Should DMs punish good deeds?

[DRD1812]

I've got a some additional context below the comic over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/selfless-charity), but this is my question: As a player, have you ever done good in-character deeds only to be met with in-game punishment? Conversely, have you ever been rewarded for lying/cheating/stealing/being a terrible person? Was it fun, was it fair, and did it make for a better game?

[beargryllz]

It depends. My party just spared the life of a giant child deep in giant territory. This is a good deed but very likely to backfire here and much less likely to backfire if they spared her in dwarven territory.

Correlate with the context of the good deed

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've had a character punished for doing the good, socially acceptable thing (trying to defuse a fight in the group's home base, not stealing, trying to make amends for the rest of the party's misbehavior). Note: This was a game where evil characters were explicitly forbidden. We were supposed to be the good guys (or at least the morally neutral ones). And they all under-bussed me, blamed me to the guards for the fight, etc. They got away scot free, I didn't. No repercussions for them.

That was a bad experience. Good deeds, if you want them to happen, need rewards other than "being a good person." They don't have to be monetary, and they can be different than the rewards of doing bad deeds, but they need to exist. Same with negative consequences for bad deeds. Actions must have consequences. Otherwise the DM is giving incentives to be bad (because there really aren't negative consequences but there is extra loot/convenience). And that's why so many games devolve into murderhobo-ism. Because that gives maximal rewards and minimizes annoyance.

And if the consequences don't follow from the act, you're diminishing agency in just the same way as if a parent says to a kid "what flavor of ice cream do you want", but no matter what they say, only gives vanilla.

[hymer]

Good deeds, if you want them to happen, need rewards other than "being a good person."
I don't know if this is more defeatist or cynical. :smallbiggrin:

I've had a character whose simple honesty (in trying to avert a war no less) got him in trouble. It led to about a half-hour to an hour sit-out from a session, as my character was being detained. I was fine with that. Good people are good, no reasons, ifs, ands, or buts. And when I play a good person, that's at all there is to it. I enjoy the drama of punishment for doing a good thing, but it might get old after a while.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't know if this is more defeatist or cynical. :smallbiggrin:

I've had a character whose simple honesty (in trying to avert a war no less) got him in trouble. It led to about a half-hour to an hour sit-out from a session, as my character was being detained. I was fine with that. Good people are good, no reasons, ifs, ands, or buts. And when I play a good person, that's at all there is to it. I enjoy the drama of punishment for doing a good thing, but it might get old after a while.

The problem is that it strongly pushes people who aren't good people away from doing good deeds, especially coupled with lack of negative consequences for bad deeds. Most people are firmly neutral (of the "no major predilection one way or another" variety). You get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. Within limits of course, but those limits are loose at the table. That's a basic fact of life.

Let's see--

you do a quest to find a mcguffin and give it back to its rightful owners. You can either

a) give back the thing and get no reward (or even get punished).
b) keep the thing, get its epic powers. Possibly even get a reward and certainly not get punished, not even disapproval from the quest giver.

Sure, the holy paladin of paladin-ness is going to give it back. Anyone else? If they don't at least wonder why the heck they're doing this, they're pretty darn flat characters.

[GlenSmash!]

Semantic argument incoming!

DM's shouldn't punish, but inhabitants of the game world should react to the Player Character's actions whatever those actions are.

[DMThac0]

Yup, this is a very semantic topic!

Do you punish players for doing good, of course. You save an orphaned drow baby from being sacrificed, Llolth is going to be upset...

Do you punish players for doing good, of course not. You saved an orphaned drow baby from being sacrificed, that baby becomes Drizzt Do'Urden and starts a movement....ok...bad example.

---

Every action has ripples that resonate outward, some of those ripples will create happy circumstances, some will cause problems, welcome to chaos theory. You, as DM, decide which of those results become revealed to the players. That is the core of the whole thing: do what is natural, your players will relish an organic reaction to their choices whether they're good or bad.

[MaxWilson]

I've got a some additional context below the comic over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/selfless-charity), but this is my question: As a player, have you ever done good in-character deeds only to be met with in-game punishment? Conversely, have you ever been rewarded for lying/cheating/stealing/being a terrible person? Was it fun, was it fair, and did it make for a better game?

Sure. I've lost companions and been killed because e.g. I cast caution to the winds and jumped into an unknown teleport gate trying to save another character whom I didn't really know that well. I knew it was probably going to get me killed, and it did, but I didn't feel like standing by and doing nothing.

I got no in-game reward for it but I got the satisfaction of showing myself, as a player, what kind of a person I was roleplaying. That was enjoyable in its own way.

(In the specific case I'm thinking of, with the teleport gate and the failed rescue, the DM tried bringing the character back as an enthralled, maybe undead version of itself, but I think that NPC version of me died or something without much impact on the campaign. Also I didn't care what happened to the NPC version because it was no longer me in any meaningful sense, with the DM making all the decisions and those decisions being nothing like the decisions I would have made.)

However, when I play PCs with that mentality instead of a survival-oriented mentality, they are much less likely to get past the lower levels. I don't mind that, but be advised that it does happen.

[Specter]

Depends on the atmosphere of the game's world. In bright worlds (a la Round Table), suffering is meaningful and good deeds are always rewarded. In grim worlds (a la Game of Thrones, or Sons of Anarchy in a more modern example), suffering is meaningless and good deeds may be punished, or carry future consequences with them.

[Malifice]

I've got a some additional context below the comic over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/selfless-charity), but this is my question: As a player, have you ever done good in-character deeds only to be met with in-game punishment? Conversely, have you ever been rewarded for lying/cheating/stealing/being a terrible person? Was it fun, was it fair, and did it make for a better game?

My view is that my games happen in a universe with actual cosmic forces of Good. Good deeds thus tend to be rewarded, and Evil deeds get punished, or turns in on itself.

The Bandit the PCs released instead of murdered turns up later on when they are captured to help them escape. Word of their kindness and mercy spreads and they get help from quarters least expected.

If they murder someone, word of that gets out and people come looking for them, or treat them with cruelty in return.

There is a reason most players play CN or E PCs (or characters with good written on their sheets, but in name only, and are evil or ruthless bastards in actual play). It's because DMs all too often use gotcha moments (the released prisoner comes back to get them when they sleep, or the NPC they romance tries to kill them etc). Players eventually start taking a ruthless and selfish approach to everything and acting like emotionless pscyotic murder hobos.

Rewarding good deeds stops that from happening.

