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View Full Version : Planar travel putting gray morality characters in black and white settings



Kzinssie
2017-09-07, 10:06 AM
Our campaign is set in a homebrew setting where the division between Good and Evil is deliberately downplayed, particularly in regards to entire races or nations - where Good and Evil exist, they stem from individuals rather than entire populations, and even then things are rarely so simple. The sort of moral conflicts that arise from this, such as whether slaughtering whole camps of goblins that happen to harbor raiders is justified, is a central part of our campaign. It's somewhat similar to Eberron in this sense, though even more muddled.

I've been wanting to introduce planar travel, either Planescape or Spelljammer, to our campaign for some time, specifically for the "stranger in a strange land" story hooks it provides even in established settings. Does anyone have experience with bringing characters from gray-morality settings such as Eberron into settings like Dragonlance, where the divisions between good and evil are clear and unambiguous? I'd like to avoid introducing too much gray to these settings, as putting the characters out of their element is part of the appeal of this concept. Any tips on how to run NPCs and the like in this situation? Obviously some natives will take statements like "maybe we shouldn't burn this orc village to the ground" as suggestions of hidden evil, but I'm curious if there are any other story hooks that might come from such a thing.

Lord Raziere
2017-09-07, 10:49 AM
Well here is what I can see going on:
the grey character wouldn't necessarily see things in terms of good and evil on a societal scale- they just see good and evil individuals. so to them, if you saying that a nation of feudal monarchs is lawful good, they're going to look at you funny because politically speaking feudal monarchies are a system that rewards cutthroat politics, land games, murdering each others family members over matters of inheritance and all that messy stuff, so they're going to be baffled when everyone actually follows through on their oaths and knights actually stick to their code of chivalry even when it costs them their lives, and the king actually rules with the well being of the common folk in mind because in a grey world, these things don't happen. They will question what cultural/societal shenanigans you pulled off to make this behavior happen so consistently, they will wonder if your employing some weird magic to bind people to this behavior, might even suspect outright brainwashing.

while the terms of good and evil themselves would be thought of differently- to them anyone could be evil if they screw up, and power corrupts. they'd suspect anyone in power of having their own motives and agendas and that their "alignment" as just a carefully honed reputation. while orcs and goblins they would think things like "well they wouldn't just attack you guys for NO REASON, no one does that, people resort to attacks because they are desperate, or angry, or whatever, they have to have a motive for this." and even when you explain the situation of evil gods to them, they'd see it as less of a good and evil problem, and more of "this is a horrible religion that is causing generations of suffering" problem and thus set out to try and show orcs why their religion is horrible and needs reforming, since in Eberron, its not clear whether gods exist so to the grey character would think that their they need to reform the religion to be less violent and genocidal against everyone else.

and then there is the fact that in Black/White settings, necromancy is often inherently evil, where the grey character is from, it'd be just another form of magic and would think that people who hate it just have a cultural taboo against it.

they would certainly look at anyone who claims to be evil funny and go "don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure your a good person and just feeling guilty." then be confused when the person uses it as a badge of pride. at some point, they'd probably conclude that "evil" in this black/white world is a weird cultural identity to signify that the person is proud of being a darwinistic, sociopathic, traitorous racist (and so on) jerkhole and that the person perfectly ok with fighting everyone over it to the death. they would then of course be confused as to how these evil cultures/races are so consistently brainwashing themselves into accepting this label when most of them seem to be roving bands of bandits and raiders, and probably chalk it up to differences between nomadic warrior cultures and settled cultures with cities and farms as the actual source of conflict with religion just being the excuse.

in short, they would think in terms of society and culture and how they work, and think that all this talk of alignment and gods is just a very strong cultural trend upon viewing morality gone out of control.

Kzinssie
2017-09-07, 10:58 AM
and then there is the fact that in Black/White settings, necromancy is often inherently evil, where the grey character is from, it'd be just another form of magic and would think that people who hate it just have a cultural taboo against it.

Would you believe that our party has a necromancer who's quite literally named Grey?

Anyway, this is really interesting analysis, but I imagine my players would probably come to similar conclusions on their own. What I'm more curious about is, how would the natives of black-and-white settings react to gray characters expressing their gray morality?

Lord Raziere
2017-09-07, 11:21 AM
Anyway, this is really interesting analysis, but I imagine my players would probably come to similar conclusions on their own. What I'm more curious about is, how would the natives of black-and-white settings react to gray characters expressing their gray morality?

Well to them, they be confused as to why the grey character is thinking things are so complex. to black and white settings, all of this is simple and easily understood:
-orcs are evil so they die, whats the problem?
-their religion is evil, just go kill Gruumsh, no religion anymore.
-don't use necromancy, thats just evil.
and so on and so forth.

