personal property is the most important virtue Robin Hood is a villain.


Now look at that outer wheel. Notice that it is 5 pairs of opposites in the shape of a 5 pointed star?
(Order-Chaos, Impulse-Logic, Technology-Instinct, Interdependence-Parasitism, Amorality-Morality)
What would happen if those 5 lines were arranged differently in another 5 pointed star? This is what I meant when I said the Color Wheel is a projection of a 5D object onto a 2D surface.

I understand what you're saying, but I disagree. They have significant overlap which is the reason why blue and black work together while white and blue work together. If they were meant to navigate a space with 5 completely orthogonal axis I would say you have a point, but I see them as a groups of values commonly shared within the respective ideologies. Some can be modeled as a scale, but I argue that overall they work more like sets (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory) and you would be described with the color (or color combination) that you have the largest intersection with. For example, wether or not morality exists is a binary opinion, however when it actually applies is the issue. If someone is playing within the rules of chess, is there such a thing as an immoral move? I would say "no", and that's not really a scale.

Raimun
2016-08-17, 04:41 PM
Why is this topic discussed all the time?

I'm pretty sure that with the amount of discussion this topic has generated, it has been already sorted out. Once and for all.

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 05:10 PM
It admittedly depends on what's prioritized the highest for this paladin; law or good. D&D acts like they are two orthogonal axis, but they're not, and once that's apparent you scratch your head wondering what happens. Whatever action the person takes has to be decided upon as a lawful, chaotic, good, evil or neutral action because it mechanically matters. Someone might throw down a "holy word" after many of these decisions have been made, and then it's up to the DM to judge you.
The color wheel offers more player empowerment because it's more consistent and it assumes inner conflicts and pragmatism to some degree, and combinations.
Which good? Two Paladins that prioritize Good over Law do not necessarily agree on how to rank the virtues. One might consider it more important to shield the weak than to nurture the goodwill within and another paladin might disagree. However this may be a moot point (see below).


And that's the problem; how flexible am I, the DM with these alignments and what's my basis for them? If I think respecting personal property is the most important virtue Robin Hood is a villain.
Ah. I did not know you were making a personal criticism. I thought you were making an universal criticism. While I can provide counterexamples to the universal criticism, it would be the epitome of foolishness to try to tell you that your were wrong about your own thoughts (and thus not something I would do).

While I can easily see internal conflicts in both systems, the systems you can see internal conflicts in are the systems you can see internal conflicts in.


I understand what you're saying, but I disagree.
Ah, then we are at an impasse because we are talking about different things when we talk about the color wheel.


Why is this topic discussed all the time?

I'm pretty sure that with the amount of discussion this topic has generated, it has been already sorted out. Once and for all.
Perhaps both the Memetic lifecycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Memetic_lifecycle:_transmission.2C_retention) and Signaling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory) would explain the longevity of this topic?

nrg89
2016-08-17, 06:04 PM
Which good? Two Paladins that prioritize Good over Law do not necessarily agree on how to rank the virtues. One might consider it more important to shield the weak than to nurture the goodwill within and another paladin might disagree. However this may be a moot point (see below). Absolutely, but which virtues encompass "good" is not without debate and that's the problem. The nine alignments mechanically relies on consensus about what's good among the players and the DM. Now, is there always a consensus about what's logical? Nope, but it's a far more well defined concept for discussion.


Ah. I did not know you were making a personal criticism. I thought you were making an universal criticism. While I can provide counterexamples to the universal criticism, it would be the epitome of foolishness to try to tell you that your were wrong about your own thoughts (and thus not something I would do).

My statements are:
1. The nine alignments rely more on DM fiat than the color wheel because "good" is a much more vague concept.
2. The color wheel represents mostly sets, not orthogonsl axis mapping a 5D space, and the reasons I provide for that is the overlap, the mutual exclusion, the peaceful coexistence and the binary nature of some of the stances within the colors. Some of the stances are scales but far from all of them.
3. When the alignments are a component of the game mechanics I argue that a clearer, more predictable system empowers the players.

I don't see how you can't challenge these statements through reasoning.


While I can easily see internal conflicts in both systems, the systems you can see internal conflicts in are the systems you can see internal conflicts in.

And that's my point; if I'm DMing, I have my view of what's good. It's very hard (not impossible, I've never said that) to see my own morals clash. It happens, all the time, but then I reconsider them and either decide on compromises or change them.
I have to decide which one of two characters, both equally respectful of their authorities and dogmatic, is evil and which one's good. And sure, some DMs allow players to weigh in or ask around rather than deciding what's good or evil by themselves, but this is a game, not a philosophy classroom. The rulings cannot be perfect, but they can be better and easier to reach.



Ah, then we are at an impasse because we are talking about different things when we talk about the color wheel.

Your argument is "doesn't the color wheel look like five axes projected on a 2D space?" and my argument is "it looks like a nice graphic, but some of those stances have significant overlap, aren't really scalable, are mutually exclusive or can cooperate peacefully so I think sets are a better model than a 5-space". Provide a better argument and I might see things better from your perspective.

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 06:41 PM
Absolutely, but which virtues encompass "good" is not without debate and that's the problem. The nine alignments mechanically relies on consensus about what's good among the players and the DM. Now, is there always a consensus about what's logical? Nope, but it's a far more well defined concept for discussion.
Okay, so it sounds like you agree that the nine alignments have internal conflict. I think that closes this part.



My statements are:
1. The nine alignments rely more on DM fiat than the color wheel because "good" is a much more vague concept.
2. The color wheel represents mostly sets, not orthogonsl axis mapping a 5D space, and the reasons I provide for that is the overlap, the mutual exclusion, the peaceful coexistence and the binary nature of some of the stances within the colors. Some of the stances are scales but far from all of them.
3. When the alignments are a component of the game mechanics I argue that a clearer, more predictable system empowers the players.

I don't see how you can't challenge these statements through reasoning.

The statement I was addressing in this first half dealt with (poorly paraphrased) "White has internal conflict by LG does not". I think that part is closed.

As far as the 5D space argument, I think our initial positions are to distant for me to feel comfortable with the amount of derailing I would have to do to address that distance. That is what I meant by impasse.

As such we return to the statement we both agreed on:
The Color Wheel is a great system, that does not work for everything.

Cluedrew
2016-08-17, 08:29 PM
http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/taste/mc3_pie.jpgThat image has more stuff in it than I knew about the five colour morality, nice graphic. Personally (from what little I previously knew about the system) I always thought White vs. Black was more community vs. individuality than moral vs. immoral... which gets kind of close to good vs. evil. I liked them all cross cutting morality.

Now if I may quote a statistics fellow whose name I have forgotten: All models are wrong, some models are useful.

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 08:58 PM
That image has more stuff in it than I knew about the five colour morality, nice graphic. Personally (from what little I previously knew about the system) I always thought White vs. Black was more community vs. individuality than moral vs. immoral... which gets kind of close to good vs. evil. I liked them all cross cutting morality.

Now if I may quote a statistics fellow whose name I have forgotten: All models are wrong, some models are useful.

Correction: Moral vs Amoral not Moral vs Immoral. Black is not evil and White is not good. White thinks it is good while Black thinks good & evil are fictitious. Both colors include individuals you and I would call evil and individuals you and I would call good.

Bestigle
2016-08-17, 09:08 PM
Serpentfolk/Yuan-ti, serpentine dragons and a few aquatic races. My campaigns a tropical sailing archipelago, and the Serpentfolk (long story short- I use Pathfinder but treasure my copy of Serpent Kingdoms), are trying to manipulate events and enslave mankind, the serpentine dragons are almost entirely devoted to Lambton, my world's dragon deity of revenge, destruction and decay, and the aquatic races (Deep Ones, Sahuagin, etc.) are all pretty much a load of kraken, aboleth and Cthulhu worshipers. I tend to steer clear from pure evil races unless I think that it's so deeply ingrained in the psyche that they only have one mindset (aboleths, most merfolk, and serpentfolk), or they've got some ancestral or divine calling towards evil (linnorms and landwyrms).

There are a few creatures that are so alien that they might be considered evil, such as the proteans, fey, inevitables and lots of outsiders, but with the exception of demons, daemons and devils I don't usually consider those guys to be pure evil in my world's lore. Just personal preference mostly.

Blackhawk748
2016-08-17, 09:18 PM
As most have said: No. I very much do Evil Cultures though, far more interesting.

My few exceptions are Undead (i've got several reasons why mindless undead are evil), Outsiders, and your typical Aberrations. Everybody else gets to be whoever they be.

Now im not against "99.9% of this race is Evil", i just want a reason and i feel that the setting Midnight did a decent job of it. In that setting Orcs are evil because the Evil god that made them is using something like low level mind control to keep them where he wants. Now, occasionally, an Orc is immune to this, and they get to have agency, otherwise they get to just be good little murder machines.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-17, 09:41 PM
In that setting Orcs are evil because the Evil god that made them is using something like low level mind control to keep them where he wants. Now, occasionally, an Orc is immune to this, and they get to have agency, otherwise they get to just be good little murder machines.

Which is a can of worms all its own. If you have a race that's Evil because a god created them that way, or worse yet because a god is actively applying consistent magical mental manipulation, do they really count as Evil? They don't have the free will to choose their actions, so can they actually be held accountable for them? (Leaving aside the natural evils philosophy for a moment, both for the sake of argument and because I don't at all subscribe to it.)

Cluedrew
2016-08-17, 09:44 PM
Correction: Moral vs Amoral not Moral vs Immoral. Black is not evil and White is not good. White thinks it is good while Black thinks good & evil are fictitious. Both colors include individuals you and I would call evil and individuals you and I would call good.That was a typo. I still think it more closely aligns with good and evil than community and individuality. At least from what I've seen of it so far.

nrg89
2016-08-17, 10:25 PM
As such we return to the statement we both agreed on:
The Color Wheel is a great system, that does not work for everything.

I can shake hands and agree to that. :)


That was a typo. I still think it more closely aligns with good and evil than community and individuality. At least from what I've seen of it so far.

Individualims vs community is just one of the conflicts between White and Black, morality vs amorality is slso one.

One could describe a mutual fund manager obsessed with becoming the best as a Black individual since capitalism is very Black, but he's helping a lot of senior citizens grow their pensions. He's not doing a charity by any means, but he's not exactly driven by making people's lives worse either. But if you ask him to maybe donate his profits to charity anonymously, because that's a very moral thing to do, he might laugh in your face and say that there is no such thing as "the right thing" andthen donates publicly so he can take credit. Yes, this is a cartoonish portrait of a Wall Street guy to illustrate my point.

A White person could be a police officer in a theocratic government who hauls people off to jail for not observing the sabbath, since his faith is serious business and even the most minor infraction cannot be tolerated if people are to understand that his god is law. Not obeying his god is immoral, and must be punished.
A White fanatic believes morality exists but it (often) has an external and rigorous morality. And if you don't agree with it, he doesn't want to hear another word from you because you're a part of the problem.

Narcissism is Black, but I wouldn't call tenagers who get a lot of followers on Instagram evil either.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-17, 10:43 PM
I can shake hands and agree to that. :)



Individualims vs community is just one of the conflicts between White and Black, morality vs amorality is slso one.

One could describe a mutual fund manager obsessed with becoming the best as a Black individual since capitalism is very Black, but he's helping a lot of senior citizens grow their pensions. He's not doing a charity by any means, but he's not exactly driven by making people's lives worse either. But if you ask him to maybe donate his profits to charity anonymously, because that's a very moral thing to do, he might laugh in your face and say that there is no such thing as "the right thing" andthen donates publicly so he can take credit. Yes, this is a cartoonish portrait of a Wall Street guy to illustrate my point.

A White person could be a police officer in a theocratic government who hauls people off to jail for not observing the sabbath, since his faith is serious business and even the most minor infraction cannot be tolerated if people are to understand that his god is law. Not obeying his god is immoral, and must be punished.

Narcissism is Black, but I wouldn't call tenagers who get a lot of followers on Instagram evil either.
... This post makes me feel kind of gross. Granted it's the color choice's fault, not yours, but still.

It's a lot less noticeable in the typical white=good and black=evil setup, if only because the more obvious cultural association is the safety of bright places versus the fear of the night. Since that doesn't really apply to this system... Eugh.

OldTrees1
2016-08-17, 11:26 PM
That was a typo. I still think it more closely aligns with good and evil than community and individuality. At least from what I've seen of it so far.

That is very strange. Incredulous even (as in I literally am having trouble believing you). I would think "Good & Evil exist" vs "Good & Evil are fictions" to have literally 0 correlation with "Good" vs "Evil". Note that is not negative correlation or figuratively zero correlation, but actually literally zero correlation. Thus anything else would have equal or greater correlation with "Good" vs "Evil" (in the case of negative correlation reverse the order to reach positive correlation).

Darth Ultron
2016-08-17, 11:56 PM
Which is a can of worms all its own. If you have a race that's Evil because a god created them that way, or worse yet because a god is actively applying consistent magical mental manipulation, do they really count as Evil? They don't have the free will to choose their actions, so can they actually be held accountable for them? (Leaving aside the natural evils philosophy for a moment, both for the sake of argument and because I don't at all subscribe to it.)

So is this true for good races created by good gods too? The elves are god-made in lots of settings, and elf gods are good, so do elves not have free will too?

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 01:09 AM
So is this true for good races created by good gods too? The elves are god-made in lots of settings, and elf gods are good, so do elves not have free will too?
The point isn't if they're made by Good gods, the point is if they're "made to be Good." A Good god is perfectly capable (and indeed, often willing) to make a being with no particular leanings towards Good, Evil, or Neutrality, and leave it to that individual free-willed being to choose Good, Evil, or Neutrality for itself. Same on the Law/Chaos axis, for that matter.

But to address your question, yes. The further away from unbiased the initially created creature is on the alignment axes (which is, I must remind you, different from being biased towards Neutral) the less accountable it is for acting within its alignment. A demon that is, in a very real sense, programmed to be Evil by the cosmos, is, in my view, so far outside of having free-willed control of its actions that it cannot be considered morally evil for them. Now, the unfortunate reality is that this doesn't mean we can just let them run around and it'll be peachy keen - they may not technically be liable for what they do, but they are an active threat to everything around them, and the same enforced lack of will means that you can, disturbing as it sounds, probably consider them more as intelligent pests than actual agents of anything, and extermination is probably the only option. Naturally, the further down you go on the "cosmic programming" chart, the more accountable you are for being unable to resist your impulses. Orcs in most settings are "created with Evil leanings, but mostly free-willed." I'd hold them to a somewhat lower standard than a human for getting into, say, a Neutral afterlife, if I was the God in charge of deciding who went where, but aside from that I wouldn't treat them too differently; likewise, elves, created with natural leanings towards Good, would have to stand out from their peers as much as Good humans stand out from Neutral humans to have displayed the free-willed goodness to get into a Good afterlife.

That's just me though. I'm sure some people would feel weird about condemning people for being born with supernaturally superior moral compasses, but ultimately, moral judgments can only be passed for actions that were taken willfully, and the less free your will is, the less willful your actions can be considered, plain and simple. It's like with my "brain wiring" example; in the same way that taking a hero, wiring his brain up to a mind control device against his will, and making him slaughter civilians doesn't leave the hero any less good, a murderer being forcibly controlled to act altruistically isn't actually a better person for it.

Coidzor
2016-08-18, 03:05 AM
If a being that is literally made of evil and exists solely to do evil and cause others to do evil doesn't ping as evil, the problem is not with them but with the lens you are using to make that decision.

In this case, you've gone past robust enough to withstand 15 minutes of an Intro to Philosophy discussion group and into, you've overthought things completely territory.

PersonMan
2016-08-18, 04:31 AM
I think the idea is that a being made of Evil would ping because of the Evil it's made of, but wouldn't be Evil in a moral sense.

veti
2016-08-18, 04:33 AM
Which is a can of worms all its own. If you have a race that's Evil because a god created them that way, or worse yet because a god is actively applying consistent magical mental manipulation, do they really count as Evil? They don't have the free will to choose their actions, so can they actually be held accountable for them? (Leaving aside the natural evils philosophy for a moment, both for the sake of argument and because I don't at all subscribe to it.)

"Accountable" is a red herring in this case. Nobody worries about whether a rabid dog is "accountable" for its actions: the important thing is to stop it from biting anyone, whatever it takes to do that.

And if this hypothetical race doesn't have "free will" (whatever the heck that is, and I've still yet to see a coherent definition but that's a whole separate thread), what difference does that make? If it's doing destructive and sadistic things, then it's Good to prevent those things from happening - much as it's Good to rescue a child from a house fire. The fire isn't malicious, but it still needs to be stopped.

PersonMan
2016-08-18, 05:20 AM
And if this hypothetical race doesn't have "free will" (whatever the heck that is, and I've still yet to see a coherent definition but that's a whole separate thread), what difference does that make?

The difference is that it isn't morally Evil.

Necroticplague
2016-08-18, 05:39 AM
Not really. I never really saw a reason to include an arbitrary 'evil' group in general. Everything in real life has reasons for doing what they do, no reason everything in fantasy can't. Unintelligent creatures are either following their programming (golems, zombies, skeletons), or else acting on their instincts (animals, unintelligent magical beasts). Either way, they have a reason (territory, orders, hunger) for what they do. Intelligent enemies are also relatively rational reasons. Just because they have reasons, doesn't mean they can't still be antagonistic. It just means the antagonistic group has goals that run counter to the party's. And heck, just look at the rational reasons people have come up with for crap in real life. Fantastic analogous to such can still quite reasonably exist. Doomdsay cults that are trying a bit harder than average to bring about what they foresee, various stripes of exploitative greed in every form, sheer incompetence or forgetfulness resulting in catastophies, the possibilities for antagonism are still endless even without a need to just paint a 'designated enemy' brush over entire races.

Ossian77
2016-08-18, 05:49 AM
to me, even the worst bad-guys get some degree of gray. If I have to pick one, I would say most of what is in the Lords Of Madness is just EVIL with little redeeming features. Evil implies intelligence, malevolence, the ability to plan harm and choose to inflict it, whether it is for utilitarian purposes or just for s**ts and giggles.

Illithids, Beholders, Aboleths: these are pretty much the "evil incarnate" type of creatures.