[Pex]

All the time in a 2E Planescape campaign. The details are a bit fuzzy now but not the memory of the frustrations and annoyances. Being Lawful Good was a handicap in that campaign. When I tried to talk to the DM of why I wasn't enjoying the game he dismissed my concerns as whining, adding more fuel the fire of my loathing of tyrannical DMing I have today.

[MaxWilson]

Let's see--

you do a quest to find a mcguffin and give it back to its rightful owners. You can either

a) give back the thing and get no reward (or even get punished).
b) keep the thing, get its epic powers. Possibly even get a reward and certainly not get punished, not even disapproval from the quest giver.

Sure, the holy paladin of paladin-ness is going to give it back. Anyone else? If they don't at least wonder why the heck they're doing this, they're pretty darn flat characters.

If the player wonders why his PC would ever do anything without external reward, he's a real-life Neutral Evil(ish) or at best Neutral. Real life people do all kinds of things for other people without receiving external rewards. You wouldn't even be alive if your parents hadn't fed and sheltered you for years and years at their own expense, without receiving any kind of quest reward for it.

BTW, as a corollary, DMs should occasionally tempt players to keep the MacGuffin, and then don't impose (illogical) external penalties for keeping it. If the players steal keep the Enkidu Holy Staff of Fire, Flauntiir, even after failing at the Enkidu's mission to use it to ward off the Dracons... DMs should not feel socially obligated to right the wrong and take it away. If the Enkidus have learn what happened, sure, they'll be confused/offended/maybe enraged by the theft, and if they have power maybe they will take action, and DMs should feel free to play with that... but if they were set up as poor peasant farmers, maybe the only real consequence is that the PC has a powerful magic item which he obtained through illicit means.

As Robin Law would point out, sometimes consequences can be dramatic rather than procedural.

[hymer]

The problem is that it strongly pushes people who aren't good people away from doing good deeds, especially coupled with lack of negative consequences for bad deeds.

Semantic argument incoming!
I think I see where we differ, PP: If you're doing it for a reward, then it isn't all that good a deed in my view.


Sure, the holy paladin of paladin-ness is going to give it back. Anyone else? If they don't at least wonder why the heck they're doing this, they're pretty darn flat characters.
Since there are any number of good things you could be doing with your life, answering why you're doing this particular one should keep you from being a flat character.

[Malifice]

If the player wonders why his PC would ever do anything without external reward, he's a real-life Neutral Evil(ish) or at best Neutral. Real life people do all kinds of things for other people without receiving external rewards. You wouldn't even be alive if your parents hadn't fed and sheltered you for years and years at their own expense, without receiving any kind of quest reward for it.

But... there is a reward for having children. You know; love and all that.

There is a reward for having pets for Gods sake.

[hymer]

But... there is a reward for having children. You know; love and all that.

There is a reward for having pets for Gods sake.

I think studies have pretty clearly shown that having kids lowers your overall quality of life. The same study also shows that parents can't see it.
As for pets, well, maybe you've got something there. :smallwink:

But that's an aside, I guess we're talking about something more tangible than a warm glow. I know my parents did the right thing by me, even when I was testing their considrable patiences to their limits and beyond. :smallredface:

Edit: To put it a different way: If someone does something good because they think it will make them feel good - it probably won't.

[Sudsboy]

I've been "punished" by the DM for a wide variety of behaviors, some altruistic, some selfish. I used to get really worked up about it. I'm turning 52 next month, and we will have the 40th anniversary celebration of our campaign - we've been gaming in the same setting since 1978.

As you can imagine, all sorts of things have happened during that time. As I mentioned before, I used to take some of it very personally, because we've all been immersed in this setting and invested for so long. As I age, I have come to realize that the DM's job is to put difficulties in my path no matter what happens. Sometimes they seem unfair, but the game falls apart when you've got it too easy. Once you have player buy-in and investment, you almost can't go wrong screwing with them and giving them motivation for further investment/adventuring/etc. Almost.

That said, DM cruelty is a real thing. A DM that plays competitively against his players is doing it wrong. A DM that abuses his position of power is doing it wrong. Only you know your specific situation, but I'd give him latitude to run the game you're so grateful to participate in. You'll know if it gets to be too much.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If the player wonders why his PC would ever do anything without external reward, he's a real-life Neutral Evil(ish) or at best Neutral. Real life people do all kinds of things for other people without receiving external rewards. You wouldn't even be alive if your parents hadn't fed and sheltered you for years and years at their own expense, without receiving any kind of quest reward for it.

BTW, as a corollary, DMs should occasionally tempt players to keep the MacGuffin, and then don't impose (illogical) external penalties for keeping it. If the players steal keep the Enkidu Holy Staff of Fire, Flauntiir, even after failing at the Enkidu's mission to use it to ward off the Dracons... DMs should not feel socially obligated to right the wrong and take it away. If the Enkidus have learn what happened, sure, they'll be confused/offended/maybe enraged by the theft, and if they have power maybe they will take action, and DMs should feel free to play with that... but if they were set up as poor peasant farmers, maybe the only real consequence is that the PC has a powerful magic item which he obtained through illicit means.

As Robin Law would point out, sometimes consequences can be dramatic rather than procedural.

I'm fine with dramatic rewards. But there have to be visible positive consequences for good deeds, otherwise you're giving incentives not to play good characters. Because people like rewards. These consequences might be love and admiration from the NPCs you saved. They might the survival of a group of people. But what I've seen is that good deeds only bring negative consequences. Saving that person is a guaranteed way of being betrayed. Giving money to the poor doesn't get you loyalty, respect, or even a good feeling--it just makes you poorer and makes the people despise you.

In real life, people who do good things often feel good about it (internal rewards). Peace of conscience, smiles of gratitude, warm fuzzies, etc. As players, we're removed from that a bit. So DMs need to make the actual positive consequences more visible to accommodate that need.

DMs shouldn't remove the item, but there should be consequences. And those consequences should follow from the action. You piss off a god, the god doesn't say "oh well, whatever." He sends someone to do something about it. And if you attack an upstanding citizen of town, the town doesn't just ignore it or the group that promoted that behavior (which is what happened to my character).


I think I see where we differ, PP: If you're doing it for a reward, then it isn't all that good a deed in my view.


If you do it intentionally and exclusively for the reward, you still did a good thing. But the reward is all you get. But your view says that the presence of a reward, even if it's not the but-for cause of the action, makes a deed not good. And that's screwy.