I'd imagine that the reasonable people would assume that if he is advocating for showing mercy to evil and trying to understand the other side that clearly the grey character is good and that they simply don't understand how things work around here. or they'd believe the best of him, and simply think he is espousing some form of Chaotic Good or Neutral Good philosophy without realizing it. however since the character is grey, the grey one could easily do something normally considered evil for pragmatic reasons and utterly confuse them.

the real question is: what effects does seeing his alignment have? because if someone is truly grey, they wouldn't HAVE an alignment, which would confuse everyone when they search them with magic and find no spells of magic items on them to hide it. they would think someone with no alignment as something completely anomalous, an outside context problem that they've never seen before. because if the grey character can do whatever without being affected by the universes alignment rules then suddenly they don't know whether they should trust him- because it would clear that they can't see alignment to check if their alignment has been stained by the actions they've caused, he could do ANYTHING and potentially get away with it from their perspective. and thus a grey character would be considered a wild card: they could do anything without alignment consequence and thus both sides would see them as a way to pull off things you normally can't, as the moral weight of his actions would not register on him, while at the same time being paranoid of whose side he is on. like, a grey character might be able to kill an entire village of people and not register as evil! that would be scary to the good guys, and they'd consider him an anomaly in moral physics.

GungHo
2017-09-08, 07:36 AM
Would you believe that our party has a necromancer who's quite literally named Grey?

Anyway, this is really interesting analysis, but I imagine my players would probably come to similar conclusions on their own. What I'm more curious about is, how would the natives of black-and-white settings react to gray characters expressing their gray morality?

They'd burn them at the stake. You've got people of absolutes. They see someone who is doing something the other side might do. They're going to assume they're the other absolute and they're going to burn them.

gkathellar
2017-09-08, 08:01 AM
Also, bear in mind that Planescape proper can be pretty strikingly grey despite a lot of it taking place in planes embodying alignments. The Factions in particular are much easier to place along the Law vs. Chaos continuum than the Good vs. Evil one.

(Rowan Darkwood, factol of the Fated and perhaps the supreme jerk in Planescape, was/is a CG priest of Heimdall.)

Bohandas
2017-09-08, 09:29 AM
Belief is power on the outer planes, and futhermore alignment is a thing of the outer planes even if you are currently elsewhere, similar (and in fact probably easier) to the powers exhibited by some members of the athar and godsmen to partly ignore or reshape specific outerplanar phenomena it is conceivable that someone sufficiently convinced that they are good (or neutral, or evil), or perhaps through meditation on the interconvertability of the alignments (google "law of eristic escalation", "sacred chao" and "langton's ant"), would ping as such even if neither actions not intent matched (possibly either in addition to whatever their actions/intents match or averaged against their actions/intents)

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-08, 01:49 PM
Chaotic neutral, true neutral, lawful neutral.

Do any of those ring a bell? Well they ought to, because they are the established shades of grey in the nine alignment system.

Though really, a person from a "morally grey" setting might just as well be some extreme alignment. Because "Morally grey", in terms of setting, simply means one of two things:

1) There is no objective proof for good or evil nor strong evidence of the supernatural, hence leaving it ambiguous who is ultimately right or wrong. This obviously goes out the window when you introduce Planescape or Spelljammer.
2) Everyone in the setting is morally flawed or imperfect. This is irrelevant for the alignment system, as such is just pegged neutral, or evil if sufficiently overt.

So for example, a slightly-cynical soldier type who has lost faith in mankind at large, smokes too much, drinks too much, curses a lot, but still puts his life on the line to protect children and the poor? Neutral Good or True Neutral.

Your average Nietschze fan who thinks most people are witless sheep and meant to be ruled by those with strong convictions, and from these premises becomes a leading figure of an oppressivr regime? Lawfull Evil. Yeah, he will have two-hour speech on how "good" and "evil" are inventions of lesser men, to make their weakness look better and the strong look worse. So what? Hell doesn't care for his philosophical house of cards.

The wide-eyed universalist hippie who thinks demons (etc.) are just as capable of goodness and virtue as other sapient beings, and how labelling them as "evil" is an oppressive cultural construct by oppressive angelic regimes of past? Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good if you want to be generous. Again, Hell doesn't care for their philosophical house of cards.

Just follow the principle found in 1st Edition AD&D's DMG: alignment is prescriptive for NPCs only, it's a guideline for the GM for how to play those creatures. For player characters, alignment is purely descriptive. Get your hands on the 1st edition aligment graph and then place the PCs down in the bracket that sounds most correct based on their philosophies and actions. Then move them around on the graph when their philosophies and actions start to sound more like some other bracket.