Cluedrew
2016-08-18, 07:20 AM
Individualims vs community is just one of the conflicts between White and Black, morality vs amorality is slso one. [...]
That is very strange. Incredulous even (as in I literally am having trouble believing you).Do you guys have links to more complete write ups of the five colour system? I'm really working off of hearsay right now. (I tried looking it up but I keep getting deck-building strategies for multi-coloured decks and the first discworld novel. And the Alignment replacement thread surprised that is so high.)Also I may be wrong in any number of ways, but I would like to say I am not lying.

GloatingSwine
2016-08-18, 07:52 AM
So what do you guys think about the concept of thoroughly evil monsters? Do you use them in your game?

I think you can have more interesting stories when the antagonists' reason isn't "because evil".


If you have a race that people think are all evil because they only encounter them rarely and in certain contexts you can do more with them (eg. Orcs live across the sea to the north and hire themselves out as mercenaries in southern lands, people only really encounter them as sailors ashore or in mercenary bands so they think all orcs are drunk and looking for a fight, even if the actual orcs are no worse than any other sailors and mercenaries).

PersonMan
2016-08-18, 08:25 AM
Do you guys have links to more complete write ups of the five colour system? I'm really working off of hearsay right now. (I tried looking it up but I keep getting deck-building strategies for multi-coloured decks and the first discworld novel. And the Alignment replacement thread surprised that is so high.)Also I may be wrong in any number of ways, but I would like to say I am not lying.

I found this (http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/myers-briggs-and-jungian-cognitive-functions/55078-magic-gathering-color-type-profiles.html), this (http://mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Color), and this (https://www.reddit.com/r/colorpie/comments/3wmw24/philosophy_and_mtg_colors_as_philosophical/), though none are official Wizards writeups.

Psyren
2016-08-18, 09:01 AM
Do you guys have links to more complete write ups of the five colour system? I'm really working off of hearsay right now. (I tried looking it up but I keep getting deck-building strategies for multi-coloured decks and the first discworld novel. And the Alignment replacement thread surprised that is so high.)Also I may be wrong in any number of ways, but I would like to say I am not lying.


I found this (http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/myers-briggs-and-jungian-cognitive-functions/55078-magic-gathering-color-type-profiles.html), this (http://mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Color), and this (https://www.reddit.com/r/colorpie/comments/3wmw24/philosophy_and_mtg_colors_as_philosophical/), though none are official Wizards writeups.

MaRo did some very in-depth and official write-ups on color philosophy years ago, then updated them all last year. Given his oversight role, it's tough to get more official than that.

The Great White Way (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/great-white-way-revisited-2015-07-13)
True Blue (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/true-blue-revisited-2015-07-20)
In the Black (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/black-revisited-2015-07-27)
Seeing Red (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/seeing-red-revisited-2015-08-03)
It's Not Easy Being Green (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/its-not-easy-being-green-revisited-2015-08-10)

There are also articles for the dual and triple color combinations (both allied and enemy) that might be of interest, but I find those are also a bit more setting-specific. (Ravnica and Alara respectively.)

mikeejimbo
2016-08-18, 09:22 AM
Isn't Red more the color of Individuality?

nrg89
2016-08-18, 09:22 AM
Do you guys have links to more complete write ups of the five colour system?

Sure thing. The writing that got me intrigued by the color wheel as an alignment system was the articles written on the colors by the head designer, Mark Rosewater. He made these articles to start with, explaining the colors (and, admittedly, there's a few paragraphs that gets into the game mechanics but the vast majority of the articles are about philosophy). Theres one for white (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/great-white-way-revisited-2015-07-13), black (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/black-revisited-2015-07-27), blue (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/true-blue-revisited-2015-07-20), red (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/seeing-red-revisited-2015-08-03) and green (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/its-not-easy-being-green-revisited-2015-08-10). The articles I linked are the updated ones. Much later on he did an article series where he interviewed the colors and each had to answer questions about their ideology and their opinions about the others (and market a new set, because hey, the man's not doing his job if you don't want to buy some cardboard afterwards) and it's feels like an interview with Karl Marx or Ayn Rand. There's one for white (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/peace-love-and-understanding-2008-10-06), blue (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/striving-perfection-2008-11-17), black (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/looking-out-number-one-2008-10-17), red (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/following-your-heart-2008-11-26) and green (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/searching-within-2008-11-03).

For the color pairs he did 10 articles about the color combinations' philosophies. There's links to them in the in
the interview articles, but the links don't always work so you might to need some Google fu (for Orzhov, the black white, try "mtg orzhov week" and look after the one written by Mark Rosewater) or searching through his article archives.

He gives examples of heroes and villains in each of the articles and MTG has villains in every color.

Black's most iconic villain is Yawgmoth (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Yawgmoth), leader of the Phyrexians. He reads like a Mengele-like scientist but who isn't doing it to further understanding but to possess more power. He enslaves an entire plane and wants to reconquer his home.
One of Black's heroes are Toshiro Umezawa (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Toshiro_Umezawa) who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time but played a very decisive role in ending the war that could've destroyed the world. He is a typical antihero, he can do the right thing, but just like Han solo he asks "what's in it for me, kid?". This war was started by the actions of a White character, by the way...

White's more recent villain is Elesh Norn (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Elesh_Norn). She fits the religious fanatic trope very nicely.
A White hero would be Elspeth (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Elspeth_Tirel), a noble knight.


Also I may be wrong in any number of ways, but I would like to say I am not lying.

You're not. I hope the links I gave you will help. :smallsmile:

Psyren
2016-08-18, 09:42 AM
Isn't Red more the color of Individuality?

No, that's Black. ("Does Not Play Well With Others.")

Red is Freedom, which is similar (and one reason the two get along so well - and of course, the affinity for mass destruction helps too.) But Red's impulsive and impatient nature means they're fine working with others if it gets them what they want faster. This is why they also get along with Green, and why Black doesn't.

OldTrees1
2016-08-18, 10:46 AM
Also I may be wrong in any number of ways, but I would like to say I am not lying.

Your post appearing incredulous to me is saying something about my ability to believe the post, it is not saying something about your honesty.

As far as the particular subject of Amorality. You could also look up Moral Error theory (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/) and things related to it. (A tiny bit of section 1 and all of section 4)

RossN
2016-08-18, 10:55 AM
I don't think it is mutually exclusive to have Orcs as something other than capital 'E' evil while still using them as antagonistic sword fodder for the PCs.

The Sea Peoples, the Huns, the Vandals, the Conquistadors, the Barbary Pirates. Real history is full of groups of normal human beings that have violently raided other cultures without provocation. The Orcs can still have a rich vibrant culture but if the only way the people from the culture the PC meet them is as marauders, then they can be treated as marauders.

mikeejimbo
2016-08-18, 12:44 PM
No, that's Black. ("Does Not Play Well With Others.")

Red is Freedom, which is similar (and one reason the two get along so well - and of course, the affinity for mass destruction helps too.) But Red's impulsive and impatient nature means they're fine working with others if it gets them what they want faster. This is why they also get along with Green, and why Black doesn't.

That makes sense, but I also think that it's possible to value individuality without being selfish, and that's the philosophy that I always felt Red espoused. Sure there's overlap between that and Black, but they are allies.

nrg89
2016-08-18, 01:04 PM
That makes sense, but I also think that it's possible to value individuality without being selfish, and that's the philosophy that I always felt Red espoused. Sure there's overlap between that and Black, but they are allies.

Yes, Red doesn't want the law limiting the individual's rights but Black doesn't want the law limiting it's rights. There's a difference, but not that big, which is why they get along very well.

mikeejimbo
2016-08-18, 01:08 PM
Yeah, that's why I always liked Red/Blue, but Izzet a good combination?

OldTrees1
2016-08-18, 01:21 PM
Yes, Red doesn't want the law limiting the individual's rights but Black doesn't want the law limiting it's rights. There's a difference, but not that big, which is why they get along very well.

Parasitism vs Interdependence
Chaos vs Order

I don't think either Red or Black has a dominant stake in individuality.

Also remember Black is opposed to Moral Law(Amorality vs Morality), Law of Man(Order) is only 3 steps away from Black and thus almost a neutral consideration.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-18, 01:34 PM
"Accountable" is a red herring in this case. Nobody worries about whether a rabid dog is "accountable" for its actions: the important thing is to stop it from biting anyone, whatever it takes to do that.

And if this hypothetical race doesn't have "free will" (whatever the heck that is, and I've still yet to see a coherent definition but that's a whole separate thread), what difference does that make? If it's doing destructive and sadistic things, then it's Good to prevent those things from happening - much as it's Good to rescue a child from a house fire. The fire isn't malicious, but it still needs to be stopped.
I actually addressed this very point. Demons are similarly non-malicious, and really shouldn't even be treated as intelligent outside of expecting them to make plans. Nonetheless, they are dangerous, like a particularly strong and cunning pest, and they need to be exterminated like any pest if they're presenting an active threat.

But accountability is far from a red herring in a fantasy world, especially for games like D&D where the power scales as high as it does. There are considerations for which afterlife a creature should go to when it dies, whether or not you should try to contain them and give them a living situation where they aren't a threat rather than just executing them outright, and whether or not magic could be used to remove the cosmic influence from them so they can finally make their own individual choices and determine their own moral identity.

In addition, it can add a layer of sympathy to, say, orcs, for those players who are prone to feelings like "sympathy." I mean, sure, on a tabletop, it's easy to headnumbers away any moral qualms about slaughtering innocent people who are being actively mind controlled into attacking you, and for some groups who just want to run a dungeon combat sim that's absolutely fine, but how comfortable do you think most people would be about doing that in reality? For people who want to add that level of emotional investment to their game, they can emphasize the moral aspect of this, and the players can decide whether they want to go through with the typical slaughter plan or see if a containment option isn't available.

The great thing about running it this way is that if you remember the difference between little-g good and capital-G Good (and the same with the other alignment bits), it comes out as a win for the players no matter which way you slice it - it's Good to put yourself in the best position to protect people from destructive forces, and it's also Good to go out of your way and take personal risks to preserve innocent lives if you can. So you can leave it to the players who care to make their choice based on what they consider little-g good, without penalizing their in-game alignment for taking one option or the other!

Cluedrew
2016-08-18, 08:53 PM
I found this (http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/myers-briggs-and-jungian-cognitive-functions/55078-magic-gathering-color-type-profiles.html), this (http://mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Color), and this (https://www.reddit.com/r/colorpie/comments/3wmw24/philosophy_and_mtg_colors_as_philosophical/), though none are official Wizards writeups.


...The Great White Way (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/great-white-way-revisited-2015-07-13) True Blue (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/true-blue-revisited-2015-07-20) In the Black (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/black-revisited-2015-07-27) Seeing Red (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/seeing-red-revisited-2015-08-03) It's Not Easy Being Green (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/its-not-easy-being-green-revisited-2015-08-10)...


...Theres one for white (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/great-white-way-revisited-2015-07-13), black (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/black-revisited-2015-07-27), blue (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/true-blue-revisited-2015-07-20), red (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/seeing-red-revisited-2015-08-03) and green (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/its-not-easy-being-green-revisited-2015-08-10). ... There's [another] one for white (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/peace-love-and-understanding-2008-10-06), blue (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/striving-perfection-2008-11-17), black (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/looking-out-number-one-2008-10-17), red (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/following-your-heart-2008-11-26) and green (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/searching-within-2008-11-03). ...

...Yawgmoth (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Yawgmoth)...Toshiro Umezawa (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Toshiro_Umezawa)...Elesh Norn (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Elesh_Norn)...Elspeth (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Elspeth_Tirel)...So many links... {collapses}

OK I got through that now I can get started on crafting my re-

Moral Error theory (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/)I give up.

I tried, I tried real hard. But it I can't follow what that is saying.



Well then, now to try to make an actually intelligent reply out of all that. Actually first: Thank-you everyone for the links.

OK, there are a lot of things I could say about this, but I think I will stick to the point that started all of this, does Moral vs. Amoral correlate to Good vs. Evil.

... ... ... I'm going to have to sleep on this one. I finished reading all the stuff a few hours ago and I still can't get my points together.

OldTrees1
2016-08-18, 10:31 PM
I give up.

I tried, I tried real hard. But it I can't follow what that is saying.



Well then, now to try to make an actually intelligent reply out of all that. Actually first: Thank-you everyone for the links.

OK, there are a lot of things I could say about this, but I think I will stick to the point that started all of this, does Moral vs. Amoral correlate to Good vs. Evil.

... ... ... I'm going to have to sleep on this one. I finished reading all the stuff a few hours ago and I still can't get my points together.

I linked to a college level encyclopedia entry on a philosophy concept. Those are notorious for being harder to follow than what most people are used to. I do not expect you to follow it (even I cannot follow the entire article and I have the background). However I do believe you will pick up some of the meaning if you reread that 1st paragraph of section 4 a few times.

For reference for everyone else:

Understanding the nature of an error theory is best done initially by example: It is the attitude that sensible people take toward phlogiston, that levelheaded people take toward astrology, that reasonable people take toward the Loch Ness monster, and that atheists take toward the existence of gods. An error theorist doesn't believe in such things; she takes talk of such things to be a load of bunk. The moral error theorist doesn't believe in such things as moral obligation, moral value, moral desert, moral virtue, and moral permission; she takes talk of such things to be bunk. This much allows one to get a fairly good intuitive grasp on the error theoretic position, though the details of how the stance should best be made precise are unresolved.
To briefly summarize it: One example of Amoral is the disbelief in good & evil.

Blake Hannon
2016-08-19, 06:04 AM
People go on and on about this question, but frankly I'm not sure how relevant it is.

"Are orcs/kobolds/goblins inherently evil? Are they okay to kill on sight?"

Let me ask you this; when was the last time your PC just randomly encountered orcs or goblins without it being part of the plot? I can't recall it ever happening to me, in any campaign, ever. If the PC's are fighting intelligent beings, then its because something has caused a conflict between those beings and the PC's (or the people whose interests the PC's represent). The gnolls are raiding caravans, go stop them. The kobolds stole something important, go get it back. There's always been a reason for me to be fighting these specific individuals.

This whole argument is an artifact of first edition, where PC's explored big, nonsensical dungeons full of everything in the monster manual including intelligent beings. The game hasn't actually been like this in a very long time.

hamishspence
2016-08-19, 06:11 AM
Might depend on the DM - but I could see, in highly urbanized games, the players encountering orc guards or goblin shopkeepers, in an ordinary city.

Blake Hannon
2016-08-19, 06:21 AM
Might depend on the DM - but I could see, in highly urbanized games, the players encountering orc guards or goblin shopkeepers, in an ordinary city.

I meant "encounter" in the DnD sense.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-19, 06:25 AM
People go on and on about this question, but frankly I'm not sure how relevant it is.

"Are orcs/kobolds/goblins inherently evil? Are they okay to kill on sight?"

Let me ask you this; when was the last time your PC just randomly encountered orcs or goblins without it being part of the plot? I can't recall it ever happening to me, in any campaign, ever. If the PC's are fighting intelligent beings, then its because something has caused a conflict between those beings and the PC's (or the people whose interests the PC's represent). The gnolls are raiding caravans, go stop them. The kobolds stole something important, go get it back. There's always been a reason for me to be fighting these specific individuals.

This whole argument is an artifact of first edition, where PC's explored big, nonsensical dungeons full of everything in the monster manual including intelligent beings. The game hasn't actually been like this in a very long time.
Even accounting for most groups not spending their time raiding randomized monster dungeons, there's much more to it than that. What if the players are assigned to get an object owned by a guy who hired some guards? Is it okay to kill them to take what you want if they're human? If not, is it more okay to kill them if they're orcs? They're just mercenaries a guy hired to protect him, which is in itself neutral, so it's not like they're (knowingly) supporting evil even if the guy they're guarding is planning to do evil things with the artifact. Ergo, nuance.

Now, I fully admit this might not be the best example - some people's moral codes would hold that since they signed up to put their lives on the line, there couldn't be anything Evil about killing them unless you tortured them or something. I'm sure it gets the idea across, though; just because you're in a situation where you might potentially fight orcs for a good cause doesn't necessarily mean the orcs are doing anything evil and thus deserving of death themselves. Unless of course, they're Always Evil in your world, in which case you're making the world a safer place by killing them while you're there.

hamishspence
2016-08-19, 06:28 AM
I meant "encounter" in the DnD sense.

For a lot of players, that is an encounter in the D&D sense - a shop full of treasure, guarded by an orc - so they kill the orc and loot the shop.

I think it's that kind of behaviour that produce the "murderhobo" meme - people who kill "monsters" on sight regardless of context that's intended to communicate that this was not intended to be a combat scene.

veti
2016-08-19, 06:59 AM
I actually addressed this very point. Demons are similarly non-malicious, and really shouldn't even be treated as intelligent outside of expecting them to make plans. Nonetheless, they are dangerous, like a particularly strong and cunning pest, and they need to be exterminated like any pest if they're presenting an active threat.

But accountability is far from a red herring in a fantasy world, especially for games like D&D where the power scales as high as it does. There are considerations for which afterlife a creature should go to when it dies, whether or not you should try to contain them and give them a living situation where they aren't a threat rather than just executing them outright, and whether or not magic could be used to remove the cosmic influence from them so they can finally make their own individual choices and determine their own moral identity.

I never said that accountability was a red herring in a fantasy world. Merely in the specific world you were talking about, where there's a race that's created under such circumstances that it's literally forced to be evil, and only in the context of that race.

If you have a choice about whether to be good or evil, then you're accountable. If you don't, you're not. But by the same token, if you don't have a choice, there's not much point trying to persuade you otherwise, is there?

It seems to me that you're trying to eat your cake and have it too. The initial position was that the Evil Race were compelled to be evil and had no free will, and therefore weren't accountable for their actions. Now it seems they're merely "compelled" by some external agency and can, potentially, have free will, and therefore they also have rights.

I don't buy it. This is just the sort of logical contortion that comes up when you choose to create a race that's "inherently evil". The very concept is incoherent.

goto124
2016-08-19, 07:00 AM
The gnolls are raiding caravans, go stop them. The kobolds stole something important, go get it back. There's always been a reason for me to be fighting these specific individuals.


"But do we kill the gnolls or just arrest them? DnD doesn't exactly have much in the way of non-"fight-to-the-death" skills..."