If there are only negative consequences for good deeds, you'll see lots fewer good deeds. You're saying that only pure perfect people need apply, and they should do so despite the consequences if they want to do good. That's a good way to get evil behavior. Because very few people like being punished. Consequence-based behavior modification works. And DMs that punish people for doing good (and don't reward them, or punish people for doing bad deeds) are engaging in evil-seeking behavior modification.

[Crusher]

There is a reward for having pets for Gods sake.

Of COURSE there is!

If things ever get really bad, you've got a totally unsuspecting source of protein *right there*.

[JackPhoenix]

If by "punishment for good deeds" you mean "natural consequences of your actions", like when my fighter tackled a tiger to save another character and got mauled for his trouble, sure. And got killed by a ghoul for the same not much later. Otherwise, I can't remember.

Being rewarded for lying/cheating/stealing/being a terrible person? Well, obviously. That's why the character was lying/cheating/stealing in the first place: to get something out of it. Whether it's material reward, avoiding punishment for different actions or some other (not necessarily combat) advantage.

[CantigThimble]

If my character regularly gives his money and resources to random people in need then most of the time he's being 'punished' i.e. he's losing resources and gets nothing in return, other times he's rewarded (if one of those people happens to know something important, or he gets a reputation that benefits him) and other times he's really punished (if a bunch of opportunists start lining up with sob stories to take his money).

But... none of that should be the determining factor in how the character behaves. I mean, he might become more cautious with who he gives money to, but he's not going to think "Golly, I'm not getting much return on this investment. I should stop doing it!"

I think the idea of being "rewarded" for being good comes from sociopathy simulators computer RPGs, where people will often save and reload to plot the optimal series of choices to get the maximum value. As a result, the only way the came can get anyone to be 'good' is by offering XP or gold rewards for doing so.

[MaxWilson]

I'm fine with dramatic rewards. But there have to be visible positive consequences for good deeds, otherwise you're giving incentives not to play good characters. Because people like rewards.

I agree to an extent--there need to be carrots as well as sticks in order to have a fun game, and many of those carrots should be for positive actions. It's a fantasy trope for e.g. the king to offer his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who can slay the dragon, and there's nothing wrong with offering rewards for those positive actions.

I don't think I'd count those positive actions as "good deeds" in the same sense that I'd count actual pure-hearted good deeds, and they wouldn't have the same effect on your alignment, but you'd still get to look like a hero and people would still be grateful to you for slaying the dragon, and you'd get a bunch of treasure, and all of that's good for the game.


These consequences might be love and admiration from the NPCs you saved. They might the survival of a group of people.

Sure.


But what I've seen is that good deeds only bring negative consequences. Saving that person is a guaranteed way of being betrayed. Giving money to the poor doesn't get you loyalty, respect, or even a good feeling--it just makes you poorer and makes the people despise you.

If that happens consistently, something is wrong with the game world and/or the DM.

Are we on the same page now?

Edit: BTW, how can the DM prevent you from having a good feeling about giving money to the poor? What does he do, say, "You feel terrible about being 20 gp poorer?" and you believe him?


If you do it intentionally and exclusively for the reward, you still did a good thing. But the reward is all you get. But your view says that the presence of a reward, even if it's not the but-for cause of the action, makes a deed not good. And that's screwy.

My view says that the expectation of an external reward makes a deed not a pure-hearted good deed.


If there are only negative consequences for good deeds, you'll see lots fewer good deeds. You're saying that only pure perfect people need apply, and they should do so despite the consequences if they want to do good. That's a good way to get evil behavior. Because very few people like being punished. Consequence-based behavior modification works. And DMs that punish people for doing good (and don't reward them, or punish people for doing bad deeds) are engaging in evil-seeking behavior modification.

Honestly, if a DM made everyone you meet consistently despise and betray those who do good, it would probably just make me say the Eight Deadly Words and quit playing in the game world: "I don't care what happens to these people." Same reason I don't read A Saga of Ice and Fire (I got through Game of Thrones, skimmed the next two books--it never got better. Also, the ice zombies never came back onstage). It wouldn't necessarily make my PC feel less inclined to do good, but it would make me less inclined to spend my precious free time living in a fantasy world based on GRRM's writings. Unlike the PC I have a way to leave that world that doesn't involve suicide: stop playing.

[hymer]

If you do it intentionally and exclusively for the reward, you still did a good thing. But the reward is all you get. But your view says that the presence of a reward, even if it's not the but-for cause of the action, makes a deed not good. And that's screwy.
I think we're still talking past each other.
It would probably still be a good thing you do, if you do something good for a reward. It would make the world a better place. But it would not be a good deed, which is what we're talking about in this thread. If it means anything to you, I believe this is the difference between ethics and morals in philosophical parlance. The good deed in its purest sense is one where the agent stands to gain nothing from it, but someone else does, and this is reason enough to do the deed.

[Malifice]

If by "punishment for good deeds" you mean "natural consequences of your actions", like when my fighter tackled a tiger to save another character and got mauled for his trouble, sure. And got killed by a ghoul for the same not much later. Otherwise, I can't remember.

Being rewarded for lying/cheating/stealing/being a terrible person? Well, obviously. That's why the character was lying/cheating/stealing in the first place: to get something out of it. Whether it's material reward, avoiding punishment for different actions or some other (not necessarily combat) advantage.

If I was the DM in your camapaign I'd tend to fudge it so your good deed got you a reward instead of murdered, and your murderous deed got you in serious trouble and backfired.

I run games where there are forces of cosmic Good though, and cosmic Evil. These are actual (unbeknown to the PCs) forces at play. Ill do everything in my power to have evil deeds lead to negative consequences (not all the time of course) and ditto, will look for contrivances to rewards heroics and good deeds.

It serves a higher purpose other than just cosmic metaphyscis also. It stops murderhobism dead in its tracks or at the very least dissuades it, and it promotes a heroic game of high adventure and self sacrifice in the face of evil.

Dragonlance campaign world does this explicity too with similar metaphyscis. 'Evil turns in on itself.' It also works the same in Krynn the other way as well (too much Good is also bad - see the Kingpriest).

[ErHo]

Yup, this is a very semantic topic!

You saved an orphaned drow baby from being sacrificed, that baby becomes Drizzt Do'Urden and starts a movement....ok...bad example.