Arbane
2017-09-08, 05:01 PM
Chaotic neutral, true neutral, lawful neutral.


aka:
"Shoot on sight", "meh", and "fill out these forms in triplicate to apply for Cure Light Wounds".

Alignment system still b0rked, film at 11.

Kzinssie
2017-09-09, 09:22 PM
I should clarify that the "grey" of our setting generally errs on the side of good, rather than evil - most average folk are basically good, and "evil" races are only evil in the upper classes, or perhaps the military, and even then it's hardly consistent. What I mean by "expressing grey morality" is, like, consistently being uncomfortable with slaughtering goblins or orcs or draconians by the hundreds - while "these people are evil" may be axiomatic to the natives, to the players it's something they're going to consistently struggle with, and I'm curious how the natives would react to that.

Slipperychicken
2017-09-09, 10:08 PM
So, it sounds like you have one person with his own ideas of morality, being thrust into an different world, the inhabitants of which unanimously adhere to a single somewhat different worldview?

If that's right, then it depends on the people, ideas, and situations involved. Also the kind of story and tone you're going for.

Lord Raziere
2017-09-09, 10:43 PM
I should clarify that the "grey" of our setting generally errs on the side of good, rather than evil - most average folk are basically good, and "evil" races are only evil in the upper classes, or perhaps the military, and even then it's hardly consistent. What I mean by "expressing grey morality" is, like, consistently being uncomfortable with slaughtering goblins or orcs or draconians by the hundreds - while "these people are evil" may be axiomatic to the natives, to the players it's something they're going to consistently struggle with, and I'm curious how the natives would react to that.

so....the grey character(s) would be uncomfortable with killing the commonfolk? and in the BW settings, all the common people would be evil? Hm. Hm. Hrrrrrrm.

well I'd imagine that the grey character would eventually tell them that in their world that only evil upper class people in power that are evil than common folk, and that common folk of any race are not inherently evil. so I'd imagine the BW natives would be confused as to how any of the evil upper class people keep power if its slanted like that, and thus argue with the grey character how everyone who upholds the ideology of evil is evil and that any support for evil is evil itself. that to the natives, just killing the upper class would just lead to someone from the lower classes of such races taking power and being just as evil in a different way.

TeChameleon
2017-09-09, 11:21 PM
Things can get very interesting (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/funextras/stories/hboys.php#.WbSqqaIpmAJ) when you start plonking people from black-and-white to grey universes and vice-versa.

Something that might make things very odd and interesting for your players- since you're going to have to tweak the established settings a little to make the divide between black-and-white and grey 'verses plain, most likely) would be to make it so that situations that set up philosophical or moral quandaries simply don't happen, even when they 'obviously' should.

GrayDeath
2017-09-10, 01:25 PM
Reading this the first thought that came to mind was the reverse: "Group of high Level Good Guys dropped into ASoIaF.

Lean back and enjoy. ;)


As for the OP: Some of the above suggestions are exactly what I would ahve said, so I wont reiterate.

But let me add: It is very likely dependant on how invested your players are in their Characters Greyness" how much this will fascinate them/pull them in.

My last group would probably only see "Hmm, doing certain things gives power here, so les abuse it" ^^

Lord Raziere
2017-09-10, 02:03 PM
Reading this the first thought that came to mind was the reverse: "Group of high Level Good Guys dropped into ASoIaF.

Lean back and enjoy. ;)


oh god. It'd be a slaughter. the Boltons would not survive at all. The Mountain's days are numbered. I'd be legitimately afraid that Tyrion would not survive the Lannisters encountering them. Robert Baratheon would be kicked off the throne at the very least, Varys would go into hiding, Littlefinger would only have a limited amount of time before they come for him and the Eyrie, House Greyjoy is going to die for sure, House Frey will probably die, the Dothraki are going to die, lots of cities in Essos are probably getting conquered by people far more powerful than Daenerys and we all know how easily she has been conquering them, just dead, dead, dead......the only ones I can be sure surviving would be the Starks, The Wall, and maybe Stannis. I'm not gonna get into specific characters too much because there are way too much.

Screw The War of the Five Kings, The War of the Five Good PC's would be way more terrifying.

Vogie
2017-09-13, 08:36 AM
I think it's a great idea, because it allows both groups to grow.

For example, you enter a B&W area where everything vaguely necromantic is evil/wrong/bad, as mentioned above. On the other hand, you have a group of grey characters that are used to things like Necromancy used for everyday uses - a citizen of Amonkhet, for example, who grew up with mummified servants like everyone else on the plane; or someone from an area where necromancy is strictly used by law-enforcement, with the phrase "multiple life sentences" being exactly what it says on the tin.