Cluedrew
2016-08-19, 09:54 AM
On Five Colour Morality: Well this took a lot of mulling it over, and I there are probably refinements I could still make. I had (am having) a bit of trouble wrapping my head... rather unwrapping my head from my own usual meanings I have for some words. All that said I think I can say something intelligent now.

First off the moral vs. amoral axis makes more sense to me framed in terms of responsibility and correctness. White has almost universal responsibility, while black rejects the notion entirely. White goes with this idea and, since the responsibility is wide it is effectively to a single universal thing, creates a single correct path to fill it. Same destination, same path. Black, having rejected the idea of responsibility also rejects the idea of a correct path. Or correct in the sense white would define it, with no other reason to pick a path you just pick the best one.

An interesting comparison is the views on sacrifice. White is self-sacrifice and black the sacrifice of others. White's sounds nicer until you zoom out, then everyone becomes a 'self' and an 'other'. So really it is just a difference on how the cost of living is distributed. White distributes it as evenly as possible, while black... again this sounds weird on a low level but if everyone pushes sacrifice away from themselves it is focused on the weak who then die. If it were not for the hole undead thing it could easily be a system to minimize the total cost.

As for which is better, I am actually going to agree with something hinted at by PersonMan's third link (https://www.reddit.com/r/colorpie/comments/3wmw24/philosophy_and_mtg_colors_as_philosophical/). That is that taken to an extreme (with absolutely no compromise to the other colours) all fire colours are actually evil. If you build a society off of just one colours principles you get a dystopia. White becomes the borg, Blue 1984, Black a more traditional tyrannical rule, Red either the worst definition of Anarchy or Brave New World and Green... OK Green I'm not entirely sure about.

So where does that leave the Moral vs. Amoral axis. Well the original axis I was thinking about certainly is not the one that separates White & Black. That one does sort of spear through the colour wheel. So what about the new axis? Actually I think they did a good job balancing it out so it is pretty neutral the whole way across. That being said I feel the black end is more likely to be... problematic. Simply because in my experience more problems come from people caring too little than caring too much.

falcon1
2016-08-19, 10:01 AM
Green would probably be nature red in tooth and claw.

I usually have mind flayers and any servant race( I make the derro like that) as my always evil race. And than orcs and the like are hostile usually, but for historical or cultural reasons. They might be brutal raiders, but only because the humans pushed them out of their original lands, but that was only in response to the orcs burning a farm, but that was because...

OldTrees1
2016-08-19, 10:11 AM
On Five Colour Morality: Well this took a lot of mulling it over, and I there are probably refinements I could still make. I had (am having) a bit of trouble wrapping my head... rather unwrapping my head from my own usual meanings I have for some words. All that said I think I can say something intelligent now.

First off the moral vs. amoral axis makes more sense to me framed in terms of responsibility and correctness. White has almost universal responsibility, while black rejects the notion entirely. White goes with this idea and, since the responsibility is wide it is effectively to a single universal thing, creates a single correct path to fill it. Same destination, same path. Black, having rejected the idea of responsibility also rejects the idea of a correct path. Or correct in the sense white would define it, with no other reason to pick a path you just pick the best one.

-snip-

So where does that leave the Moral vs. Amoral axis. Well the original axis I was thinking about certainly is not the one that separates White & Black. That one does sort of spear through the colour wheel. So what about the new axis? Actually I think they did a good job balancing it out so it is pretty neutral the whole way across. That being said I feel the black end is more likely to be... problematic. Simply because in my experience more problems come from people caring too little than caring too much.

You have a solid understanding of that axis and your description of it is well balanced.

As you said it is easy to come up with evil examples of extreme positions. For examples of White being problematic just look to most of the topics banned from this forum. Regardless of your position on those topics you probably can see 1 or more positions that are problematic in their choice of what to decree is the responsibility & the correct path to it.

Blake Hannon
2016-08-19, 03:23 PM
Even accounting for most groups not spending their time raiding randomized monster dungeons, there's much more to it than that. What if the players are assigned to get an object owned by a guy who hired some guards? Is it okay to kill them to take what you want if they're human? If not, is it more okay to kill them if they're orcs? They're just mercenaries a guy hired to protect him, which is in itself neutral, so it's not like they're (knowingly) supporting evil even if the guy they're guarding is planning to do evil things with the artifact. Ergo, nuance.

Now, I fully admit this might not be the best example - some people's moral codes would hold that since they signed up to put their lives on the line, there couldn't be anything Evil about killing them unless you tortured them or something. I'm sure it gets the idea across, though; just because you're in a situation where you might potentially fight orcs for a good cause doesn't necessarily mean the orcs are doing anything evil and thus deserving of death themselves. Unless of course, they're Always Evil in your world, in which case you're making the world a safer place by killing them while you're there.

I'm not really sure how that's a refutation of my point. If orcs or gnolls can be hired as mercenaries just like humans, then...well...that means the morality of the situation is probably the same as dealing with human mercs.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-20, 04:10 AM
People go on and on about this question, but frankly I'm not sure how relevant it is.

"1) Are orcs/kobolds/goblins inherently evil? 2) Are they okay to kill on sight?"

The answers are super simple: 1) yes, if the setting creator defines them as such and 2) yes if the setting's morality system says it's okay.

People aren't actually going on about the questions. They're professing dislike of the answers.


Let me ask you this; when was the last time your PC just randomly encountered orcs or goblins without it being part of the plot?

The same as the last time they encountered them. I don't do "plots" in the sense you use the word here. But I do random encounters, so.


I can't recall it ever happening to me, in any campaign, ever. If the PC's are fighting intelligent beings, then its because something has caused a conflict between those beings and the PC's (or the people whose interests the PC's represent). The gnolls are raiding caravans, go stop them. The kobolds stole something important, go get it back. There's always been a reason for me to be fighting these specific individuals.

Apparently you don't do random encounters and don't have player characters pick a fight with people for petty and stupid reasons.


This whole argument is an artifact of first edition, where PC's explored big, nonsensical dungeons full of everything in the monster manual including intelligent beings. The game hasn't actually been like this in a very long time.
1a) People still play 1st edition. Neither the rules nor the people using them vanished off the face of Earth when 2nd edition was published.
1b) what you said is not all that presentative of actual 1st Ed dungeons.
2) OSR is a thing and many games in that camp are doing quite well.
3) Random generation and its presence in a game is orthogonal to both of the questions you posed. A game can lack all of alignment, inherent evil and orcs, and still rely on random generation. A game can have alignment, inherent evil and orcs and still be plot-based.
4) Murderhoboism and its presence in a game is orthogonal to all of the above. Murderhoboism happens when players choose to play their characters as antisocial, violent bums.

Dr paradox
2016-08-20, 05:16 PM
Mark me down for "Supernatural beings." Demons, devils, you'll never find a "good" one of these in my settings. Similarly, Vampires and almost all undead. Some undead, ghosts, mostly, will be neutral, but I like them best as horrors. Lycanthropes, by the same token, always act as evil monsters when transformed. The "Lawful Good" were-bear thing never made sense to me. What if someone who is evil is bitten by a were-bear? Do they turn into a bear once a month and start helping neighbors to roof their houses and fight crime? Like, "join the police force" fight crime? That's a funny idea, but I'd rather stick to them as monsters. Beholders and Mind Flayers are always evil, too. Most aberrations, really.

One religion in my setting has an interesting take on the undead. They hate all corporeal undead and will try to destroy them no matter what, but have a taboo against attacking incorporeal undead. The reasoning is (loosely) that corporeal undead are all need and no want, all compulsion without soul. Skeletons and mummies obey curses and necromancers, ghouls eat people, vampires suck blood, and they will never compromise on these desires. However complicated a vampire might seem, everything it does is in the name of prolonging its life and slaking its thirst.

(Mortals will sacrifice themselves for other people, or subsume their desires for the sake of idealism or friendship. You could argue that they're just protecting their gene pool, and thus still just slaves to corporeal desire, but it's the middle ages and evolutionary theory is not exactly advanced.)

Ghosts and specters, conversely, are all want and no need, and thus the truest expression of personhood. If they're lashing out, then they're in duress and should be gently exorcised if at all possible.

I get a lot of crap in my college friend group for being racist against the undead, and orcs in Lord of the Rings. A lot of people suggest that the Orcs are allegorically racist, being southern, dark-skinned savages who are always chaotic evil, but I don't buy that because the skin tones of Orcs are described pretty variably, and the orcs are closely associated with machines and industrialization, which... doesn't really fit with African stereotypes.

That got a little off track.

LudicSavant
2016-08-20, 07:22 PM
Didn't Tolkien himself express regrets later in his life about the way he presented orcs in his work?

Dr paradox
2016-08-20, 07:31 PM
Didn't Tolkien himself express regrets later in his life about the way he presented orcs in his work?

Sort of? He had trouble with their origins fitting into his cosmology. Since the creator wouldn't have made any inherently evil creatures, he spent a long time rewriting their history, suggesting that morgoth or Sauron had made them, or that they were mutants, or what have you. He was never totally satisfied with his solutions, but since he wasn't shy about editing later editions of his book, I have to assume that he was satisfied by their actions and characterization.

Thrudd
2016-08-20, 07:52 PM
Mark me down for "Supernatural beings." Demons, devils, you'll never find a "good" one of these in my settings. Similarly, Vampires and almost all undead. Some undead, ghosts, mostly, will be neutral, but I like them best as horrors. Lycanthropes, by the same token, always act as evil monsters when transformed. The "Lawful Good" were-bear thing never made sense to me. What if someone who is evil is bitten by a were-bear? Do they turn into a bear once a month and start helping neighbors to roof their houses and fight crime? Like, "join the police force" fight crime? That's a funny idea, but I'd rather stick to them as monsters. Beholders and Mind Flayers are always evil, too. Most aberrations, really.

One religion in my setting has an interesting take on the undead. They hate all corporeal undead and will try to destroy them no matter what, but have a taboo against attacking incorporeal undead. The reasoning is (loosely) that corporeal undead are all need and no want, all compulsion without soul. Skeletons and mummies obey curses and necromancers, ghouls eat people, vampires suck blood, and they will never compromise on these desires. However complicated a vampire might seem, everything it does is in the name of prolonging its life and slaking its thirst.

(Mortals will sacrifice themselves for other people, or subsume their desires for the sake of idealism or friendship. You could argue that they're just protecting their gene pool, and thus still just slaves to corporeal desire, but it's the middle ages and evolutionary theory is not exactly advanced.)

Ghosts and specters, conversely, are all want and no need, and thus the truest expression of personhood. If they're lashing out, then they're in duress and should be gently exorcised if at all possible.

I get a lot of crap in my college friend group for being racist against the undead, and orcs in Lord of the Rings. A lot of people suggest that the Orcs are allegorically racist, being southern, dark-skinned savages who are always chaotic evil, but I don't buy that because the skin tones of Orcs are described pretty variably, and the orcs are closely associated with machines and industrialization, which... doesn't really fit with African stereotypes.

That got a little off track.

Tolkien's racism comes across more in his description of the "southrons" and "easterlings", the foreign human kingdoms of "swarthy" people that decide to align with Sauron against Gondor, who are clearly meant to be African, Arabian, and Asian people. Orcs and the other "evil" races are mostly implied to have once been elves and other beings that were stolen and corrupted by Morgoth's magic long ago. Saruman performs his own experiment in this tradition by creating the Uruk Hai, who are maybe some kind of corrupted human or human-orc hybrid.

hamishspence
2016-08-20, 08:03 PM
Tolkien's racism comes across more in his description of the "southrons" and "easterlings", the foreign human kingdoms of "swarthy" people that decide to align with Sauron against Gondor, who are clearly meant to be African, Arabian, and Asian people.

We see Sam wondering if one of the Easterlings (hit by an arrow and falling dead in front of him) was really a bad person, or not.


"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace."


http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works

Thrudd
2016-08-20, 08:39 PM
We see Sam wondering if one of the Easterlings (hit by an arrow and falling dead in front of him) was really a bad person, or not.




http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works

Yes, I don't think Tolkien was really racist. He just made non-European people from exotic far-away lands the enemies of the heroic English-Germanic "free-folk". Though he also made enemies of the Scottish/Irish Celtic type hill folk that were incited to war by Saruman against Rohan. The humans were always implied to be manipulated or incited by the forces of evil, rather than being inherently evil themselves. They fought for normal human reasons like looting, border disputes and resources and quarrels about being governed.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-20, 09:19 PM
Yeah. In one of his letters, Tolkien said "we were all orcs". "We" referring to soldiers who fought in the World War. Orcs aren't a stand-in for any really existing people, they're representation of evil humankind can be and commit at its worst.

hamishspence
2016-08-20, 09:41 PM
Yeah. In one of his letters, Tolkien said "we were all orcs". "We" referring to soldiers who fought in the World War.

I googled it and that quote may be a slight paraphrase.



Letter 71:

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction: your vigorous words well describe the tribe; only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. But it does make some difference who are your captains and whether they are orc-like per se!

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-20, 10:14 PM
Possibly. I don't have encyclopedic memory of Tolkien's corresponce, as much as I'd want to.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-08-21, 03:46 AM
Really, though, if the question "Are orcs inherently evil?" comes up in game then you're probably on the wrong track. A question like that should be met with incredulous stares from all but the most ivory tower philosophers.

OldTrees1
2016-08-21, 08:42 AM
Really, though, if the question "Are orcs inherently evil?" comes up in game then you're probably on the wrong track. A question like that should be met with incredulous stares from all but the most ivory tower philosophers.

Are you saying that the answer should be obvious to the PCs in character or are you saying that the question has no bearing on how one should treat the orcs?

As to the 2nd possible meaning: If I were playing a "destroy evil" Paladin then how I would respond to an inherently Evil incapacitated foe and a not inherently Evil incapacitated foe would differ dramatically.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-08-21, 09:12 AM
Are you saying that the answer should be obvious to the PCs in character or are you saying that the question has no bearing on how one should treat the orcs?

As to the 2nd possible meaning: If I were playing a "destroy evil" Paladin then how I would respond to an inherently Evil incapacitated foe and a not inherently Evil incapacitated foe would differ dramatically.

I'm saying that in setting "Are orcs inherently evil" should have about as much practical use as "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" and the reactions of the townspeople should be something along the lines of "Why are you even asking this?"

Whether or not orcs are inherently evil honestly shouldn't come up at all because whether or not it's true, orcish culture should be so antithetical to civilization that wondering about their inherent nature is a philosophical exercise instead of anything that would ever be useful.

hamishspence
2016-08-21, 09:45 AM
Whether or not orcs are inherently evil honestly shouldn't come up at all because whether or not it's true, orcish culture should be so antithetical to civilization that wondering about their inherent nature is a philosophical exercise instead of anything that would ever be useful.

Some campaign settings move away from that though - Eberron in particular.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-21, 09:51 AM
I'm saying that in setting "Are orcs inherently evil" should have about as much practical use as "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" and the reactions of the townspeople should be something along the lines of "Why are you even asking this?"

Whether or not orcs are inherently evil honestly shouldn't come up at all because whether or not it's true, orcish culture should be so antithetical to civilization that wondering about their inherent nature is a philosophical exercise instead of anything that would ever be useful.



While some settings don't have that sort of culture/society for their orcs, for those that do, you're correct.

See also, obvious but rules-pushing IRL examples.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-21, 11:21 AM
I'm saying that in setting "Are orcs inherently evil" should have about as much practical use as "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" and the reactions of the townspeople should be something along the lines of "Why are you even asking this?"

Whether or not orcs are inherently evil honestly shouldn't come up at all because whether or not it's true, orcish culture should be so antithetical to civilization that wondering about their inherent nature is a philosophical exercise instead of anything that would ever be useful.
This is all sorts of lacking in nuance.

If it's just culture, they can perhaps be reasoned with or integrated if you get a sufficient power advantage, and more importantly, orc children raised outside orc society should be fine to interact with, and "traitors to the culture" can potentially be trusted. If they're inherently Evil, none of that applies.

Psyren
2016-08-23, 04:10 PM
I linked to a college level encyclopedia entry on a philosophy concept. Those are notorious for being harder to follow than what most people are used to. I do not expect you to follow it (even I cannot follow the entire article and I have the background). However I do believe you will pick up some of the meaning if you reread that 1st paragraph of section 4 a few times.

For reference for everyone else:

To briefly summarize it: One example of Amoral is the disbelief in good & evil.

It's worth pointing out however that simply identifying as Amoral does not keep one from becoming Immoral. (Case in point.) (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0760.html)


On Five Colour Morality: Well this took a lot of mulling it over, and I there are probably refinements I could still make. I had (am having) a bit of trouble wrapping my head... rather unwrapping my head from my own usual meanings I have for some words. All that said I think I can say something intelligent now.

First off the moral vs. amoral axis makes more sense to me framed in terms of responsibility and correctness. White has almost universal responsibility, while black rejects the notion entirely. White goes with this idea and, since the responsibility is wide it is effectively to a single universal thing, creates a single correct path to fill it. Same destination, same path. Black, having rejected the idea of responsibility also rejects the idea of a correct path. Or correct in the sense white would define it, with no other reason to pick a path you just pick the best one.
...
So where does that leave the Moral vs. Amoral axis. Well the original axis I was thinking about certainly is not the one that separates White & Black. That one does sort of spear through the colour wheel. So what about the new axis? Actually I think they did a good job balancing it out so it is pretty neutral the whole way across. That being said I feel the black end is more likely to be... problematic. Simply because in my experience more problems come from people caring too little than caring too much.

MaRo himself has said, and I agree, that Morality in Magic comes from the colors being more or less balanced, whereas Immorality comes from one or a couple dominating the rest.

This very dynamic is why Black tends to be the villain so often - its very nature is to put itself out of balance with the others, and thus simply is not satisfied with the kind of equilibrium where goodness would thrive. As the most selfish color, its goal is to get whatever it can get, by any means necessary. In addition, Black's dominion over portfolios like death and decay makes it ascendant in nearly every fantasy setting because entropy is usually a constant. Life meanwhile is the force that typically has to struggle to exist, and so the "scrappy underdog" spot is almost always claimed by Green and/or White.


This is all sorts of lacking in nuance.