Nice Avatar BTW :smallbiggrin:

[PhoenixPhyre]

When I say "good deed" I mean in an objective sense. That is, deeds that promote society, help people, avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and generally are what we think of as good (circular, I know).

You can do good deeds without being a good person. To say otherwise is to say that neutrality is impossible (because since you're not good, you can't do good).

In a real-world moral sense, doing good deeds (to the best of your ability and understanding) is necessary but not sufficient to being good. There, motive matters. People who are, themselves, good do good because they're good, not for the sake of rewards. This does not mean they turn down offered rewards (that's the bad paladin stereotype), although they will take those rewards because they allow them to do more good. These are less sensitive to incentive structures.

The people at the other end do evil because they're evil at heart. Loot, etc are icing on the cake. These are somewhat susceptible to negative consequences, but they'd do evil for its own sake.

It's the people in the middle (which 90% of us really are) that are influenced by incentives. And incentives matter. That's my big point. If the default is "no/small reward for good" (or even "negative consequence for good") and "no/small negative consequences for bad" (or even "positive consequences for bad"), you'll get more people doing bad than good. And I don't like to see people doing bad things at the table. For one, it tends to be quite disruptive.

The issue with overtly penalizing (imposing negative consequences) for good deeds in games is that you get less of them. If helping peasants gets you spat on, or if saving the day gets a big yawn, while extorting every penny from innocents, murdering shopkeepers to get stuff, and generally acting like a murderhobo draws no negative attention (or meaningless amounts), all those people who could be persuaded to do good? You've lost them.

[GlenSmash!]

A few more thoughts on the subject.

Evil deeds often have an immediate and tangible reward. They are also often quicker and easier than taking the high road.

In my Adventures in Middle-Earth Campaign doing the good thing will be harder but if you do Eagles might come save your butt later.

It's ok if that's the feeling you want in your D&D game. It's also ok if it isn't.

[Malifice]

In a real-world moral sense, doing good deeds (to the best of your ability and understanding) is necessary but not sufficient to being good. There, motive matters.

No it doesnt.

If you do good deeds (being altruistic, helping little old ladies across the road, giving to charity etc) your motive is irrelevant. We call you a good person.

You could only be doing nice stuff in order to fulfill a Satanic prophesy or something. It doesnt matter.

Ditto if you do evil deeds (murdering people, raping people, causing harm to others, torturing people etc) your motive is irrelevant. We call you an evil person, and send you to prison.

You might only be murdering, raping and harming other people who are themselves murderers, rapists and so forth. Your motive is irrelevant. you're evil.

I mean either individual might think they're actually evil (when they're good) or good (when they're evil). Thats a different question though.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Most of the greatest deeds a person can perform don't come with any extra rewards beyond the deed itself. That's what a heroic sacrifice is.

You don't save a child to bask in the adoration of a loving public. You save a child because you can't bear to see anything bad happen to them.

[Malifice]

Most of the greatest deeds a person can perform don't come with any extra rewards beyond the deed itself. That's what a heroic sacrifice is.

You don't save a child to bask in the adoration of a loving public. You save a child because you can't bear to see anything bad happen to them.

Problem. Its extremely hard to have empathy for a fictional person in a game. Doubly so when you're a teenage nerd or grognard with problems relating to people to begin with (the dominant demographic of our hobby).

This is the main reason most PCs are depicted as total sociopaths executing prisoners out of hand, torturing people, animating the dead as slaves, and so forth.

Well, that and the game actively rewards murder and violence.

[PhoenixPhyre]

No it doesnt.

If you do good deeds (being altruistic, helping little old ladies across the road, giving to charity etc) your motive is irrelevant. We call you a good person.

You could only be doing nice stuff in order to fulfill a Satanic prophesy or something. It doesnt matter.

Ditto if you do evil deeds (murdering people, raping people, causing harm to others, torturing people etc) your motive is irrelevant. We call you an evil person, and send you to prison.

You might only be murdering, raping and harming other people who are themselves murderers, rapists and so forth. Your motive is irrelevant. you're evil.

I mean either individual might think they're actually evil (when they're good) or good (when they're evil). Thats a different question though.

There's an asymmetry in real life. Someone can do good deeds for blatant PR reasons and not be good at heart. They'd do evil if it was better PR. But a good person won't knowingly, intentionally do evil.

Having a good motive doesn't change the outcomes--doing evil is still wrong even "for the greater good." It still hurts people, etc. But being a truly good person means that you do good despite any hostility from those who are evil, who return evil for good. You save someone at risk to yourself, with no thought of reward. That doesn't make rewards bad, or make you better for refusing a reward, though.

[to the general topic]
Good people can get paid for doing good without them losing their good status. Good, un-self-motivated people can accept praise and thanks and prizes. But if you're doing what you think is good, and the only consequences you see are bad ones....well...by their fruits and all that. Generally, bad consequences for actions mean that the act is not something you should do. When toilet training a kid, do you punish them for going in the toilet? No. You reward them. Because you want them to do the act that's not natural for them. Eventually, the need for positive external reinforcement fades. That doesn't mean that you should punish them for doing good.

I knew someone with a dog. This dog had been "trained" to be psychotic. The master had issues, and so the master's behavior was, as far as the dog was concerned, random. The same act might draw praise or punishment (or just get ignored). So the dog acted however it felt it should, which manifested as psychosis. It never knew if it was going to get praised or punished. People are the same way.

[Derpaligtr]

I've got a some additional context below the comic over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/selfless-charity), but this is my question: As a player, have you ever done good in-character deeds only to be met with in-game punishment? Conversely, have you ever been rewarded for lying/cheating/stealing/being a terrible person? Was it fun, was it fair, and did it make for a better game?

Good =/= Lawful

Chaos =/= Evil

My group saved a man from execution and became wanted criminals for doing as such. We didn't think he deserved to die for his crimes.

We couldn't shop in that town, had to be sneaky (we weren't sneaky characters), and generally got ganged up on.

The guy was convicted of killing a town guard, however it was in self defense, so we weren't having any of that. We stepped in and the man got a trial. The town found him guilty of the law, which he technically was in violation of... Funny enough our lawful good paladin lead the group in rescuing the man from the unjust laws of the land.

And to think the DM originally planned that instance to show us how brutal the town was and we weren't actually supposed to follow up on that plot hook.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Problem. Its extremely hard to have empathy for a fictional person in a game. Doubly so when you're a teenage nerd or grognard with problems relating to people to begin with (the dominant demographic of our hobby).