When these people clash, things can change on both sides. People in the B&W world may see that they were being a bit pig-headed and blunderous about an entire school of magic, while people from the grey areas may rethink their assumptions about the topic at hand.

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2008/12/1.png

GrayDeath
2017-09-13, 03:28 PM
oh god. It'd be a slaughter. the Boltons would not survive at all. The Mountain's days are numbered. I'd be legitimately afraid that Tyrion would not survive the Lannisters encountering them. Robert Baratheon would be kicked off the throne at the very least, Varys would go into hiding, Littlefinger would only have a limited amount of time before they come for him and the Eyrie, House Greyjoy is going to die for sure, House Frey will probably die, the Dothraki are going to die, lots of cities in Essos are probably getting conquered by people far more powerful than Daenerys and we all know how easily she has been conquering them, just dead, dead, dead......the only ones I can be sure surviving would be the Starks, The Wall, and maybe Stannis. I'm not gonna get into specific characters too much because there are way too much.

Screw The War of the Five Kings, The War of the Five Good PC's would be way more terrifying.



Just about this, yeah. :smallcool:

Now I am really thinking about playing this. Lets assume they arrive right at the start when Robert gets Ned. Not Level 20 from start, but High Level, a classic good Group.

Say the Leader is a Level 14 Paladin, accompanied by his trusted advisor a Level 14 Cleric of Pelor (Lord of Light? Pfft, al he can do is Fiery Swords and sometimes a ressurection), Their Meatshield/Foecutter, a Level 14 Warblade, a Level 14 Wizard Conjuration Specialist and to make it all fit (and the world be all pro what they do) a level 14 Bard (of course with Sublime Chord Levels).

Taking Bets on how long it`öll take for them to conquer Westeros (or at least destroy any Evil Factions). Good for Stannis (this early he`s textbook lawful neutral) and the Starks, as well as the Nights Watch.

Dang, now I really want to play this ^^

rferries
2017-09-13, 08:26 PM
Well here is what I can see going on:
the grey character wouldn't necessarily see things in terms of good and evil on a societal scale- they just see good and evil individuals. so to them, if you saying that a nation of feudal monarchs is lawful good, they're going to look at you funny because politically speaking feudal monarchies are a system that rewards cutthroat politics, land games, murdering each others family members over matters of inheritance and all that messy stuff, so they're going to be baffled when everyone actually follows through on their oaths and knights actually stick to their code of chivalry even when it costs them their lives, and the king actually rules with the well being of the common folk in mind because in a grey world, these things don't happen. They will question what cultural/societal shenanigans you pulled off to make this behavior happen so consistently, they will wonder if your employing some weird magic to bind people to this behavior, might even suspect outright brainwashing.

while the terms of good and evil themselves would be thought of differently- to them anyone could be evil if they screw up, and power corrupts. they'd suspect anyone in power of having their own motives and agendas and that their "alignment" as just a carefully honed reputation. while orcs and goblins they would think things like "well they wouldn't just attack you guys for NO REASON, no one does that, people resort to attacks because they are desperate, or angry, or whatever, they have to have a motive for this." and even when you explain the situation of evil gods to them, they'd see it as less of a good and evil problem, and more of "this is a horrible religion that is causing generations of suffering" problem and thus set out to try and show orcs why their religion is horrible and needs reforming, since in Eberron, its not clear whether gods exist so to the grey character would think that their they need to reform the religion to be less violent and genocidal against everyone else.

and then there is the fact that in Black/White settings, necromancy is often inherently evil, where the grey character is from, it'd be just another form of magic and would think that people who hate it just have a cultural taboo against it.

they would certainly look at anyone who claims to be evil funny and go "don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure your a good person and just feeling guilty." then be confused when the person uses it as a badge of pride. at some point, they'd probably conclude that "evil" in this black/white world is a weird cultural identity to signify that the person is proud of being a darwinistic, sociopathic, traitorous racist (and so on) jerkhole and that the person perfectly ok with fighting everyone over it to the death. they would then of course be confused as to how these evil cultures/races are so consistently brainwashing themselves into accepting this label when most of them seem to be roving bands of bandits and raiders, and probably chalk it up to differences between nomadic warrior cultures and settled cultures with cities and farms as the actual source of conflict with religion just being the excuse.

in short, they would think in terms of society and culture and how they work, and think that all this talk of alignment and gods is just a very strong cultural trend upon viewing morality gone out of control.

I really enjoyed reading this analysis. Kudos!