If it's just culture, they can perhaps be reasoned with or integrated if you get a sufficient power advantage, and more importantly, orc children raised outside orc society should be fine to interact with, and "traitors to the culture" can potentially be trusted. If they're inherently Evil, none of that applies.

In D&D at least, the answer appears to be "you should at least try, Paladin, even if it's a Drow or something."

This expectation gets relaxed for non-humanoids however - aberrations, chromatic dragons, intelligent undead, and of course Fiends.

anti-ninja
2016-08-23, 09:46 PM
Besides things like aberrations and demons not really .
But monstrous races like goblins in my world are often things like pirates , so The question is how many villages do they have to burn ,how any dead family members do they have to create before the pc's can feel justified in killing them.

They are by no means inherently evil, but because of their chosen trade it's perfectly rational to respond upon sighting a group of armed goblins with violence.

Ninjaxenomorph
2016-08-23, 10:45 PM
In the setting I work on, the only 'always evil' race is the Orgruk; also the only race that is solidly a non-player race. The Orgruk spun off of the standard Orc race (mechanically, the orc race is new and the Orgruk use normal orc stats), and are of the 'supernatural tampering' variety. They can literally make more of themselves by spawning from muck. If demons were a thing in the setting, they would be demonic. We've also incorporated ogres and ogrekin into the race as racial variants, along with mixing and matching all those with the Fiendish and Half-Fiend templates.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-27, 06:54 PM
Well, I read ... most ... of the thread, skimmed some of it, so I hope I'm not repeating too much of something here, but...

One of the main things I see as a problem in D&D based roleplaying in general is a conflation of multiple meanings of the words used in the alignment grid. In 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder, at least, "Good" and "Evil" are not nebulous terms. They are specific rules keywords. I am aware that the Original Poster did not specify a game world, but I'm going to use 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder for reference, specifically because the concepts of 'detect evil' and the like have popped up several times in this discussion, and this is a very convenient set of rules to demonstrate exactly why we need to be careful about which meaning of the word we're using.

More specifically, good and evil, as we discuss them philosophically, have a great many connotations associated with them - this is what makes them nebulous for philosophy. However, good and evil have very specific meanings in the 3.0/3.5/pathfinder world, and do NOT have most of the connotations we usually associate with the words. Stealing, lying, racism, sexism, etc - have nothing to do with good and evil, and much more to do with law vs. chaos. Good and Evil, very specifically, in the rules, have to do with one's attitude towards individual life. Do you value and protect individual (sentient/sapient) life, or do you disregard it? That's all it has to do with. "Detect Good" and "Detect Evil," along with many other spells associated with these key words, are pretty much only detectors for a specific value of a specific ethical viewpoint, and NOT on the whole set of connotations we usually associate with the words.

When you work with a system which has 'good' and 'evil' as natural forces which can be scientifically deduced and reliably tested for in repeatable laboratory experiments, you need to very carefully look at that system and determine what, rules-wise, do those keywords mean? Once one realizes the difference between the game term 'Good' and 'Evil' and the way we usually use the words in casual conversation, it becomes easier to answer the original question.

"Do I use evil races in my settings?"

Yes. And no.

I have the truly 'good' races - Angels and metallic dragons. They're good, not just because they're made that way, but because if they were to become not-good, they'd change into something else. (I also do metallic kobolds)

I have the 'goodly' races - which are good by culture, not by race. The civilized races which try to encourage good behavior and punish bad behavior. There are individuals who are evil, and individuals who are good, and you have to judge individually, but in general, you can feel relatively safe around goodly races unless you make them feel threatened.

Then you have the 'monstrous' races - which are evil by culture, not by race. These are the ones like orcs and drow who are evil because their culture has drilled it into them to kill others as a matter of social interaction, but who might have good individuals around them. Killing them because of you know that particular group is dangerous is OK, but there might be better ways. Killing them because they're an 'evil race' and you know all of that race is evil might involve alignment hits.

Then you have the 'Blessed with suck' races. This is the Illithids category. They *have* to be evil in order to survive. They have to kill intelligent beings just to live. Most of them are evil because the nature of their metabolism forces them to be so - but it's possible that you might run across an Illithid that rejects its biology and its fellows and tries to feed only off of evil individuals. It's really just an extreme example of the monstrous races.

Then you have the 'broken' races. I put Goblins into this category, because I love the Pathfinder write-up of them as racially sociopathic. They're adorable and vicious and they literally *cannot* care about others by their very physical nature. That being said, it's possible some mad wizarding or clerical genius might be able to do some experiments to 'fix' that broken wire in the goblins' brain.

Finally, I have the truly 'evil' races - demons and chromatic dragons. They're evil, not just because they're made that way, but because if they were to become not-evil, they'd change into something else. (I also do chromatic kobolds)

I like having a nice, wide variety of concepts to choose from, to fit into the story as needed. To know exactly how all of these races fit into the game-term morality, and then not use the game-term morality to skip out on the moral/ethical philosophy which expands far beyond the physics of the world. And in every instance above, you can see that there's at least one way to solve a problem of 'evil' other than killing. But convincing a demon to convert to an angel is an mythic-level event.

But then, I also played the evil PC once who was literally sociopathic and *could not* care about individual life other than his own ... but was trying really hard to do things the proper way because... well... he was aware he was a sociopath and logically deduced that he should care... he just... couldn't. The best he could do was ethics 'by the numbers'. He was the one who would kill one innocent person to save five others without feeling guilty about it, and not understand why his teammates were facepalming so hard.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-27, 08:54 PM
Problem is, by using the words "good" and "evil", and encoding one particular narrow definition into the rules (spells, keywords, alignments, etc) when there's that whole universe of moral and philosophical debate out there, what a game is actually doing is saying "here's exact meaning of good and evil that we're baking into the very rules of the game and making objectively true inside the games that use these rules".

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-27, 09:57 PM
No more than it does by setting a rules-keyword definition of 'grapple' or defining 'magic'. That doesn't mean that 'grapple' in this universe can no longer mean 'a latch that holds you onto something', or that music and artwork can no longer be described as 'magical'.

Just like in our real world, a scientific 'theory' and a detective's 'theory' are two very different things.

Just because something is marked as a rules-keyword for such a word doesn't mean that's the only definition the word can have. Just because one technical field has a specific meaning for a word doesn't mean that another technical field with the same word can't mean something else by it. In this case, philosophy and magic would use the same word but have different meanings.

And some pedants within universe would declaim "But good has a scientifically designated meaning! Why are you bothering to debate it?" and the philosophers of that universe would roll their eyes and respond, "Understanding does not come from measured absolutes, but from our perception and consideration of the world around us. Knowing that a piece of wood is eight feet tall does nothing for you if you do not understand what a foot is. Just because the wood is a tree does not mean it cannot also be a home."

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-27, 10:15 PM
No more than it does by setting a rules-keyword definition of 'grapple' or defining 'magic'. That doesn't mean that 'grapple' in this universe can no longer mean 'a latch that holds you onto something', or that music and artwork can no longer be described as 'magical'.

Just like in our real world, a scientific 'theory' and a detective's 'theory' are two very different things.

Just because something is marked as a rules-keyword for such a word doesn't mean that's the only definition the word can have. Just because one technical field has a specific meaning for a word doesn't mean that another technical field with the same word can't mean something else by it. In this case, philosophy and magic would use the same word but have different meanings.



Those other words to not have the baggage that "good and evil" have, and claiming that the problems of defining them to no more of a challenge than defining "grapple" is... missing a lot.

The very notion of good and evil as simple qualitative tags that can be applied to a creature or even object is troublesome to begin with.

There's no history of people killing each other over the definition of "grapple", or people (or PCs, even) claiming that it's OK to kill someone "as long as they're a grappler". Most games do not, as far as I'm aware, have "Smite Grappler" as a spell option.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-27, 10:32 PM
Those other words to not have the baggage that "good and evil" have, and claiming that the problems of defining them to no more of a challenge than defining "grapple" is... missing a lot.

The very notion of good and evil as simple qualitative tags that can be applied to a creature or even object is troublesome to begin with.

There's no history of people killing each other over the definition of "grapple", or people (or PCs, even) claiming that it's OK to kill someone "as long as they're a grappler". Most games do not, as far as I'm aware, have "Smite Grappler" as a spell option.

You went for the easy route. Listen to what happens if you try to make that same argument with my other example.

"There's no history of people killing each other over the definition of "magic", or people (or PCs, even) claiming that it's OK to kill someone "as long as they do magic". Most games do not, as far as I'm aware, have "Counter Magic" as a spell option."

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-27, 10:56 PM
You went for the easy route.


I did what?

I am not the one who asserted that a rules-definition meaning for "grapple" was equivalent to trying to hard-code into the rules an absolutist "qualitative tag" answer to the millennia-long and sometimes-bloody history of debate over the nature and meaning of "good" and "evil"... or the same subject's long history of derailing gaming sessions with too-often heated arguments.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-27, 11:05 PM
I did what?

I am not the one who asserted that a rules-definition meaning for "grapple" was equivalent to trying to hard-code into the rules an absolutist "qualitative tag" answer to the millennia-long and sometimes-bloody history of debate over the nature and meaning of "good" and "evil"... or the same subject's long history of derailing gaming sessions with too-often heated arguments.

No, but you did decide to use my example of 'grapple' instead of my example of 'magic'.

Not to mention, I didn't assert that, either. That is a severe misrepresentation of what I said.

Regardless of pre-existing connotations and whether you believe there is absolute 'good' and 'evil' definitions in the real world or not, there are game worlds which have declared an absolute and measurable definition thereof. What I did assert is that having a seed of absolute good and evil does not in any way prevent or invalidate just as much in-universe philosophical exploration nor meta-exploration of such topics. And part of the reason for this is because words have multiple meanings.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-27, 11:14 PM
No, but you did decide to use my example of 'grapple' instead of my example of 'magic'.

Not to mention, I didn't assert that, either. That is a severe misrepresentation of what I said.

Regardless of pre-existing connotations and whether you believe there is absolute 'good' and 'evil' definitions in the real world or not, there are game worlds which have declared an absolute and measurable definition thereof. What I did assert is that having a seed of absolute good and evil does not in any way prevent or invalidate just as much in-universe philosophical exploration nor meta-exploration of such topics. And part of the reason for this is because words have multiple meanings.


If you put an "evil tag" in the game that is assigned to certain creatures or characters or objects, once someone can cast "detect evil" and always get an accurate answer, then you've established in-setting objective answers to "what is evil?" and "is this creature evil?" Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

Saying "there's an objective evil keyword in the rules, but that doesn't create an objective answer to "what is evil?" in the setting", is a fine example of disassociated rules, a total disconnect between the rules/mechanics and the setting -- your map is no longer accurate to the territory.

Dr paradox
2016-08-27, 11:56 PM
If you put an "evil tag" in the game that is assigned to certain creatures or characters or objects, once someone can cast "detect evil" and always get an accurate answer, then you've established in-setting objective answers to "what is evil?" and "is this creature evil?" Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

Saying "there's an objective evil keyword in the rules, but that doesn't create an objective answer to "what is evil?" in the setting", is a fine example of disassociated rules, a total disconnect between the rules/mechanics and the setting -- your map is no longer accurate to the territory.

Well, that's not necessarily true. I could imagine a world in which a group of wizards works to create the first detect evil spell, burning through shelves of ethics and philosophy books trying to find the perfect criteria for their spell to check, and they get real close... But can't get it 100% perfect, because they can't solve ethics. It's an accurate measure 99.9% of the time, but it's not objectively perfect.

Of course, that's just headcanon, and for most editions of D&D, unfounded. But, I also wanted to bring up 5th edition.

In 5th edition, the alignment tags are just flavor for roleplay. Paladins no longer key off of alignment, and detect evil only detects undead, outsiders, fey, and aberrations, plus desecrated ground. I think most people would agree that demons and devil's are always evil, since I believe that even if they somehow change their alignment, they then physically transform into an angel or a modron or whatever. Is that true in D&D? I heard that somewhere and never checked again.

RazorChain
2016-08-28, 12:27 AM
Well, that's not necessarily true. I could imagine a world in which a group of wizards works to create the first detect evil spell, burning through shelves of ethics and philosophy books trying to find the perfect criteria for their spell to check, and they get real close... But can't get it 100% perfect, because they can't solve ethics. It's an accurate measure 99.9% of the time, but it's not objectively perfect.

Of course, that's just headcanon, and for most editions of D&D, unfounded. But, I also wanted to bring up 5th edition.

In 5th edition, the alignment tags are just flavor for roleplay. Paladins no longer key off of alignment, and detect evil only detects undead, outsiders, fey, and aberrations, plus desecrated ground. I think most people would agree that demons and devil's are always evil, since I believe that even if they somehow change their alignment, they then physically transform into an angel or a modron or whatever. Is that true in D&D? I heard that somewhere and never checked again.

Well then you have to explain how the spell detect evil works as either there is an immutable evil or subjective evil. There is almost no way to be objective about what evil is. If evil is subjective, what might be considered evil in one culture might not be evil in another culture. So if an "evil" Drow makes a detect evil spell it will detect different criteria than if a "good" human might have made the same spell. To the Drow, humans are an evil race.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-28, 12:41 AM
I think I mentioned this elsewhere, but one way I diffused an alignment argument in one of my campaigns was making the very association of the "alignment" energies with moral principles an in-setting cultural decision. The alignment energies are boosted or waned by certain actions and feelings, based on whether those things trend towards affecting certain types of growth in the universe. These largely coincided with primary cultural ideas of morality, causing many people to take the alignment energies as actual indicators of moral truth, when in reality they have nothing to do with good, evil, law, or chaos on any objective level. That said, they are objective, so changing cultural norms won't cause shifts in how alignment works. And some of the non-primary cultures, with very different ideas of what's morally right and wrong, give the alignments different names - for example, an extremely loose, community-based society, which the primary culture would consider Chaotic, wouldn't necessarily call the primary society's energy Lawful, but instead something like Oppressive or Tyrannical.

Dr paradox
2016-08-28, 03:50 AM
Well then you have to explain how the spell detect evil works as either there is an immutable evil or subjective evil. There is almost no way to be objective about what evil is. If evil is subjective, what might be considered evil in one culture might not be evil in another culture. So if an "evil" Drow makes a detect evil spell it will detect different criteria than if a "good" human might have made the same spell. To the Drow, humans are an evil race.

I guess that's sort of open to interpretation, but I figured that since good and evil aren't teams, but distinct qualities, drow wouldn't percieve the lack of evil in humans as abhorrent, just stupid on our part. That is to say, they don't hate us. Hate would imply they thought we were a danger. They just snicker at our idiot religions with their poor-boxes and lack of blood rites.

Second, that sounds like a cool setting element! I've already got a thing where comprehend languages needs to be "patched" as new languages are discovered, this is pretty similar.

Dr paradox
2016-08-28, 03:55 AM
These largely coincided with primary cultural ideas of morality, causing many people to take the alignment energies as actual indicators of moral truth, when in reality they have nothing to do with good, evil, law, or chaos on any objective level. That said, they are objective, so changing cultural norms won't cause shifts in how alignment works.

Interesting! How does alignment energy fall along lines of, say, slavery, or forced impressment into the military? Or heathen burning? It's interesting to think how that kind of guiding force might cause a culture to stagnate ethically if they buy into it as an objective code for morality. Any time someone tries to free slaves, the alignment energy goes negative in reaction to theft, so the society never questions of slavery is good or not.

Not saying that's necessarily an outgrowth of the idea in your setting, just mulling it over.

PersonMan
2016-08-28, 04:13 AM
I think most people would agree that demons and devil's are always evil, since I believe that even if they somehow change their alignment, they then physically transform into an angel or a modron or whatever. Is that true in D&D? I heard that somewhere and never checked again.

I don't think that's the case - but I don't know if 4e or 5e changed it so it's true for the newer editions. For 3.5e it isn't the case, though.

Dr paradox
2016-08-28, 04:26 AM
I don't think that's the case - but I don't know if 4e or 5e changed it so it's true for the newer editions. For 3.5e it isn't the case, though.

Hm. On reflection, I think I might be extrapolating from the 4e mm entry for the rakshasa, which said that rakshasa are evil reincarnations of Devas, and vice versa. So, in 3e can demons just never be good, or what?

PersonMan
2016-08-28, 04:58 AM
They can, actually - the famous example is the Succubus Paladin from a WotC online article.

Dr paradox
2016-08-28, 05:14 AM
They can, actually - the famous example is the Succubus Paladin from a WotC online article.

What? Wait, then what's the point of even having demons?

Are there evil angels?

AMFV
2016-08-28, 05:22 AM
What? Wait, then what's the point of even having demons?

Are there evil angels?

Well in 3.5 that's the root of some of the Devils. Asmodus for example was a Celestial of some shape or form who fell. Although that's different in different editions. Presumably if Asmodus can fall, then an Evil Entity could redeem. Of course in a different setting or cosmology that changes pretty heavily.

Dr paradox
2016-08-28, 05:25 AM
Well in 3.5 that's the root of some of the Devils. Asmodus for example was a Celestial of some shape or form who fell. Although that's different in different editions. Presumably if Asmodus can fall, then an Evil Entity could redeem. Of course in a different setting or cosmology that changes pretty heavily.

Well, sure, that's basic Milton, but when Asmodeus fell, he ceased to be an angel and became a devil. King. God. Something. I thought that the reverse would be true, but apparently not.

AMFV
2016-08-28, 05:29 AM
Well, sure, that's basic Milton, but when Asmodeus fell, he ceased to be an angel and became a devil. King. God. Something. I thought that the reverse would be true, but apparently not.

That is a really interesting theory. To be fair the only example of a "Good" Demon we have is one that winds up going Evil again at the end (transferring levels to Blackguard as I recall). So it's possible that the Chaotic aspects of the Succubus overwhelmed the inherent predisposition towards Evil, and possibly temporarily even their aversion to law. After which point they later pulled it back. Although I can't really speak too much to it. D&D Cosmologies tend to be a pretty ridiculous mess.

Edit: It's also possible that the transition from Angel to Devil took years and wasn't an instantaneous thing. I mean as far that's concerned in 3.5 that's so far back in time that very few entities are aware of it, even most deities tend to be from a period after that, so it's probably at DM discretion.