This is the main reason most PCs are depicted as total sociopaths executing prisoners out of hand, torturing people, animating the dead as slaves, and so forth.

Well, that and the game actively rewards murder and violence.
It's useful for roleplaying, psychologically speaking. I'm advocating for the eventual catharsis that comes at the end of that tunnel, when you really get into the world and start to embrace a real morality in spite of the meaninglessness of the game. When you choose a path of pain, discomfort, (or realistically here, mild inconvenience at best) over the simple, primal urges and rewards that acting in such a selfish manner brings forth.

Not everyone gets there, of course. But it's worth trying, I think.

[JoeJ]

I think the question for me comes down to what the ultimate ethical truth of the world is. (edit: I mean the fictional world in the game. I don't want to make this about r/l morality.) If good ultimately triumphs, then that should be something that is visible in the game. Good deeds should make a positive impact on the world, in a way that is visible to the players. That's not to say that there can't be a few jerks who will try to rob the PC who just saved their life, but they should be a very small minority because saving people who don't deserve to be saved gets old pretty fast.

OTOH, if the world is ultimately a cruel joke and the DM wants the PCs to fight heroically but ultimately futilely for good, then there need to be player rewards outside of the game world. Making experience points contingent on doing good might be a good way to do that.

Otherwise, if doing good deeds doesn't accomplish anything positive in the world and the players also aren't being rewarded for doing them in the game, then you're telling your players that you want them to play self-centered and unscrupulous characters.

[Segev]

The rewards for a player can be as simple - and as complicated - as lending emotional weight to the choice made.

The paladin who discovers that all his good deeds, all his heroism, all his self-sacrifice was taken advantage of by "beggars" who were con artists, greedy people who merely claimed to have lost their most valuable possessions, and lazy jerks who mock him behind his back for doing their work for them...but then goes on, when faced with just one more person asking for help at great cost to himself, only to die in the effort...

That can be a marvelous story. A testament for the player to his character's virtue in a harsh world. The nobility of his character can be emphasized in how his story is told, how his death is recounted, even if just at the table, to the other players. In how he's remembered.

In most games, not quite so grim and dark in tone, the paladin would develop a reputation as one who helps selflessly. This would lead to swindlers, yes, but it would also mean that more and more people would trust the paladin with their virginal daughters in a private inn room with a single bed, and take his word when he is caught, buried in their vault's gold, that he just pursued a slippery eel of a thief into there and is sorry that the thief got away with the most valuable gem there. Because he's honest, and known for it. Less egregiously, people will generally believe in him, and treat him well (at least overtly).

But yes, sometimes good deeds must be their own reward. IF that is to be the case, the GM needs to take care to make sure that they are not wasted. That they do make a difference. The orphans he rescued from the slavery ring remember him and are happy to see their hero. The town whose well he stopped from being poisoned may think he was the one trying to poison it, but at least he can see that it still thrives if he ever passes by again. Even if the old man is going to die of old age no matter what the good-hearted hero does (ignore him, toss some money at him, buy him a room and a hot meal at the inn while sitting next to him), the old man's last hours being lived in relative comfort as a result of the hero's aid can truly be its own reward.


What others are also getting at, though, is that you need to be careful what message you're sending to your players. Consequences should be good and bad, not just bad. And if Pleasanton is always being threatened by the next BBEG, it can get wearing. Especially if Pleasanton is populated by stepford smilers who are actually jerks who always swindle and abuse the heroes. If rescuing orphan Annie means that she's the one you'll see most clearly on the pile of corpses when the orcs raid the town at the start of next adventure, it undermines the heroic urge.

And, of course, if the player is looking for something of a power fantasy (perfectly reasonable in one's pretend-fun-times), and the powerful rewards only go to the ignoble, he will feel punished for not playing his character ignobly. And likely will start to play it in the way needed to get the rewards he seeks.

Full Frontal Nerdity has power-gaming munchkins who rip apart their DM's settings and play like sociopathic narcissists. But it's at least partially the DM's fault, given how he permits their behaviors and doesn't have the setting react reasonably in retaliation, but plays the restrictive DM role straight when they try to play more heroically. He attempts to restrain their power and options with social constructs in-game, and rewards their playing along with "clever" reveals of treachery that they'd called out OOC long ago. And then he seems surprised when they barge through social restraints like tissue paper on top of a gift bag in order to maximize their personal power and wealth rather than playing along with the plot that likely would have screwed them over again.

So, yes. Rewards for good behavior are a must, if only in the sense that you need to ensure the game remains at least as enjoyable for those who engage in that behavior as for those who engage in more...malicious...options.

[Unoriginal]

Doing good deeds does NOT mean you should be punished, but it does NOT mean you will be rewarded either.

It's all a question of context and of what the good deed ultimately result in.

My players choose to use a favor to save a thief, after they stopped him in his daylight robbery. The thief is *not* grateful, as they ruined his chance to make it big and whatever reputation he had up until now.

Other NPCs will react differently.

Point is, it's not a question if it's a good or bad deed, it's a question of what effect the deed has. Helping the kidnapped farmer go back to her family will probably not reward as much as accepting the slavers' bribe to let them go with their victims, but it builds good will and good reputation, which in turn will likely help in the long term (especially when quest givers hear about how you're good and hard to corrupt). Meanwhile, maybe the prisoner in the necromancer's crypt is actually a Demon in disguise, trying to fool people into having compassion so it can strike.

There is no "do good thing get good thing" or "do good thing get bad thing" direct relationships in the world.

A DM who punishes you for doing the good thing is a terrible DM and a petty jerk, unless it was explicitly said at the start of the campaign. A DM who always make so actions don't have bad consequences is not a good DM either, from the other side of the issue, because they're removing basically all reasons why someone would be evil.

If evil was always punished with no advantage, no one would do it. All the evil beings in D&D do evil things because it gives them something in return, or promises to do so, even if it's as limited as pleasure from hurting others or satisfying an hatred.

So, long story short, both good and bad deeds don't always have the outcome you expect them to have.

[NichG]

I'm fine with dramatic rewards. But there have to be visible positive consequences for good deeds, otherwise you're giving incentives not to play good characters.

Ideally, I'd say a GM would neither explicitly incentivize 'good' nor 'evil' characters, but rather would run the game as a way of asking the players which, in the particular circumstances of that setting and world, they feel is more interesting - and then play into their choice. That doesn't necessarily mean sheltering from negative consequences or creating rewards where none should exist, but it does mean enabling the direction to at the least be possible to follow long enough to explore it in depth, as well as adding richness and nuance to way the world responds - e.g. thinking through the consequences and fleshing them out beyond the level of just reward or punishment.