MrConsideration
2016-08-28, 05:52 AM
Yes, Gnolls and Orcs (but also arguably a number of human nations). The game explicitly marks slavery and war for plunder as the actions of 'evil' individuals, so almost the entirety of human history was spent in the deep end of the alignment pool...

Gnolls in my world simply do not see other creatures, sapient or not, as anything other than meat or slaves. Their in-group preference is enormously strong: they have bonds as strong as humans do with close family with anything they recognise as Gnoll. They are a single pack, ruled by a biocultural imperative. They see hunting screaming Halfling children for meat as the average human sees hunting a skittish doe.

Orcs in my world were an engineered soldier race, so if they don't engage in violence they experience languor, ennui and depression. Whereas a human might get over a break-up with a night on the town or casual sex, an Orc gets over a break up by plundering a village. As they get more 'hits' of the addictive violence, they need more and more extreme violence to get the same thrill. As a result, their actions become more and more depraved* the longer they campaign - this is why the sort of massacres an Orc army loose in a city can commit are so horrifying.

This also explains why so many of them work for other beings as cannon fodder - they have a psychological need for some kind of authority figure who directs their rage. It's a itch they can otherwise never scratch.

'Civilised' Orcs need to use alcohol, drugs or meditation to try and control their murderous rage. They are not always successful.

*I'm talking Sranc levels of depraved for those who have read R. Scott Bakker.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-28, 06:16 AM
Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

And?

All this means that in the context of the game, some characters are wrong. F.ex. if Drows ping Evil on Detect Evil, nothing stops Drows from proclaiming Evil is really good and what others call Good is just a collectivist-fascist system created by "Good" gods to coddle the weak and prevent the strong from flourishing.

So I as a player know the Drow are objectively wrong. So what?

I've yet to see this prevent players from playing such characters.

It's not a problem and it's not troublesome. Your opponent was precisely right in comparing it to grapple rules and magic. All aspects of game and its setting are arbitrary - truth values of things are what the arbitrator (usually the GM) decides they are. From an in-character perspective, it's nonetheless possible to disbelieve setting facts, be ignorant of or argue against them. The game having objective facts does not preclude characters from rejecting those on subjective grounds. Just like reality having objective facts does not preclude conspiracy theorists from existing.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 06:51 AM
D&D Cosmologies tend to be a pretty ridiculous mess.


Quoted for insane levels of truth.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-28, 07:15 AM
Wow, this conversation really got moving this morning! how wonderful!

First and most important that I'd like to address:


Your opponent was precisely right

That would be referring to me, and while I appreciate the voice chiming up in agreement with me, I'd really like to not term myself such. I'm certainly disagreeing with Max, but I'm not setting myself against Max. 'Opponent' makes it sound like a debate, and the intent of a debate is not 'finding truth' - a debate is a contest intended to measure social skill. I don't care which of us has better social skills, I'm enjoying talking about in-game philosophy and how to interpret rules on a particular subject which often prompts discord in groups.

My two goals here are (1) to just enjoy myself nitpicking over rules, which as a GM I need practice with when I'm not in the middle of a game, and (2) to help prevent such discord in groups in the future. To my eyes, this involves helping folks understand the difference between 'good' the philosophical concept and 'good' the game term.


If you put an "evil tag" in the game that is assigned to certain creatures or characters or objects, once someone can cast "detect evil" and always get an accurate answer, then you've established in-setting objective answers to "what is evil?" and "is this creature evil?" Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

Saying "there's an objective evil keyword in the rules, but that doesn't create an objective answer to "what is evil?" in the setting", is a fine example of disassociated rules, a total disconnect between the rules/mechanics and the setting -- your map is no longer accurate to the territory.

I am delighted you brought up the map/territory disconnect - all too often I have to explain what that means to poeple.

However, I'm focusing on something else, first - I've taken the liberty of highlighting the line where I feel you make an incorrect leap of logic. Other answers on 'what is evil' are only wrong if they touch on the core objective seed. IE: saying that "Yes, he detects evil, but just worshipping an evil god doesn't MAKE him evil!" Technically this is actually true! Someone can be lawful neutral and worship a lawful evil god, but will still detect as evil. This is because, at some level, they're contributing to an evil end, even if indirectly. Right there, even by the rules, we have a matter of some debate. Someone who does not have an evil alignment can detect as evil.

However, let's bring up the point of ... a previous player I've had. He once adopted a little mostrous critter that had popped out of a cursed amulet and loved hunting humans. The rest of the group felt it was evil - he didn't want to believe it. He contended that we didn't know it was intelligent - and if it wasn't intelligent, then it was just a beast. If it was just a beast, then it wasn't evil for killing humans, it was just neutral and didn't know better. (I, in fact, knew it had a better intelligence, but hadn't told anyone its intelligence score). This is a valid contention for the beast's alignment, and they had no one to cast 'detect evil' on it. However, I informed the player that if he didn't do something to stop it from killing humans, then *he* would be considered evil. He contended, "No, because I'm letting nature continue its course!" And I replied, "That only works as an argument if your intelligence is less than 3. Once anything has an intelligence of 3 or more, then they get good or evil alignments depending on how they feel about the killing of intelligent life." The player was quite upset.

But in-universe, it worked. They didn't *have* a cleric in the group. They were a starting group, and didn't have much in the way of gold to just go out and get a 'detect good' spell cast. So there *was* a lack of knowledge as to whether or not this was good or evil. True, it wandered OOC from a lack of knowledge of the rules, but the in-character debate occurred. It was fascinating!

Point being that ... this is where someone is objectively wrong - because they tried to say that not caring that humans were dying by something in their control was not evil, which is objectively not true.

However, that is, as I said, a 'seed'. That does not mean that saying 'slavery is evil' or 'racism' is evil is objectively untrue. 'good' and 'evil' are words applied to this fact of physics, as well as to a wider variety of actions which aren't covered at all by that physics. "Slavery", for instance, cannot have 'detect evil' cast on it. The closest one might get would be casting it on a random sampling of slavers and slave-owners, and finding what percentage of them detect as evil. For the person arguing that slavery is evil, perhaps they would point out that all the actions revolving around slavery indicate a complete disrespect for intelligent life in its requirement of dehumanizing the slaves. The person arguing that slavery is not evil would point out that the other is using only one concept of slavery as relevant to their upbringing - that other cultures have concepts of slavery which are quite different and less dehumanizing - it's just that it creates a situation where evil people are drawn to the potential abuse.

And suddenly, even with that seed, you have a valid debate on whether or not something is evil. Now, I'm firmly and immovably on the side of the 'slavery is evil' person... but that doesn't mean I couldn't write both sides of the debate with some validity to them.

Let me provide a quote from the lawful-evil god I've created for the campaign I'm starting next year. I was tired of having mustache-twirling demonic evil deities. I wanted a charismatic evil deity.

"What does it mean to be evil? In short, it means one does not value the individual life. Is this so bad, by itself? Even good people do this. We revere the hero that defeats a tyrant and rescues his people - we do not call that person a murderer, and mourn the tyrant. But when a vizier disagrees with how a 'goodly' king governs his people, and arranges the king's death so he can make the improvements he sees fit, this we see as murder. The individual life is not so important to us all as whether or not their ethics agree with ours. For me, it is a matter of mathematics. If, by the death of five people, you can save 50, is that not worth doing? What is the point of feeling guilt over the death of those five? If the painful death of 50 people can bring us the medical knowledge to save 5000, is this not even better? And if the death of 5000 people in medical experiments can change the face of the world, creating a longer and more fulfilling life for every person that will ever live, is it even a question as to whether or not these experiments should be done? Yes, I do not value the life of the individual. I value the existence of all peoples, and the individual that makes their life worth valuing."

Now, this is all BS. He doesn't lie until the end when he says 'I value the existence of all peoples' - and even then it's not so much a lie as it's just stretching the truth. He values all people because without 'all people', he wouldn't have worshippers, test subjects, etc. Make no doubt that even while confusing the issue and sounding very reasonable and genteel ... he's evil as heck. He's got so much evil going on in the background. But he rationalizes the bejeebers out of it - by making people question whether that objective 'good' and 'evil' is even important.

These are just three examples of ways in which you can still have philosophical debate, wrong, right, or otherwise, in a universe which has an objective seed of good and evil. There's a lot more. Is that race evil? Well, certainly any random sampling of that race would give you all evil results - the outlier is statistically irrelevant, right? Someone else says, that just means the race isn't evil, their culture is evil. Doesn't prevent the disagreement in philosophy... Is the first person evil for their racism? They just dehumanized an entire race. Is the word 'dehumanize' evil? It suggests that only humans are worth considering. Not to mention that not every evil act instantly causes someone to be evil. When someone finally slips over that threshold - what *is* all the acts which led to that final rejudgement by the universe? You, as a game-master, know why they're evil. For everyone inside the universe, who cannot cast 'detect evil' on individual actions, they don't know! They have to judge by proxy, by the actions of good individuals compared to the actions of evil individuals. At which point you get the fantasy world equivelent of Godwin's Law.


They can, actually - the famous example is the Succubus Paladin from a WotC online article.


Well, sure, that's basic Milton, but when Asmodeus fell, he ceased to be an angel and became a devil. King. God. Something. I thought that the reverse would be true, but apparently not.

Honestly, I feel that as they continued to need regular material to feed the fanbase, they often get people making stuff that doesn't... match, as a whole. There's plenty of examples of it. Remember the match of Raistlin vs. Elminster? They ended up judging against Elminster because he had a divine intervention without having cleric on his character sheet. Except he DOES have cleric on his character sheet! Oops. And even in that succubus paladin article, they reference paladins as needing patrons. Except they don't! Paladins specifically, in 3.X, never get their powers from deities. Oops! They are not clerics with swords and full plate. The article also references her as only being good so long as she gets something from it.

In other words, I'm not sure she's a valid example.


And?

All this means that in the context of the game, some characters are wrong. F.ex. if Drows ping Evil on Detect Evil, nothing stops Drows from proclaiming Evil is really good and what others call Good is just a collectivist-fascist system created by "Good" gods to coddle the weak and prevent the strong from flourishing.

Ahhh... so very right. Love this. You're *quite* right. they would argue, "It's not evil, it's just what we decided to CALL evil! We're not evil by fiat of the universe! We're evil by a choice of language! If we'd kept our conversation of good and evil separate from this other thing... and called those spells 'Detect Ipth' and 'Detect Oopth', would we even be having this discussion?"


Just like reality having objective facts does not preclude conspiracy theorists from existing.

Also very true. However! As you can see above, it's also not just a matter of in-universe folks being 'wrong', which is part of what his point is. Max would probably point out that "yes, but at the same time, we know, out of the game, that everyone who thinks that way is wrong. They just don't know it yet." The right/wrong aspect is keyed in from the very beginning. However, my response above already details a number of ways in which someone doesn't have to be wrong in order to have a philosophical debate on good and evil. You're not wrong in what you say, and I feel you really added some nice points to this discussion, but I'm just pointing out that what you're saying doesn't really disagree with what Max is saying.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:18 AM
This is starting to sound a lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

The only way an "evil tag" actually makes any damn sense is if there is some sort of objective quality, that a person or creature or thing either has, or does not have.

And if someone worships and evil god but that doesn't make them evil... then why would it give them an evil tag and why would they set off a detect evil spell?

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-28, 07:20 AM
This is starting to sound a lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

Well that's ... just ... insulting. Also disappointing. I thought we were having a nice discussion. If you have a reason behind that, it's up for discussion, but without a reason, it's ... really just name-calling ... do you have a reason?

*EDIT* I see that after I asked that, you went back and edited your response to have more to it. Thank you! Although I wish you had just responded instead of editing a post I'd already responded to...


The only way an "evil tag" actually makes any damn sense is if there is some sort of objective quality, that a person or creature or thing either has, or does not have.

True!


And if someone worships and evil god but that doesn't make them evil... then why would it give them an evil tag and why would they set off a detect evil spell?

Because they're aligning themselves with a power they know to be evil. The evil magic of their dark god courses through them. They can try to use that power towards a non-evil end, but the power itself is from an evil source. The spell is detecting the evil god through proxy, not so much the person themself.

Also, because the rules say so, but don't inherently say why, so we get to talk philosophy to figure it out!

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:37 AM
Well that's ... just ... insulting. Also disappointing. I thought we were having a nice discussion. If you have a reason behind that, it's up for discussion, but without a reason, it's ... really just name-calling ... do you have a reason?


How else would you describe wanting to have something that only works with an objectively defined binary "evil or not evil" checkbox on every person, creature, and thing in a fictional reality...

...but going on at length trying to avoid the inherent consequences of that decision for the broader setting, and instead trying to work around and have everything else just like a setting in which "evil" isn't an objectively identifiable quality or energy or force or whatever?


E: and it's not just directed at you, but rather at entire swaths of this thread.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:38 AM
*EDIT* I see that after I asked that, you went back and edited your response to have more to it. Thank you! Although I wish you had just responded instead of editing a post I'd already responded to...


The edit was going on while you posted.

AMFV
2016-08-28, 07:40 AM
Quoted for insane levels of truth.

Although to be fair, I'm pretty sure that's a feature rather than a bug. It gives the DM a lot of room to make judgement calls: "Can a fiend be saved"? "Did Asmodus' Nature Change Immediately When He Fell?" Alignment questions are able to be answered in great depth by each individual Dungeon Master in accordance with their setting. It's why I find Pathfinder's Cosmology to be much more frustrating.

Edit: Even the earlier discussion as to how something would ping as "Evil" despite not being technically "Evil" is certainly a room for a judgement call along the same lines.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:47 AM
Although to be fair, I'm pretty sure that's a feature rather than a bug. It gives the DM a lot of room to make judgement calls: "Can a fiend be saved"? "Did Asmodus' Nature Change Immediately When He Fell?" Alignment questions are able to be answered in great depth by each individual Dungeon Master in accordance with their setting. It's why I find Pathfinder's Cosmology to be much more frustrating.

Edit: Even the earlier discussion as to how something would ping as "Evil" despite not being technically "Evil" is certainly a room for a judgement call along the same lines.


I prefer to just avoid alignment as a mechanical system, and notions of "evil as a stain", entirely.

AMFV
2016-08-28, 07:51 AM
I prefer to just avoid alignment as a mechanical system, and notions of "evil as a stain", entirely.

Well that's certainly an option. Although that causes quite a few subsystems in 3.5 to start breaking down, requires a complete restructuring of the cosmology and makes certain classes obsolete. If that's your poison I would push for a different system where alignment isn't as intrinsic to it. It's almost like trying to play NWoD (or CoD, whatever it's called now) without the Morality System.

I'm personally fond of alignment systems, in general. They can prompt interesting philosophical discussion that might not ever come up in a game primarily focused on hack and slash, which is to my mind a definite feature of the system.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 08:45 AM
Well that's certainly an option. Although that causes quite a few subsystems in 3.5 to start breaking down, requires a complete restructuring of the cosmology and makes certain classes obsolete. If that's your poison I would push for a different system where alignment isn't as intrinsic to it. It's almost like trying to play NWoD (or CoD, whatever it's called now) without the Morality System.

Doesn't seem too tough to me. You can probably just remove all of the "personality determines alignment" stuff and still keep the "special alignment aura" stuff if you really want to.

The important effects are... lessee... Protection from X, Detect X, and the Word line. If there are any important ones I'm forgetting, lemme know.

- Alignment restrictions for acquiring features, generally speaking, can go the way of the dodo without impacting much of anything. Paladins and Clerics no longer have alignment requirements but can still have codes of conduct.

- Detect X becomes "detect clerics/paladins/blackguards/outsiders/undead/deathless" or more simply "detect aligned auras / aligned energy channeling." Clerics ping as the alignment of their deities / the extraplanar energy they channel, regardless of their own personalities. Paladins / Blackguards / etc all ping as the alignment of their aura. Deathless always ping Good, other undead always ping Evil, Outsiders ping of their respective alignments. Anyone who doesn't have a deity (or has a neutral aligned deity) who can turn undead pings Good, and vice versa for Rebuke Undead.

- Protection from X spell could perhaps become reflavored as a sort of "Planar / Possession Ward" spell. It prevents summoned extraplanar creatures from entering an area, it provides an AC bonus against anything not native to the caster's plane or summoned, undead, clerics, paladins, and it suppresses outside attempts to control you (compulsions and such). The most important part of PfX is the suppression of compulsions, so it's important to keep that part intact, and that seems to fit with the "possession ward" flavor.

- Holy Word / Blasphemy / Dictum / Word of Chaos simply affect all beings not from your plane that don't share your deity's aligned aura. If a balor does it on the material plane, he's hitting everyone except for, say, clerics of Erythnul. This means that monsters like Balors tend to keep their CRs intact but clerics take a tad of a nerf in most campaigns, and I'm okay with that.

- Radiant Charge / Doom Charge / Tide of Chaos / Law Bearer can simply work on any sentient enemies whom you have a specific moral disagreement with (e.g. you must know something, even if it is a minor or generalized detail, about the target. You can't use it on random peasants). Radiant charge may work on undead/evil outsiders, Doom charge may work on Deathless/good outsiders. To qualify to have these maneuvers, your deity's alignment must be within one step of the maneuver's alignment requirement.

- Smite works on everything. No I don't care that this is a buff, Paladins are a low tier class. Alternatively, use the solution for the aligned charge maneuvers above.

- Aura of Chaos / Perfect Order / Tyranny / Triumph stances make you ping as if you were a cleric of a god of those alignments. Aura of Triumph procs the same way Radiant Charge does.

How's that?

Alternatively, remove the deity stuff and just make it a case of whether or not you channel positive or negative energy.

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 08:46 AM
Well that's certainly an option. Although that causes quite a few subsystems in 3.5 to start breaking down, requires a complete restructuring of the cosmology and makes certain classes obsolete. If that's your poison I would push for a different system where alignment isn't as intrinsic to it. It's almost like trying to play NWoD (or CoD, whatever it's called now) without the Morality System.
PF covered removing alignment pretty easily in one of it's books. Been using it's subjective morality rules for a while now without really much issue.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 08:46 AM
PF covered removing alignment pretty easily in one of it's books. Been using it's subjective morality rules for a while now without really much issue.

I haven't seen that rule. Got a link?

AMFV
2016-08-28, 08:59 AM
PF covered removing alignment pretty easily in one of it's books. Been using it's subjective morality rules for a while now without really much issue.