[KorvinStarmast]

I've got a some additional context below
Ya mean like this?

You’ve got to mix it up. Keep your players off balance. Punish good deeds every once in a while. Throw murder hobos the occasional bone. As a GM, it’s not your job to teach players how to be good people. You’re there to have good fun; to create interesting situations. If that means allowing your players to club the old lady/enchantress over the head and steal her sweet magical loot, that’s probably more interesting than simply sharing a sandwich with her. Either that person is trolling, or is (epithet removed). Or just a garden variety murderhobo. I didn't find that post in the least bit useful, nor enlightening. Was this some odd attempt at humor?

DM's shouldn't punish, but inhabitants of the game world should react to the Player Character's actions whatever those actions are. Indeed.

Rewarding good deeds stops that from happening. Indeed. We had a 1e AD&D DM who loved to play a twisty game of gotcha as a "reward" for a variety of good deeds that our Ranger, our Paladin and our Druid did. It was annoying as hell, and we let him know it.
That said, DM cruelty is a real thing. A DM that plays competitively against his players is doing it wrong. A DM that abuses his position of power is doing it wrong. aye ...

Problem. Its extremely hard to have empathy for a fictional person in a game. Doubly so when you're a teenage nerd or grognard with problems relating to people to begin with (the dominant demographic of our hobby). Not all grognards have trouble relating to people. (Digression not completed).

This is the main reason most PCs are depicted as total sociopaths executing prisoners out of hand, torturing people, animating the dead as slaves, and so forth. Well, that and the game actively rewards murder and violence. If you bother to look at the life of the medieval system as it was, life was nasty, brutish, and short. The level of violence accepted then, both formal and informal, was well in excess of what you or I would accept today in Western culture.

[Sigreid]

Personally, I think things should play out pretty logically. For most actions, unless done in total secret, will and should have a mixture of good and bad consequences. Beating up the bandit robbing the old lady gets you on the thieve's guild list. But word starts getting round that you're a stand up guy and people stick their necks out a little farther to help you. But people are now more likely to come to you with their problems. But the local lord gets graft from the guild. But he can't afford to act directly against you and tick off his people. But...

[MaxWilson]

The people at the other end do evil because they're evil at heart. Loot, etc are icing on the cake. These are somewhat susceptible to negative consequences, but they'd do evil for its own sake.

It's the people in the middle (which 90% of us really are) that are influenced by incentives. And incentives matter. That's my big point. If the default is "no/small reward for good" (or even "negative consequence for good") and "no/small negative consequences for bad" (or even "positive consequences for bad"), you'll get more people doing bad than good. And I don't like to see people doing bad things at the table. For one, it tends to be quite disruptive.

Huh. It sounds like what I define as "evil" you define as "neutral", and what you define as "evil" I define as "extremely evil"--perhaps even cartoonishly evil.

An amoral sociopath who takes what he wants from other people without regard for their welfare is evil in my book, even if he's not a sadist. The loot isn't "icing on the cake", and he's not doing evil for its own sake, but the lack of countervailing consideration and respect for others is what leads to him committing evil deeds.

Ob5E: the view of the Blood War described in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is actually a pretty reasonable starting point for making Tanar'ri and Baatezu emotionally relatable characters. Still evil, but in a way that one can comprehend, more like Hitler or Boko Haram than like a cartoon villain. With some work you can even turn it into a pretty reasonable motivation for interacting with humans on the Prime Material plane. (I do think however that the Blood War is better off if you imply that it's dynamically unstable, and that there have been many instances where final victory seemed about to be achieved but was averted--and that there used to be billions and billions of troops on each side but now they're down to the final dregs, only a few hundred thousand, which is why they're so desperate for deals with mortals.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

I should clarify. I'm not asking for illogical or constant rewards for goodness. But when DMs make repeated conscious choices to establish situations where the "good" option only has negative consequences and only rarely if ever has positive consequences, it tells me that they want people to choose evil (or at least to not care about being good). I want the consequences to flow from the situations, and the situations to reflect the world.

In a grim-dark, black-on-black setting, sure. Everyone's a cheat and a liar. Good deeds are viewed as stupid. But those settings either become over-the-top and end up feeling silly (see WH40K) or are just unpleasant for me to play in.

In a more natural-feeling world, most people are at least tolerably honest. Otherwise civilization would fall apart. So most of the time, doing good has neutral or better outcomes, plus the intrinsic rewards. And doing bad has neutral or worse outcomes collectively.

In a heroic world of light and dark, light breeds light and dark breeds dark. Good actions have good consequences, bad actions have bad consequences. Reliably. Good people flock to those who do good.

Note that "consequence" is broader than just money, fame, or other explicit reward or punishment. It could be that when you take the "easy", selfish route at one point, you see the world darkening around you. That village you abandoned? Gone when you come back. Or they all turn their backs and refuse to deal with you because you left them in the lurch in their time of need. Etc.

Edit: and because evil tends to be easier in the short run, DMs that don't want evil actions should put a small finger on the scale in favor of good. Because the long term is hard to see in a game, but the short term is obvious.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Huh. It sounds like what I define as "evil" you define as "neutral", and what you define as "evil" I define as "extremely evil."

An amoral sociopath who takes what he wants from other people without regard for their welfare is evil in my book, even if he's not a sadist. The loot isn't "icing on the cake", and he's not doing evil for its own sake, but the lack of countervailing consideration and respect for others is what leads to him committing evil deeds.

I was speaking of the extremes. Someone who completely ignores the welfare of others will do so regardless. Yes, you may be able to pay them enough to offset the annoyance, but they're just as likely to take the money and run. Or, when you show you've got money, they mug you and leave. That's what I mean that they're insensitive to consequences.

[Pex]

When I say "good deed" I mean in an objective sense. That is, deeds that promote society, help people, avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and generally are what we think of as good (circular, I know).

You can do good deeds without being a good person. To say otherwise is to say that neutrality is impossible (because since you're not good, you can't do good).

In a real-world moral sense, doing good deeds (to the best of your ability and understanding) is necessary but not sufficient to being good. There, motive matters. People who are, themselves, good do good because they're good, not for the sake of rewards. This does not mean they turn down offered rewards (that's the bad paladin stereotype), although they will take those rewards because they allow them to do more good. These are less sensitive to incentive structures.

The people at the other end do evil because they're evil at heart. Loot, etc are icing on the cake. These are somewhat susceptible to negative consequences, but they'd do evil for its own sake.

It's the people in the middle (which 90% of us really are) that are influenced by incentives. And incentives matter. That's my big point. If the default is "no/small reward for good" (or even "negative consequence for good") and "no/small negative consequences for bad" (or even "positive consequences for bad"), you'll get more people doing bad than good. And I don't like to see people doing bad things at the table. For one, it tends to be quite disruptive.

The issue with overtly penalizing (imposing negative consequences) for good deeds in games is that you get less of them. If helping peasants gets you spat on, or if saving the day gets a big yawn, while extorting every penny from innocents, murdering shopkeepers to get stuff, and generally acting like a murderhobo draws no negative attention (or meaningless amounts), all those people who could be persuaded to do good? You've lost them.

You just described the 2E Planescape game I ranted about, though it was more larcenous hoboism than murder. Same difference.

[willdaBEAST]

I don't think DMs should punish anything. The line between showing consequences for actions and punishing the players can be hard to define, but in my opinion, punishment is only going to set up an antagonistic relationship between players and the DM. Again, consequences are important, but there's a huge difference between "let's explore the results of that decision together" and "how dare you do that, now you must suffer!"

[galaxia]

If the player wonders why his PC would ever do anything without external reward, he's a real-life Neutral Evil(ish) or at best Neutral. Real life people do all kinds of things for other people without receiving external rewards.

That's true if you subscribe to the pure altruism theory. In pure altruism theory, people will somehow do "good" things without having any cause. See, if you have a cause then you have a reason. If you have a reason then that means there is a payoff. If you have a payoff you can't have pure altruism.

It's false if you don't. In fact, those who don't may even regard that as a type of insanity. According to them, the principle of reciprocity is the reason people do "good" things. Or, they may do them to gain something else for themselves, like a self-esteem boost. Or, it can be a combination. According to this view, it is impossible to act without self-interest unless you're insane. They will also say that you can't understand an action as being good prior to doing it without knowing about the payoff. So, if you think something is going to be a good act it means you're automatically acting out of self-interest.

The pure altruism vs. payoff debate is one of the fundamental conflicts of philosophy.

Biology-minded folks may argue that humans are biologically required to act in self interest. Others, though, will reject that as reductionist. Typically, pure altruism theory is believed by religious people and it's not by atheists. For the religious, there is the concept of "transcendence" — going beyond human understanding. They can argue that pure altruism is possible via that. Atheists will reply that if it can't be understood by humans then it's impossible for us to know about pure altruism in the first place, beyond it being an abstract theory.

(I should note that the word "pure" isn't necessarily necessary. Altruism that isn't pure can be said to not be altruism at all. I added the word pure, though, for convenience — since it is common to believe that altruism can be self-interested to some degree. That is debatable. Personally, I think altruism is defined by the absence of self-interest.)

[Nifft]

If your dungeon mistress isn't punishing you to your satisfaction, why are you still paying her?

Seriously though, these click-bait adverts are getting a bit transparent.

[Pex]

Objectivism would say self interest is itself Good. Self interest is the desire of your own happiness. Everyone trying to achieve that forces you into being Good because once you hurt others - steal, lie, physical harm, etc., those you hurt become unhappy. To achieve happiness means you must be removed from society at worst or ignored. For example, if you're a shopkeeper selling expensive faulty goods people will stop buying from you. For your own interest you have to sell well-made goods at a price people are willing to pay. Helping others is fine if that's what you want to do, but forcing people to help/volunteer/give to charity is slavery/theft.

[galaxia]

Objectivism would say self interest is itself Good. Self interest is the desire of your own happiness. Everyone trying to achieve that forces you into being Good because once you hurt others - steal, lie, physical harm, etc., those you hurt become unhappy. To achieve happiness means you must be removed from society at worst or ignored. For example, if you're a shopkeeper selling expensive faulty goods people will stop buying from you. For your own interest you have to sell well-made goods at a price people are willing to pay. Helping others is fine if that's what you want to do, but forcing people to help/volunteer/give to charity is slavery/theft.
Self interest is often not clear-cut. Check out the Dostoyevsky (The Underground Man) vs. Chernyshevsky debate (What is to be Done?). After that, read the part of Arendt's Human Condition about capitalism.

Chernyshevsky argued that self-interest can be defined and harnessed to create a utopian society. This was not a new idea, of course. Dostoyevsky responded with a character who acts irrationally, against his self-interest — to demonstrate that people don't necessarily act according to their self-interest. The other issue is whether perceived self-interest is the same thing as actual self-interest. For instance, the Underground Man says something like "I hate myself so much that my liver hurts". One the one hand, it could be argued that he perceives it as being in his self-interest to feel that way. On the other, it could be argued that his behavior is in opposition to his self-interest by being unhealthy. Chernyshevsky would likely then argue that the person is insane and insanity isn't a proper rebuttal. But, then we're back to the whole altruism vs. self interest debate, where self interest typically views altruism as insanity.

That "removed from society bit" is, interestingly enough, the same conclusion Arendt came to in the Eichmann matter. However, there is a problem with this conclusion. That is the irresolvable conflict between the society and the individual. Resting your case on the basis of having resolved an irresolvable conflict is indeed shaky. It's also circular to argue that society has the right to remove people it deems undesirable and, simultaneously, arguing that such a removal is grounds for removing the remover!

Different people have different needs/desires. This is the society vs. the individual problem again, one that is unresolvable. It is unresolvable because individuality is both beneficial and a drawback, at the same time.

[galaxia]

Self interest being the basis of a society is therefore a problem. Competing self interests can't just be resolved with an "ideal person" model because there is no one monolithic ideal person. And there are more problems, too:

Environmentalists, for instance, will point to the condition of the planet as being an example of self interest delusion — where people, thinking they're acting in self interest harm their interests and where self interest is simply destructive for others' interests. No one wants to sit in smoggy traffic jams and yet they exist. The arguments that created them and which maintain them are often based on the notion that self interests are being served. The resources exist to get rid of them quickly and yet they persist. And, the fact that environmentalism is typically seen as peripheral politics is pointed to by environmentalists as proof that self interest isn't being correctly followed. If it were, they argue, then everyone would make environmentalism the basis of their decision-making. But, then we get into the mess of trying to determine how that would work.