Well my concerns are more based cosmology and thematic concerns over mechanical concerns. For example, removing a Paladin's moral clauses severely impacts the character and can make certain things very wonky.

Edit: It's the same sort of thing as removing the morality from World of Darkness, it messes with some of the inherent thematic assumptions of the game, as well as certain mechanical features.

Jay R
2016-08-28, 09:19 AM
The concepts of good and evil are crucial to fantasy gaming, but are also crucial to any kind of simulated human interaction, as important to Pretty Woman as to Lord of the Rings.

But Law and Chaos, as used in D&D, are purely D&D constructs, which don't attempt to model any real-world theory of morality, ethics, psychology, philosophy, religion, metaphysics, or any other system of thought or behavior.

So the Good/Evil axis can inspire philosophical discussion that applies to our lives and world. The Law/Chaos axis inspires philosophical discussion pertaining to the D&D rules and constructs, but nothing else.

A little history: The original D&D alignments were called Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, based on Michael Moorcock's Elric stories.

But the very few rules about them made it clear that they really meant Good, Neutral, and Evil. A high level cleric was a Patriarch if Lawful, or an Evil High Priest if Chaotic. The description of reversed clerical spells, and effects of clerics on undead, referred to evil clerics, not chaotic ones, etc.

Eventually enough players pointed out that "Lawful" didn't mean "Good", and "Chaotic" didn't mean "Evil". So Gygax had to choose one of from three options:
1. He could explain the terminology he was using.
2. He could switch to clearer language and say "Good" and "Evil".
3. He could invent a more detailed rules system that added complexity without clarity.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice.

Good and Evil are crucial concepts of human behavior.
Law and Chaos (in the D&D sense) are D&D-specific complications.

So in discussions of whether the alignment system adds something to D&D, it seems to me that the "yes" and "no" sides aren't taking positions directly opposed to each other, but at 90 degrees to each other.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-28, 09:42 AM
How else would you describe wanting to have something that only works with an objectively defined binary "evil or not evil" checkbox on every person, creature, and thing in a fictional reality...

...but going on at length trying to avoid the inherent consequences of that decision for the broader setting, and instead trying to work around and have everything else just like a setting in which "evil" isn't an objectively identifiable quality or energy or force or whatever?

E: and it's not just directed at you, but rather at entire swaths of this thread.

I'd call it "Dealing with world building in a realistic manner where even when some things are black and white, doesn't mean EVERYTHING is black and white" You don't have to go to either one extreme or the other - it can involve a balance somewhere in the middle.

Also, by the way ... no, it's *not* trying to have everything else just like a setting in which "Evil" isn't an objectively identifiable quality or energy or force or whatever. If you'll look closer at the examples I gave, the philosophical discussions involved have the seeds of objective morality at their core, but show that they don't inherently clarify everything. These are specifically a philosophical scenario that includes, not excludes, the provable objective morality.

I personally don't understand the concept that it has to be either one extreme or the other extreme, but if you could explain *why* you feel that there is no middle ground and that even the slightest tidbit of absolute morality means that there is absolutely no subjective morality, it might help matters a bit.

I feel that you are making the assumption that any level of objective morality at all immediately simplifies everything to the point where discussion is pointless ... but that's just not the case. And you never addressed any of the examples I provided to show where they in any way did not make sense. You simply went, "I don't understand why you would do that" but you never logically invalidated it.


The concepts of good and evil are crucial to fantasy gaming, but are also crucial to any kind of simulated human interaction, as important to Pretty Woman as to Lord of the Rings.

But Law and Chaos, as used in D&D, are purely D&D constructs, which don't attempt to model any real-world theory of morality, ethics, psychology, philosophy, religion, metaphysics, or any other system of thought or behavior.

*snip*

Good and Evil are crucial concepts of human behavior.
Law and Chaos (in the D&D sense) are D&D-specific complications.


I actually quite disagree. I've found quite a few parallels to lawful/chaotic interaction in our own world, though that frequently gets into politics, so I won't lay out any examples thereof. But suffice to say, I've found that speaking on lawful/chaotic alignment with understanding fellow gamers has quite helped to clarify several real-world philosophical points in a common language which really helped us come to an understanding.

The primary difference simply being that we don't tend to use the words 'lawful' and 'chaos'. However, when you look at the difference between them, the automatic reaction to authority figures, etc - you can definite see parallels.

cobaltstarfire
2016-08-28, 11:11 AM
Well my concerns are more based cosmology and thematic concerns over mechanical concerns. For example, removing a Paladin's moral clauses severely impacts the character and can make certain things very wonky.



Alignment is completely removed mechanically from 5e D&D, and paladins still work just fine. The first two Subclasses (oaths) of paladin probably can't be done with an Evil characters, but I could see an Evil Paladin of Vengeance working fine.

It is still possible for a Paladin to fall in 5e, but it's because of failure to uphold their Oath rather than because of a change in alignment. (Which gives us the Oathbreaker class, though I think it's intended mainly for NPC's)


As far as the question of having "Evil" races/species in my world? The answer is no, though if you asked an inhabitant of the world I'm sure there are plenty who would say the answer is yes.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 11:18 AM
Once you have a spell (or whatever) that "detects evil", there are two possibilities:

1) The spell is reliable and objective, and the result is consistent based on what "the universe" has declared "evil", and you've established that there is an objective standard for evil against which all other standards can be judged. Every time there's a question of good and evil, there's a purely empirical process by which to determine the answer. "This is an evil person/creature/thing!" can be tested, and confirmed or rejected, as an accusation.

2) The spell is subjective to the caster, and the results vary based on what the CASTER or whoever thinks of as "evil". In this case you're right back in the situation of our world, where there's no empirical test and both sides in a dispute can claim to be good and accuse the other of being evil.


It's like forensic use of DNA. If you have a reliable DNA comparison method, you can determine whether the hair at the crime scene belonged or did not belong to the accused. Anyone can still claim the opposite, but they're objectively and empirically wrong. Etc.


Some people seem to want a setting in which there is an "evil virus" and a quick simple reliable test for it... and yet still room to have debates about "what makes someone evil" or "is this action evil?"

AMFV
2016-08-28, 11:20 AM
Alignment is completely removed mechanically from 5e D&D, and paladins still work just fine. The first two Subclasses (oaths) of paladin probably can't be done with an Evil characters, but I could see an Evil Paladin of Vengeance working fine.

I personally disagree very strenuously with that assessment, but that's really a matter for another thread rather than this one. For me, personally though, a Paladin without Alignment loses the most interesting bit of their flavor. Furthermore the Oaths in 5E aren't too my liking either. It smacks of trying to make the whole thing wishy-washy.

This is naturally a great deal my opinion, but it's why I would caution against removing alignment systems, because my personal opinion is that they're intrinsic to the game, at least as I play it.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-28, 12:33 PM
Once you have a spell (or whatever) that "detects evil", there are two possibilities:

1) The spell is reliable and objective, and the result is consistent based on what "the universe" has declared "evil", and you've established that there is an objective standard for evil against which all other standards can be judged. Every time there's a question of good and evil, there's a purely empirical process by which to determine the answer. "This is an evil person/creature/thing!" can be tested, and confirmed or rejected, as an accusation.

2) The spell is subjective to the caster, and the results vary based on what the CASTER or whoever thinks of as "evil". In this case you're right back in the situation of our world, where there's no empirical test and both sides in a dispute can claim to be good and accuse the other of being evil.


Yes, this is true. And completely unrelated to anything we were talking about. We're not asking whether or not Detect Evil works to detect whether an individual person, creature, or thing is evil.


It's like forensic use of DNA. If you have a reliable DNA comparison method, you can determine whether the hair at the crime scene belonged or did not belong to the accused. Anyone can still claim the opposite, but they're objectively and empirically wrong. Etc.

OK, granted, such an insanely advanced sci-fi technique would indeed take a lot of the issue out of the way, but then you're left wondering whether or not the hair at the crime scene means the accused actually did it or whether the hair was there for another reason (see: Gattaca, which had this exact scene. And the person whose hair was at the crime scene was innocent.) And at that level of technology, then you're also left wondering after clones. Maybe the accused was not at the crime scene, but his twin brother or clone was.


Some people seem to want a setting in which there is an "evil virus" and a quick simple reliable test for it... and yet still room to have debates about "what makes someone evil" or "is this action evil?"

Except you didn't say anything above about 'what makes someone evil' or 'is this action evil'. You said something about 'is this person evil', which is a completely, utterly, and entirely different topic.

Frozen_Feet
2016-08-28, 12:58 PM
Some people seem to want a setting in which there is an "evil virus" and a quick simple reliable test for it... and yet still room to have debates about "what makes someone evil" or "is this action evil?"

You speak as if people can't debate about facts. They do, all the time. It simply means some of them are misguided, stupid, wrong, or... wait, I think I'm forgetting a word here...

Oh, right. Evil.

The idea of people refusing to accept objective morality despite it existing is not a new one and could be said to be at the very core of some famous fantasy settings. There's nothing hard, troublesome or problematic about playing it out.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-28, 01:30 PM
You speak as if people can't debate about facts. They do, all the time. It simply means some of them are misguided, stupid, wrong, or... wait, I think I'm forgetting a word here...

Oh, right. Evil..

Or, you know, understanding it differently, and both having valid points.

Satinavian
2016-08-28, 03:52 PM
Except you didn't say anything above about 'what makes someone evil' or 'is this action evil'. You said something about 'is this person evil', which is a completely, utterly, and entirely different topic.
No, they aren't

With good/evil detection you can look if people regularly doing action X are more/less evil than average population. You can also make before/after scans for those actions. Which means, you can measure the evilness of any action scientifically, it is only a matter of measurement errors for smale scale deeds and limited testcases for large scale deeds what limits you. There is not really a lot of place left for real moral debates, at best you could formulate moral model theories and prove/disprove them via detect alignment spells.


You speak as if people can't debate about facts. They do, all the time. It simply means some of them are misguided, stupid, wrong, or... wait, I think I'm forgetting a word here...When the fact can be proven via science, people rejecting it are as reasonable as flat earthers. Which is very very different from minority opinions in real world morality debates.

ArcanaGuy
2016-08-28, 04:10 PM
No, they aren't

With good/evil detection you can look if people regularly doing action X are more/less evil than average population. You can also make before/after scans for those actions. Which means, you can measure the evilness of any action scientifically, it is only a matter of measurement errors for smale scale deeds and limited testcases for large scale deeds what limits you. There is not really a lot of place left for real moral debates, at best you could formulate moral model theories and prove/disprove them via detect alignment spells.

First off, I already mentioned the comparison of 'doing action X' versus a statistically significant sample size. And for a shortcut to the end result there: This is the same thing that convinces people that drow and orcs are all evil, and therefore killing them is bad. Because a statistically significant sample size shows that they are. In fact, there probably wouldn't even be an outlier in the vast majority of tests. Which means your test would, in fact, give you the wrong answer. It's not 'being drow' or 'being orc' that makes you evil.

Second: that part of the suggested series (ignoring the element I'll address under point three) of tests actually ignores something very important: Direction of causation. Such tests would not tell you if this action is an evil action, or if it's just an action more likely to be taken by evil people.

Third, remember that 'Detect Evil' is very specifically NOT that sensitive that it can detect the subtle shifts in evil between one action and the next.

Fourth, remember that even if the spell WAS that sensitive, or your GM let you custom-build some specialty device that was that sensitive (which actually changes our discussion entirely)... you'd find yourself with inconsistent results. Some people doing an action would register a larger increase in evil than other people doing the same action.

And fifth: the fact that you need to come up with some tenuous and extended series of tests that would give you even the faintest hint of a proof is actually proof that these are *NOT* the same thing. If it was the same thing and the same topic, and one directly led to the other ... you wouldn't have to hunt for it over decades or centuries of research and careful analysis and theory and experimentation and mistakes and basic human error. Sure, study of one topic can lead to theories and evidence of the other, but that doesn't make them the same topic, with the same level of instant and readily available clarity.

cobaltstarfire
2016-08-28, 04:38 PM
I personally disagree very strenuously with that assessment, but that's really a matter for another thread rather than this one. For me, personally though, a Paladin without Alignment loses the most interesting bit of their flavor. Furthermore the Oaths in 5E aren't too my liking either. It smacks of trying to make the whole thing wishy-washy.

This is naturally a great deal my opinion, but it's why I would caution against removing alignment systems, because my personal opinion is that they're intrinsic to the game, at least as I play it.


From a crunch standpoint, there's nothing wrong with how the class works, which was were I was coming from. If you don't like the fluff, there's nothing stopping you as the DM from changing it, or as a player asking to add things to make it feel less "wishy-washy" in your opinion. Having alignment be only "Fluff" in 5e also doesn't remove the alignment from the game. What games I've played there is usually cause and effect in place, so even if alignment isn't tied to the mechanics, doing things on either end of the spectrum usually has consequences, sometimes rather large ones too.


I'm pretty certain the whole reason paladin was done the way it was in 5e was to address the numerous out of character issues we constantly see in regards to the paladin. (or alignment problems and interpretation in general). Oaths give both the player and DM some rules to follow, which they both know.

I understand where you're coming from, it seems like it can be fun to try to experiment and play with alignment, I've never had an opportunity to really do it though. I'm very unpracticed in role playing, and not very well socialized, which makes trying out a class like paladin difficult and frankly scary to me because of the potential ooc issues. The one character I really wanted to experiment with (A CX character, who bounced between Good and Evil behavior for reasons) had the cause of her unstable behavior solved in the first session. Which was really frustrating because the DM seemed excited about me running this character, only to completely kill the exciting part immediately...

That said I am just as happy with alignment being black and white, as I am with it being in gradients. I think both can be easy or hard, and frustrating, depending on the mind set of the players and DM.

veti
2016-08-28, 05:04 PM
"What does it mean to be evil? In short, it means one does not value the individual life. Is this so bad, by itself? Even good people do this. We revere the hero that defeats a tyrant and rescues his people - we do not call that person a murderer, and mourn the tyrant. But when a vizier disagrees with how a 'goodly' king governs his people, and arranges the king's death so he can make the improvements he sees fit, this we see as murder. The individual life is not so important to us all as whether or not their ethics agree with ours. For me, it is a matter of mathematics. If, by the death of five people, you can save 50, is that not worth doing? What is the point of feeling guilt over the death of those five? If the painful death of 50 people can bring us the medical knowledge to save 5000, is this not even better? And if the death of 5000 people in medical experiments can change the face of the world, creating a longer and more fulfilling life for every person that will ever live, is it even a question as to whether or not these experiments should be done? Yes, I do not value the life of the individual. I value the existence of all peoples, and the individual that makes their life worth valuing."

Nice villainous rant there, but is it possible to believe all that and not be evil?


Now, this is all BS.

Aww shucks, cop-out. Now you've made the whole thing irrelevant. If no-one actually does believe that, then you're refusing to commit yourself on whether or not it's defensible.


Not to mention that not every evil act instantly causes someone to be evil. When someone finally slips over that threshold - what *is* all the acts which led to that final rejudgement by the universe? You, as a game-master, know why they're evil. For everyone inside the universe, who cannot cast 'detect evil' on individual actions, they don't know! They have to judge by proxy, by the actions of good individuals compared to the actions of evil individuals. At which point you get the fantasy world equivelent of Godwin's Law.

If "evil" means anything - and personally I'm in the "bin it, it adds nothing of value" camp - then it's about motivations, not actions. "Evil acts" do not in general "cause" the perpetrator to become evil - they were already evil before they acted. (They may cause others to become evil, but that's a side-issue and need not detain us.) The only reason we talk about "actions" is as an externally observable guide to the internal thoughts; but if there is a Detect Evil spell, we don't even need that. We can detect someone who is planning a murder before they've committed it.


Ahhh... so very right. Love this. You're *quite* right. they would argue, "It's not evil, it's just what we decided to CALL evil! We're not evil by fiat of the universe! We're evil by a choice of language! If we'd kept our conversation of good and evil separate from this other thing... and called those spells 'Detect Ipth' and 'Detect Oopth', would we even be having this discussion?"

And the drow would be completely right to say that. Within their own language, which is what they presumably use when discussing it among themselves, they are the ones who get to define what "good" and "evil", or "ipth" and "oopth", mean. If someone else chooses to translate their words into "good" and "evil", that's on them. They can say "the humans call us 'evil', which is a word they use to stigmatise our society and give themselves what they call a 'right' to oppose us. This concept of 'right' is a curious feature of their society, but from our point of view what matters is the effect: they will hate us, fear us, usually kill us on sight, and do everything they can to oppose us. We will need to be assertive, to get our way."

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 05:28 PM
When the fact can be proven via science, people rejecting it are as reasonable as flat earthers. Which is very very different from minority opinions in real world morality debates.


Too right.

And it's even more true if "detect evil" isn't just qualitative, but quantitative.

Once you've established that "evil" is a discrete quality you can detect, you've eliminated all non-empirical moral debate.

RazorChain
2016-08-28, 06:12 PM
That is a really interesting theory. To be fair the only example of a "Good" Demon we have is one that winds up going Evil again at the end (transferring levels to Blackguard as I recall). So it's possible that the Chaotic aspects of the Succubus overwhelmed the inherent predisposition towards Evil, and possibly temporarily even their aversion to law. After which point they later pulled it back. Although I can't really speak too much to it. D&D Cosmologies tend to be a pretty ridiculous mess.

Edit: It's also possible that the transition from Angel to Devil took years and wasn't an instantaneous thing. I mean as far that's concerned in 3.5 that's so far back in time that very few entities are aware of it, even most deities tend to be from a period after that, so it's probably at DM discretion.

Angels falling have nothing to do with good or evil but free will. If Angels rebels against their Gods will then they fall. Angels might drown the entire human race, destroy cities, kill the fistborns of an entire nations just to enforce the will of their God. The word you are looking for is righteous, angels must be righteous and so long as they do follow the will of their God they will not fall.

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 06:16 PM
I haven't seen that rule. Got a link?
Here you go. (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/gameplay/removingAlignment.html)


Well my concerns are more based cosmology and thematic concerns over mechanical concerns. For example, removing a Paladin's moral clauses severely impacts the character and can make certain things very wonky.
In my experience it's actually made things More thematic and enhanced the cosmology since things have a reason to do things and planes/outsiders have personality beyond just being defined by two words. Also, paladins still have a code of conduct. Though there are options in the rule which would have the cosmology not need a single readjustment, I haven't used it yet.


Edit: It's the same sort of thing as removing the morality from World of Darkness, it messes with some of the inherent thematic assumptions of the game, as well as certain mechanical features.
Not really.... since the morality things in World of Darkness are major aspect on it's mood, atmosphere and themes.... Not so in D&D. You can have whole campaigns following the rules where Everything is exactly the same as if alignment didn't exist. It's not like you only go after the bad guys because they detect as a certain alignment, would go after them regardless of how they detect on a specific test since they are causing something bad or have done something bad. Alignment doesn't even interact with all characters, it basically only even interacts with clerics and paladins in 3.5e outside of arbitrary and nonsensical alignment restrictions.

Cluedrew
2016-08-28, 06:19 PM
Once you've established that "evil" is a discrete quality you can detect, you've eliminated all non-empirical moral debate.Not really. I mean it helps, but only for people who believe evil is bad. That is some people will flat out deny that is what it means.

But still I'm sure one a quantifiable, detectable force that represents moral quality people will start arguing how closely it does actually represent moral quality. For instance say an brutal police officer (or since fantasy, inquisitor) pings as evil, they would argue they are doing evil but they are doing it to create good in the end. Even if detect is more actuate than that, people might argue that it isn't.

And this doesn't take into account Law vs. Chaos. There is plenty of room for debate over which is better, either as a tie breaker or even overriding small amounts of good.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 06:40 PM
Too right.

And it's even more true if "detect evil" isn't just qualitative, but quantitative.

Once you've established that "evil" is a discrete quality you can detect, you've eliminated all non-empirical moral debate.

Actually, no it doesn't. It establishes that there's a discrete quality that you can detect which you've chosen to call evil.

You can accomplish the same thing by choosing to label any discrete measurable quality "Evil." Heck, there are already people that do this in the real world. Moral philosophers will not be impressed.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 06:53 PM
Actually, no it doesn't. It establishes that there's a discrete quality that you can detect which you've chosen to call evil.

You can accomplish the same thing by choosing to label any discrete measurable quality "Evil." Heck, there are already people that do this in the real world. Moral philosophers will not be impressed.


If the spell is not detecting actual "moral evil" but rather something else that's just being labeled "evil", that would fall under my second possibility listed earlier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21147199&postcount=192), that "detect evil" is not reliable, which leaves us with something very much like the real-world situation (other than certain people just having a bigger finger to point).

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 07:00 PM
If the spell is not detecting actual "moral evil" but rather something else that's just being labeled "evil", that would fall under my second possibility listed earlier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21147199&postcount=192), that "detect evil" is not reliable, which leaves us with something very much like the real-world situation (other than certain people just having a bigger finger to point).

*Checks link*

Okay... this situation 1 thing doesn't work to end all non-empirical moral philosophy either.



1) The spell is reliable and objective, and the result is consistent based on what "the universe" has declared "evil", and you've established that there is an objective standard for evil against which all other standards can be judged. Every time there's a question of good and evil, there's a purely empirical process by which to determine the answer. "This is an evil person/creature/thing!" can be tested, and confirmed or rejected, as an accusation.

How is the universe "declaring" something evil? This just isn't how language works. Language is developed and defined by creatures in order to communicate ideas with each other. Moreover, words can have multiple meanings.

If you're saying "this test objectively measures how evil someone is," that doesn't actually give me any information unless you first tell me what "evil" means. It seems like you're not even bothering to define the question before claiming to have the answer.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:15 PM
*Checks link*

Okay... this situation 1 thing doesn't work to end all non-empirical moral philosophy either.



How is the universe "declaring" something evil? This just isn't how language works. Language is developed and defined by creatures in order to communicate ideas with each other. Moreover, words can have multiple meanings.

If you're saying "this test objectively measures how evil someone is," that doesn't actually give me any information unless you first tell me what "evil" means. It seems like you're not even bothering to define the question before claiming to have the answer.


If it's just "we're detecting this X and we call X evil", then that's situation #2.

In order for "detect evil" to be what it says on the label, that requires the setting to feature some sort "evil as a force" or "evil as a stain" or whatever for it to detect. In order for "detect evil" to detect evil, there must be some sort of actual objective evil as a detectable thing (in that setting) for it to detect.

If "detect evil" is not detecting actual objective evil, if it's just a subjective label or a matter of perspective, then it's not really what it says on the box.

If it's just detecting some sort of energy or force, and the culture says "if you have that energy, you're evil", then it's the magic equivalent of "people with green eyes have demon blood and should be purged".

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 07:19 PM
If it's just "we're detecting this X and we call X evil", then that's situation #2. I'm sorry, but how is situation #1 different? In situation #1, you're calling it evil. You haven't added any definitions beyond that in your description of situation 1.

The fact that the test is 100% reliable in detecting Trait A (called "Evil") doesn't actually do much on its own to establish Trait A as being a solution to any specific moral questions posed by philosophers.

Note that this is coming from someone who already thinks that moral questions can be answered empirically. I just don't think the scenario you described in situation #1 is an example of solving moral questions empirically.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:23 PM
I'm sorry, but how is situation #1 different? In situation #1, you're calling it evil. You haven't added any definitions beyond that in your description of situation 1.

The fact that the test is 100% reliable in detecting Trait A (called "Evil") doesn't actually do much on its own to establish Trait A as being a solution to any specific moral questions posed by philosophers.


If the spell doesn't detect evil, but instead detects some trait that is then subjectively called "evil" or which caused the target to be subjectively labeled "evil", then it's not Detect Evil, it's Detect Trait.

A functioning Detect Evil spell presupposes some form of actual concrete detectable evil. If it's not detecting evil, but rather detecting something else, then it's a "detect something else" spell, whether the users understand/realize this or not.


Personally, I think the concept of some sort of actual detectable "evil as a cosmic energy" is nonsense, and would ditch the spell entirely, but that's not the point.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 07:31 PM
If the spell doesn't detect evil, but instead detects some trait that is then subjectively called "evil" or which caused the target to be subjectively labeled "evil", then it's not Detect Evil, it's Detect Trait.

A functioning Detect Evil spell presupposes some form of actual concrete detectable evil. If it's not detecting evil, but rather detecting something else, then it's a "detect something else" spell, whether the users understand/realize this or not.

There seems to be some confusion about language still.

Unless you establish what (insert any word, seriously) is, and how it answers specific, practical moral questions (let alone all of them), then the fact that you're 100% objectively, accurately measuring the presence of (anything, described by said any word), you haven't provided information capable of answering any non-circular question about moral philosophy.

The fact that you're telling us that you're accurately detecting evil doesn't give me any information unless you're telling me what evil is and how it answers practical moral questions.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 07:44 PM
There seems to be some confusion about language still.

Unless you establish what (insert any word, seriously) is, and how it answers specific, practical moral questions (let alone all of them), then the fact that you're 100% objectively, accurately measuring the presence of (anything, described by said any word), you haven't provided information capable of answering any non-circular question about moral philosophy.

The fact that you're telling us that you're accurately detecting evil doesn't give me any information unless you're telling me what evil is and how it answers practical moral questions.

This is not about language, or terminology.

An objectively functional "detect _______" requires that there be ______ to detect. If there's no _______, there's nothing to detect, and "detect _______" doesn't work. At all.

That a light sensor detects light (ie, registers photons, etc) is not predicated on us calling light, "light". We could call light "roger" instead, and then it would be roger sensor, and it would detect roger. The fact that what it detects is named svjetlost or dritė or valo or whatever in other languages doesn't change how it works or what it's detecting.


If "detect evil" is detecting something else that is THEN associated with evil subjectively, then it's not detecting evil, it's detecting that other thing.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 07:47 PM
This is not about language, or terminology.

Yeah, it is. You're not bothering to define your terms, or explain how they answer any (let alone all) non-circular moral questions. You're skipping from "Thing exists and is measurable" to "thing answers all moral questions" with nothing in between, and that doesn't work.


An objectively functional "detect _______" requires that there be ______ to detect.

Yep. And you will notice in my previous posts, I said that this applies even if the evil exists to detect.


That a light sensor detects light (ie, registers photons, etc) is not predicated on us calling light, "light". We could call light "roger" instead, and then it would be roger sensor, and it would detect roger. The fact that what it detects is named
svjetlost or dritė or valo or whatever in other languages doesn't change how it works or what it's detecting.

Correct. I said as much myself in my previous posts. It seems like there's a bit of confusion as to which part of your situation 1 that I'm objecting to.

Listen. Telling me that it "actually detects evil, no really, it does. It's detecting a real thing that's really there" is all well and good, but it does not communicate any information to me about what you've detected. You can have a test, which is 100% objective, 100% accurate, whatever unrealistic standard of veracity you want to posit, which detects a thing (Whether it's light or evil or whatever). But just saying that you detected a thing isn't an explanation of how you've answered all moral questions (or even established any relevance to moral questions). You never bothered to define what this "evil" thing you're detecting is, let alone how it's relevant to answering practical moral questions.

If you told me "Hey, I detected Roger," that doesn't help me. If you tell me, "I detected Roger, which is the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible" then now I know what you're talking about and how it answers questions about how you see things.

You just told me you detected evil. Even if evil is really there, you're not establishing how it answers every possible moral question unless you define what evil is and how it's relevant to those questions.

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 07:53 PM
Ah, one of the many issues I have with objective alignment. That it turns Good/Evil into traits that could as much be called X/Y or Blue/Orange rather than actually being morals.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 08:06 PM
Let me try to clarify my position here because I feel like something's being lost in translation. Here's the statement I object to:


Once you've established that "evil" is a discrete quality you can detect, you've eliminated all non-empirical moral debate.

My primary objection to this statement is that (as far as I can see) you haven't bothered to tell me what evil is, let alone how it would resolve any (let alone all) moral debate.

You then linked me to this post:


1) The spell is reliable and objective, and the result is consistent based on what "the universe" has declared "evil", and you've established that there is an objective standard for evil against which all other standards can be judged. Every time there's a question of good and evil, there's a purely empirical process by which to determine the answer. "This is an evil person/creature/thing!" can be tested, and confirmed or rejected, as an accusation.

My objection to this is that it still doesn't tell me what the word evil is supposed to mean. You just told me that a thing exists, and that you can measure it. I know none of the properties of this thing that you're measuring. If I don't know any of its properties, I can't use it to resolve moral debates.

I am not objecting to these statements:

Every time there's a question of good and evil, there's a purely empirical process by which to determine the answer.

"This is an evil person/creature/thing!" can be tested, and confirmed or rejected, as an accusation.

Certainly, if you detected this thing, you can answer questions of whether people have this thing. However, that alone is not enough to support the claim

you've eliminated all non-empirical moral debate.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 08:18 PM
Ah, one of the many issues I have with objective alignment. That it turns Good/Evil into traits that could as much be called X/Y or Blue/Orange rather than actually being morals.

And this entire discussion is why I avoid nonsense about Good and Evil as "cosmic forces" in my settings. Like the effing bubonic plague.

In order for "detect evil" to work, Evil must be an objectively existent cosmic energy or force that's there to be detected and measured. By definition, actions that increase Evil are immoral, actions that decrease Evil are not. People, creatures, and objects that have Evil in them are them are immoral, and therefore subject to whatever sanction the culture/society deems necessary / acceptable.

The problem is not that we haven't defined "evil" -- it's that the very existence of a reliable objective "detect evil" in a setting presupposes one and answers all questions about it.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 08:19 PM
By definition What definition is that?


The problem is not that we haven't defined "evil"

Yeah, it is. If you refuse to define a thing, telling me that you can measure that thing gives me no applicable information. "X exists, and I can objectively measure it, therefore all the moral questions are answered" is a non-sequitur so long as X remains undefined.

Thrudd
2016-08-28, 08:20 PM
Detect Evil is a spell which must detect a thing that is actually extant (who knows what it really is), that the people who designed or use the spell call "evil". Is the spell detecting a mental predisposition to think a certain way or behave a certain way, which the spell-caster's culture calls "evil"? In other words, a targeted form of mind-reading/empathy? It could also be detecting some form of non-physical entity or substance that attaches itself to things or possesses things and alters their behavior. This might explain why "protection from evil" spells also prevent the use of mind-altering magic and possession. Maybe any creature or thing that detects as Evil are actually made of or possessed by in some degree a detectable substance, or it is the very fact of possession by an outside energy source that the spell is detecting, not a specific substance. The people responsible for naming the spell perhaps don't understand what it is actually detecting, and call it "evil", because the majority of possessed beings and objects tend to act or be used for anti-social and malevolent purpose, or at the very least can't be trusted.

As long as the GM decides what it is that the spell is actually detecting and rules its effects accordingly, the setting can have perfectly realistic non-objective morality and any form of cosmology one might want. The characters in the world, of course, will be influenced by the subjective morality of their own cultures and beliefs, and may even believe that there is objective Evil and that their spells tell them where it is. Only you, the GM, know the truth, and can reveal it to the players if appropriate.

Coidzor
2016-08-28, 08:21 PM
As an aside, even if you're playing Dungeons and Discourse, you're rarely actually having moral debates while playing a game.

It seems quite strange that there is an apparent need to remind people that these are games, not philosophical treatises that are supposed to whether the scorn and dissection of those who have majored in philosophy.


Ah, one of the many issues I have with objective alignment. That it turns Good/Evil into traits that could as much be called X/Y or Blue/Orange rather than actually being morals.

I identify as Chaotic Funky, myself. :smallwink:

Yes, it's arbitrary and going to have oversights that need to be addressed or recognized if one doesn't want to be a prig. It's one of many love it or leave it conventions that have cropped up over the years.

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 08:22 PM
In order for "detect evil" to work, Evil must be an objectively existent cosmic energy or force that's there to be detected and measured. By definition, actions that increase Evil are immoral, actions that decrease Evil are not. People, creatures, and objects that have Evil in them are them are immoral, and therefore subject to whatever sanction the culture/society deems necessary / acceptable.
Except the claim could be made that it's actually:
Detect X is detecting an objective cosmic energy/trait/force that can be detected and measured. Some actions that are immoral end up increasing X, and some actions that are moral end up decreasing X and increasing Y. How does that equal "Detect X solves all morality questions"?

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 08:23 PM
Detect Evil is a spell which must detect a thing that is actually extant (who knows what it really is), that the people who designed or use the spell call "evil". Is the spell detecting a mental predisposition to think a certain way or behave a certain way, which the spell-caster's culture calls "evil"? In other words, a targeted form of mind-reading/empathy? It could also be detecting some form of non-physical entity or substance that attaches itself to things or possesses things and alters their behavior. This might explain why "protection from evil" spells also prevent the use of mind-altering magic and possession. Maybe any creature or thing that detects as Evil are actually made of or possessed by in some degree a detectable substance, or it is the very fact of possession by an outside energy source that the spell is detecting, not a specific substance. The people responsible for naming the spell perhaps don't understand what it is actually detecting, and call it "evil", because the majority of possessed beings and objects tend to act or be used for anti-social and malevolent purpose, or at the very least can't be trusted.

As long as the GM decides what it is that the spell is actually detecting and rules its effects accordingly, the setting can have perfectly realistic non-objective morality and any form of cosmology one might want. The characters in the world, of course, will be influenced by the subjective morality of their own cultures and beliefs, and may even believe that there is objective Evil and that their spells tell them where it is. Only you, the GM, know the truth, and can reveal it to the players if appropriate.


And most of that falls under option #2 -- it's detecting what the caster subjective thinks of as "evil". Which is just a more magic-ish version of what goes on in our real world.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 08:44 PM
Except the claim could be made that it's actually:
Detect X is detecting an objective cosmic energy/trait/force that can be detected and measured. Some actions that are immoral end up increasing X, and some actions that are moral end up decreasing X and increasing Y. How does that equal "Detect X solves all morality questions"?

Indeed.

Max's "situation 1" needs to overcome several obstacles at the very least if it is to support the "ends moral debate" statement. First, it would have to make concrete, testable claims about all moral questions. In order to do this, it must establish relevance to all moral philosophy in the first place (which would require defining evil in such a way that measuring it would answer all morality questions in a non-circular fashion, a tall order in its own right). Second, it would require establishing how anyone actually knows that said thing being defined is actually what is being detected and quantified, instead of something like what Milo describes. If not, you don't get to shut up all the moral philosophers because you don't actually know if your test works or not.

Thrudd
2016-08-28, 08:49 PM
And most of that falls under option #2 -- it's detecting what the caster subjective thinks of as "evil". Which is just a more magic-ish version of what goes on in our real world.

Yes, that's how I prefer it. No cosmically defined or objective moral positions which manifest as substances.
It's like if a future civilization had inherited a device which tested the blood for parasites and viruses, but having lost the knowledge of pathology and most other sciences they call it an "evil detector". The device really does detect something which really is probably harmful to the person that has it and others that they are exposed to. Some people may have more of a sense of what it is really detecting than others do. Is a potentially harmful thing being detected? Does failing to detect it present a risk for everyone? Yes. You need to detect that there are some ghouls or wights around, because if you don't pretty soon the whole place will be crawling with them and the whole town will be dead. There is a very practical purpose for having such a detection spell. Whether you call it "evil", or "negative energy" or "sentient nanotech pathogens", it's something not "good" for us.

RazorChain
2016-08-28, 09:00 PM
If we are going to be using the alignment system as a yardstick for morality we might as well try to discern the average temperature of the ocean using only a bucket

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 09:11 PM
If we are going to be using the alignment system as a yardstick for morality we might as well try to discern the average temperature of the ocean using only a bucket

Wow, you just elegantly said what I've been trying to communicate over several posts in one sentence. The bucket totally works for measuring water, but can hardly be said to answer all water-related questions.

That is a pretty apt comparison. I may have to steal it :smallwink:

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 09:12 PM
What definition is that?



Yeah, it is. If you refuse to define a thing, telling me that you can measure that thing gives me no applicable information. "X exists, and I can objectively measure it, therefore all the moral questions are answered" is a non-sequitur so long as X remains undefined.


As far as I'm concerned, whether or not we can come up with a "definition of evil" right here and now in this thread is irrelevant -- entirely beside the point.

An objectively reliable and unbiased "detect evil" spell requires an objective "evil" to detect. We don't need to define it, it has a definition within the setting, whatever that definition is.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 09:18 PM
An objectively reliable and unbiased "detect evil" spell requires an objective "evil" to detect.

Max, I've been granting you the premise that there is an objective evil to detect. That has not been contested. I am rejecting the conclusion that having an objective measurement tool for evil allows you to "eliminate all non-empirical moral debate."

It's just like RazorChain said. Having a bucket actually allows you to measure water, which is actually water and is actually there and is actually defined and everything. However, it does not allow you to answer all water-based questions.


We don't need to define it, it has a definition within the setting, whatever that definition is. Yeah, you do, because "undefined thing X exists" does not justify the conclusion "can eliminate all non-empirical moral debate." You need to define it to establish relevance to the moral debate in the first place.

Anyways, you mentioned definitions given in settings, so let's look at those, shall we? As it happens, there is no definition of Detect Evil in any D&D setting of which I am aware which gives you a tool for answering moral questions more effective than the metaphorical bucket (actually, most of the "objective alignment" settings I've read give a tool less useful than the metaphorical bucket). If you believe otherwise, I invite you to give me an example of a setting where all moral questions are answered by Detect Evil.

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 09:30 PM
As far as I'm concerned, whether or not we can come up with a "definition of evil" right here and now in this thread is irrelevant -- entirely beside the point.

An objectively reliable and unbiased "detect evil" spell requires an objective "evil" to detect. We don't need to define it, it has a definition within the setting, whatever that definition is.

Except how do you know the thing you're detecting is "Objective Evil" and not just you naming the thing it detects "Evil", which has about as much worth in a morality discussion as saying "You're an orange because my culture calls this spell Detect Orange."

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 09:32 PM
Max, I've been granting you the premise that there is an objective evil to detect. That has not been contested. I am rejecting the conclusion that having an objective measurement tool for evil allows you to "eliminate all non-empirical moral debate."

It's just like RazorChain said. Having a bucket actually allows you to measure water, which is actually water and is actually there and is actually defined and everything. However, it does not allow you to answer all water-based questions.


Does an action cause the bucket to become more or less full?




Yeah, you do, because "undefined thing X exists" does not justify the conclusion "can eliminate all non-empirical moral debate." You need to define it to establish relevance to the moral debate in the first place.

Anyways, you mentioned definitions given in settings, so let's look at those, shall we? As it happens, there is no definition of Detect Evil in any D&D setting of which I am aware which gives you a tool for answering moral questions more effective than the metaphorical bucket (actually, most of the "objective alignment" settings I've read give a tool less useful than the metaphorical bucket).


Unless we're divorcing "evil" from morality, and we might as well call it "purple" or "bob" or "monkey flavor energy"... how can an objectively reliable "detect evil" not be a shortcut past (almost) any moral debate? About the only question left is "when if ever is it OK to do something we know makes you more evil?"

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 09:33 PM
Does an action cause the bucket to become more or less full? That is generally how buckets work, yes.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 09:34 PM
Except how do you know the thing you're detecting is "Objective Evil" and not just you naming the thing it detects "Evil", which has about as much worth in a morality discussion as saying "You're an orange because my culture calls this spell Detect Orange."


AGAIN, that falls under #2 -- subjective "detect evil".

Not sure how many times I have to go back to that at this point... I already left a bucket for "detects something else, which then gets subjectively labeled evil".

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 09:40 PM
AGAIN, that falls under #2 -- subjective "detect evil".

AGAIN.

AGAIN.

Okay, slow down a bit. There's no need for allcaps. I think you may be missing his point. If I understand correctly, he's not contesting whether or not the "detect evil really is actually detecting evil" theory is correct. He's asking you how one would know that it is correct from an in-world perspective.

e.g. How does an in-world empiricist differentiate if he's living in a situation 1 world or a situation 2 world?

Edit: I see you removed the allcaps spam while i was posting this, so that's good!


Here you go. (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/gameplay/removingAlignment.html)

Thanks :smallsmile:

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 09:54 PM
AGAIN, that falls under #2 -- subjective "detect evil".

Not sure how many times I have to go back to that at this point... I already left a bucket for "detects something else, which then gets subjectively labeled evil".
But the spell Isn't subjective, alignment is an objective thing. So it's not #2. It's just that it has nothing to do with morality, and is more like cosmic-scope factions.

RazorChain
2016-08-28, 10:11 PM
All right I'm going for the original question.


No I don't have an evil race in my world. As this seems to be really D&D centric and alignment based I'm just going to say that almost all player characters are evil by the measure of western civilization today.

Alignment serves two purposes, to keep the Paladin in line and give the PC's something evil to kill.

Most people won't feel good about themselves going into dungeons killing carebears and ponies and taking their stuff. Hence dungeons are always populated by icky goo, spiders, giant rats, undeads or evil races.

Western morality which is partly based on the ten commandments say that you shall not murder, steal, lie, committ adultery or covet somebodies elses property.

But in a game we must be able to do those things without feeling bad about ourselves and the best way to do this is to demonize the enemy, make him evil, instill an us vs. them mentality.

I'm going to quote someone from another thread




My group "plays the dragons" a lot because we're almost all, except for like one guy, Native Americans of some stripe or another - I'm Miccosukkee/Seminole, one player is Hawaiian/Apache, another is Cree, one guy is Coeur D'Alene - we found the "go explore the unexplored" narrative and the limited scope of what D&D was attempting to do rather distasteful from the very start. "Let me see if I get this straight. We go down into "unexplored" territories, where as it turns out, people are already living, so they're not really unexplored at all, and we have to smash their gods and take their gold? This is really uncomfortable on a rather visceral level. Let's flip that narrative and play more politics and protect our lands from these invaders that think they're "exploring" the "wilderness.""



Evil cannot be quantified or measured because the universe really doesn't care. The only thing of importance to a species or race is survival in the grander scheme of things. If cannibalism is evil and you're stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean with nothing to eat but a human corpse the evil act of cannibalism isn't going to matter to you much.

Evil races are never going to consider themselves evil, just as nations or ideological groups don't consider themselves evil. If you ask somebody from USA if they are evil they will say: hell no, USA is the bastion of freedom, the home of the brave, we are the good guys. If you go to the different part of the world you'll definitely get a different answer. So do the Drow or Duergar consider themselves evil? Hell no!


So how is detect evil then going to work....yeah the good answer is because the GM/DM says so, end of discussion. If we dwell deeper I'm going to tell you how it works. Detect evil is a clerical spell so clearly your God is telling you what evil you are detecting. So what information you are receiving is what the God deems evil. Heretics: Evil. Those who the God doesn't like: Evil.
Unless all the Gods met up and decided on what is Evil and how to quantify it and when a person becomes Evil, then all you are receiving is the subjective perception of what your God deems evil.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 10:21 PM
Okay calm down a bit and slow down a bit. There's no need for allcaps. I think you may be missing his point. If I understand correctly, he's not contesting whether or not the "detect evil really is actually detecting evil" theory is correct. He's asking you how one would know that it is correct from an in-world perspective.

e.g. How does an in-world empiricist differentiate if he's living in a situation 1 world or a situation 2 world?

Edit: I see you removed the allcaps spam while i was posting this, so that's good!


Yes. To me, that's a different question, and probably involves a lot of testing using subjects with known histories, etc, and comparing the results from many different casters of different cultural backgrounds, with some rounds of testing done using casters who know the subjects' histories, and some rounds done using casters who do not know the subjects histories.

Of course, in some of those worlds, the casters would refuse to participate on the grounds that it was blasphemous to question the deity/dieties sendings on the matter.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 10:23 PM
But the spell Isn't subjective, alignment is an objective thing. So it's not #2. It's just that it has nothing to do with morality, and is more like cosmic-scope factions.

That's a whole other bucket of worms, one that I think we brought up earlier in the "might as well call it detect purple" subthread.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 10:26 PM
Yes. To me, that's a different question, and probably involves a lot of testing using subjects with known histories, etc, and comparing the results from many different casters of different cultural backgrounds, with some rounds of testing done using casters who know the subjects' histories, and some rounds done using casters who do not know the subjects histories.


How would any of that differentiate between Situation 1 and the case Milo suggested in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21148683&postcount=220)?

RazorChain
2016-08-28, 10:34 PM
How would any of that differentiate between Situation 1 and the case Milo suggested in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21148683&postcount=220)?

So if killing would be a negative cosmic evil and growing or giving life would be positive cosmic good would then a serial killer that cultivates a garden be considered neutral?

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 10:35 PM
How would any of that differentiate between Situation 1 and the case Milo suggested in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21148683&postcount=220)?

Because in his "#3" situation, the results start to diverge unless the "stuff you're detecting" maps perfectly to "evil" -- you get incongruous results.

LudicSavant
2016-08-28, 10:41 PM
Because in his "#3" situation, the results start to diverge unless the "stuff you're detecting" maps perfectly to "evil" -- you get incongruous results.

How do you prove that, for instance, an action which is morally neutral (doesn't change your alignment either way) is actually morally neutral based on the methods you described? What stops a person from just getting up in the morning one day and arguing that the coverage of issues is incomplete?


how can an objectively reliable "detect evil" not be a shortcut past (almost) any moral debate?

Because there are countless moral debates other than "is this guy a good person overall or not?" Because moral philosophy involves so many different avenues of moral optimization that a single meter can't possibly be an accurate measure of all of them any more than you can reasonably have a single meter measuring "healthiness" even if you had a genuinely complete understanding of biology. Because a great deal of moral philosophers think asking "is this guy a good or evil person overall" is asking the entirely wrong question in the first place. There are so many answers to this question.

Milo v3
2016-08-28, 10:42 PM
So if killing would be a negative cosmic evil and growing or giving life would be positive cosmic good would then a serial killer that cultivates a garden be considered neutral?
Depends on who/how you kill and what/how much you grow, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. I mean, you can be a villain and detect as good by repeated castings of Protection from Evil.

Max_Killjoy
2016-08-28, 10:52 PM
Because there are countless moral debates other than "is this guy a good person overall or not?" Because moral philosophy involves so many different avenues of moral optimization that a single meter can't possibly be an accurate measure of all of them any more than you can reasonably have a single meter measuring "healthiness" even if you had a genuinely complete understanding of biology. Because a great deal of moral philosophers think asking "is this guy a good or evil person overall" is asking the entirely wrong question in the first place. There are so many answers to this question.



I'm not arguing that YOU are wrong in that. I'm arguing that RPG settings that have -- as asserted by authorial fiat -- "detect evil" as an actually functional, objective "evil detector", it blows off everything in your paragraph and says "here's evil, it's a nice neat linear scale".

And that's why I think evil as an extant energy or force, or inherent quality, or "moral stain", is such a mess to begin with, why "evil" as a keyword is problematic, and why "detect evil" is a ridiculous spell.

AMFV
2016-08-29, 03:21 AM
Because there are countless moral debates other than "is this guy a good person overall or not?" Because moral philosophy involves so many different avenues of moral optimization that a single meter can't possibly be an accurate measure of all of them any more than you can reasonably have a single meter measuring "healthiness" even if you had a genuinely complete understanding of biology. Because a great deal of moral philosophers think asking "is this guy a good or evil person overall" is asking the entirely wrong question in the first place. There are so many answers to this question.

Well this is where you're wrong. Most moral philosophies have a fairly singular scale. What you're arguing is that the existence of many moral philosophies means that such a scale cannot exist. That's not necessarily true. It's only true if all of them have equal validity. There can be only one right answer (and many of the philosophies recognize this). So that's an important thing to recognize.

Again, lots of debate about an answer doesn't preclude a single correct answer from existing, it only shows that it lends itself to debate. Frankly, there are many issues that have single correct answers that are still subject to widespread debate.


I'm not arguing that YOU are wrong in that. I'm arguing that RPG settings that have -- as asserted by authorial fiat -- "detect evil" as an actually functional, objective "evil detector", it blows off everything in your paragraph and says "here's evil, it's a nice neat linear scale".

And that's why I think evil as an extant energy or force, or inherent quality, or "moral stain", is such a mess to begin with, why "evil" as a keyword is problematic, and why "detect evil" is a ridiculous spell.

Well to be fair there are MANY real world philosophies that see Evil that same exact way. As an objective moral quality. Which is probably why some people find the idea of objective good and evil not problematic and others find it very much so.


Angels falling have nothing to do with good or evil but free will. If Angels rebels against their Gods will then they fall. Angels might drown the entire human race, destroy cities, kill the fistborns of an entire nations just to enforce the will of their God. The word you are looking for is righteous, angels must be righteous and so long as they do follow the will of their God they will not fall.

Not necessarily that's not true universally even in all current philosophies which possess angels. Certainly not true in D&D where there is no objective God in charge of various angels (or at least in the edition I was referencing, 3.5)

LudicSavant
2016-08-29, 03:29 AM
Well this is where you're wrong. Most moral philosophies have a fairly singular scale. What you're arguing is that the existence of many moral philosophies means that such a scale cannot exist. That's not necessarily true. It's only true if all of them have equal validity. There can be only one right answer (and many of the philosophies recognize this). So that's an important thing to recognize. You're misconstruing "I think morality has more depth than Detect Evil" as "You need to subscribe to multiple moral philosophies and consider them equally valid."

The fact that there are many moral philosophies isn't even relevant to my belief that you can't reduce all moral questions to a single scale any more than you can reduce healthiness to a single scale and have that be fully descriptive.

AMFV
2016-08-29, 03:32 AM
You're misconstruing "moral philosophy involves so many avenues of optimization that they cannot reasonably be reduced to a single meter any more than "healthiness" can" as "You need to subscribe to multiple moral philosophies and consider them equally valid."

There are many moral philosophies that DO reduce it to a single meter just as D&D does. With arguable degrees of correctness. Hell, for some moral philosophies you have to reduce that to a single scale (for example if you're doing total harm as evil, then you need an objective way to define that). So if you are arguing that moral philosophy doesn't do something it very much does for many philosophies you are defacto arguing that all of those philosophies are inherently wrong, which is not I believe your intention.

LudicSavant
2016-08-29, 04:18 AM
There are many moral philosophies that DO reduce it to a single meter just as D&D does.

Name one that reduces literally all moral questions to a very low-granularity rating of how evil someone is. My expectation would be that any philosophy that offers nothing but a single low granularity evilness rating would not even address most moral questions, let alone stop people in the world from ever debating them.

Remember, here's the statement I'm objecting to:

Once you've established that "evil" is a discrete quality you can detect, you've eliminated all non-empirical moral debate.

Also, was answering this:

how can an objectively reliable "detect evil" not be a shortcut past (almost) any moral debate?

Gave a longer answer before, but here's a more succinct one:

By having a moral debate about any topic other than whether a given individual is evil.

AMFV
2016-08-29, 04:37 AM
Name one that reduces literally all moral questions to a very low-granularity rating of how evil someone is. My expectation would be that any philosophy that offers nothing but a single low granularity evilness rating would not even address most moral questions, let alone stop people in the world from ever debating them.

Objectivism, Consquentialism (for certain versions), Catholic Moral Philosophy, Kant's Universal Maxim. Those could all be pretty easily described as doing that. There are many other examples as well. But certainly one of the first steps in any objectivist moral philosophy is to break down the question to simple parts so that it can be answered. The usual complexity comes from breaking it down.

Take a Consequentialist view. The goal is to do the least harm, that's a very simple binary scale that rates how moral or immoral an action is. The problem is that one must define harm (and different branches of that moral philosophy do that quite differently), and then one has to figure out the actual harm caused by a particular course of action or by a particular person. The complexity you're speaking of comes in there.

Take Kant's Universal Maxim, it breaks down things very simply. If something were done universally would it be good or evil? That's a pretty simple thing, but figuring out the effect of something being rendered a universal maxim is inordinately complex, and could certainly be so. Also then you'd need to define the exact nature of an action very precisely.

I won't go into Catholic Moral Philosophy, since it's a religious practice and is therefore against board rules, but it's the same as well.

And all of those philosophies have complex moral reasoning, it's just in a different place than where you're ascribing it. The same can be easily true of D&D moral reasoning. The complexity isn't coming from the moral quality of a person or a thing, but there's moral complexity in other spots.

Edit: You'll note that I'm agreeing with your argument that Detect Evil doesn't end all moral debate. For one, "Detect Evil" only detects pretty hardcore levels of Evil (entities over 6 HD or Clerics), It doesn't register on the moral qualities of actions.

LudicSavant
2016-08-29, 04:39 AM
Objectivism, Consquentialism (for certain versions), Catholic Moral Philosophy, Kant's Universal Maxim. Those could all be pretty easily described as doing that. Funny, I'm familiar with those, and I'm pretty sure they can't be described as doing that.


Take a Consequentialist view. The goal is to do the least harm, that's a very simple binary scale that rates how moral or immoral an action is. An action? But we're talking about a low-granularity scale for how moral or immoral a creature is, and using that and that alone to resolve every debate.

AMFV
2016-08-29, 04:43 AM
Funny, I'm familiar with those, and I'm pretty sure they don't do that.

They certainly do, as I detailed. They boil down an action to a single moral barometer that can be used to determine it's goodness or badness. You may not be as familiar as you believed. Again the complexity of the arguments comes from different areas than that quality. For example: In Catholic Philosophy Evil is absolute so the moral barometer of whether or not something is Evil is going to always have a single answer. The same thing with Kant's Moral Maxims' there's always a single right answer when you say : "Is such an action Good or Evil?"

Which is what you're claiming is not the case. But it is it the case, an action is going to be good or evil in all of those philosophies, and a person's value morally can be determined by the sum of said actions.

Edit: A Creature's morality in this case might depend on the sum of it's actions. Notably we don't have creatures that are pure representations of one type of morality or another. Certainly in Catholic Philosophy there is the closest. But because we don't really have that sort of thing it's a difficult thing to evaluate. Some of those moral philosophies do deal with morality of individuals.

LudicSavant
2016-08-29, 04:47 AM
They certainly do, as I detailed. They boil down an action to a single moral barometer An action. Not a creature. And, importantly, the barometer has greater granularity than detect evil does.

You didn't provide an example of what I asked for, which was
Name one that reduces literally all moral questions to a very low-granularity rating of how evil someone is.