A related problem is that people don't just have one self interest at a time in relation to things. There can be layers of overlap. "I really enjoy having a big flower garden." "I really don't enjoy having to pay for it or all the upkeep." "I like the fresh air I get when I garden and the exercise." "I don't like having to skip other activities I like to do the gardening." "My mood improves when I see bees, butterflies, and birds making use of the garden flowers." "My mood declines when I realize that others don't appreciate my hard work enough." "I wonder if it's a waste of water to garden like I do?" "At least I don't have chemically-treated grass where my garden is!" And on and on.

People are a mess of contradictory information and beliefs. Many of the beliefs people have are simply false, too. How can anyone act according to their self interest if they believe in something that's not true? "I really enjoy shooting deer and eating deer meat." "I don't enjoy getting lead poisoning or having my kids get it." "I don't like feeling controlled." "I am being asked to support a ban on lead shot." "I don't like being told by people I perceive as different from myself and my interests that lead poisoning is a big enough problem to do something about the shot, especially any kind of regulation." "My kids come first! I'll beat the tar out of anyone who harms them." "My father and grandfather used lead shot and I turned out okay!"

No one can be an expert in everything, which brings us to the most fundamental purpose of civilization: specialization. Well, that carries a problem, too (beyond the basic society vs. individual problem): One has to rely on the specialists' integrity. And, they have their own self interest criteria and their own level of cognitive mess (conflicting beliefs/information, false information, limited cognitive frameworks/information/processing ability).

[CantigThimble]

I used to be an objectivist but now I think I'm with Dostoevsky on self-interest. The problem is just that saying good=happiness isn't that simple. There are complicated and painful things in life that are worth confronting, and it is worth sacrificing happiness for that purpose. For example, the concept of toiling to make a better world for your children. Is that REALLY done out of your self interest? You will never see that future and you will never enjoy it. You may get some happiness out of knowing that you did good things, but you also sacrifice a great deal of happiness in the anxiety and toil you have made for yourself. But that doesn't mean that life of toil for the future is a bad one.

Happiness isn't an ultimate goal, it's the rose you smell along the road. It's nice when it's there, but you shouldn't just spend your life sitting by the rose bush forever. You should keep walking down the path.

Ultimately its the path that matters. What are you going towards? Should I really be picking my destination based on how many rose bushes are along the way?

To break down the metaphor, what I'm saying is that what you are aiming your life at and how well you progress towards that matters much more than the kind of life you experience in that pursuit.

"If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

[Pex]

I'm not an Objectivist because I disagree with its absoluteness, though I am sympathetic. It has a point in promoting the Mind instead of the Heart, but I give it fault for disregarding the Heart entirely. Its argument in allowing a little Heart will destroy the Mind is strong, but I reject its total rejection of Heart. I agree it's wrong to force someone to live by Heart as other Heart believers would do, but its devotion to Mind doesn't allow the Mind Person his own Heart. I'm ok with Mind being dominant, but Heart is a value worth existing.

[galaxia]

For example, the concept of toiling to make a better world for your children. Is that REALLY done out of your self interest?

Bolded as a hint.


You will never see that future and you will never enjoy it. You may get some happiness out of knowing that you did good things, but you also sacrifice a great deal of happiness in the anxiety and toil you have made for yourself.

People should remember that either/or thinking is often not the best path. Children fulfill a narcissistic goal. They provide social advantages. They fulfill a biological imperative. They provide meaning/goal in a questionable existence. They can be used as tools to justify one's political stances. Yet, despite many perceived benefits, there are many drawbacks. They cost a lot. The huge investment can backfire if something bad happens. Women can lose valuable calcium and such or even die in childbirth. Women can be abandoned by the men who fathered their children. Etc. etc.


But that doesn't mean that life of toil for the future is a bad one.
It doesn't mean it's a good one, either. Slaves in the mines in ancient Greece typically toiled horribly and died quickly. How well did that work out for them?


Happiness isn't an ultimate goal, it's the rose you smell along the road. It's nice when it's there, but you shouldn't just spend your life sitting by the rose bush forever. You should keep walking down the path.
What proof do you have for this? Some will argue that the only reason people continue to exist is because they feel they have no choice. Psychology typically regards suicide as an act of irrational protest.


Ultimately its the path that matters. What are you going towards? Should I really be picking my destination based on how many rose bushes are along the way?
That sounds nice but consider that you could be one of those Greek mining slaves, or worse. People have often been content to stop and smell the roses while others don't even know what a rose looks like.

[galaxia]

I'm not an Objectivist because I disagree with its absoluteness, though I am sympathetic. It has a point in promoting the Mind instead of the Heart, but I give it fault for disregarding the Heart entirely. Its argument in allowing a little Heart will destroy the Mind is strong, but I reject its total rejection of Heart. I agree it's wrong to force someone to live by Heart as other Heart believers would do, but its devotion to Mind doesn't allow the Mind Person his own Heart. I'm ok with Mind being dominant, but Heart is a value worth existing.
Heart/mind is a false dichotomy. Emotions are part of rationality, despite much lore to the contrary. When we burn our hand on a stove and get angry that anger isn't irrational. It's a rational response to the damage and pain from the stove injury. It reinforces the learning experience.

If someone is mean to us and we get angry that is a rational response to being treated badly.

Emotions aren't some weird layer of fairyland like the Star Trek writers who wrote Spock typically presented it as. They're not insanity that has to be repressed.

However, it is true that they also must be controlled, balanced with logic. One memorable quote from a psychology book talked about the difference between someone who is mature emotionally and someone who isn't. Give the emotionally uncontrolled person a loaded gun while angry with someone and you're more likely to see that person get shot. Another easily understood dichotomy is the difference between someone who has untreated mania and that person when they're on their medication. Untreated, they are liable to act in a manner that seems irrational. It's not, though. It's simply the rationality of more basic impulses, less restrained by higher logic. Also, just because higher logic is a higher layer doesn't mean it's better. Sometimes the more "basic" impulses have things going for them and complex social etiquette can be a drawback.

Emotions aren't delusion. They are a primitive way our bodies help us to understand the world. Primitive but essential. We would act less rationally without them.

Another problem with your dichotomy is that the heart is an organ that pumps blood through the body, not one that has anything to do with one's cognition. I know you know that but it's really better to use accurate terminology. Inaccurate terminology is one of the easiest tools for spreading inaccurate beliefs.

[CantigThimble]

Galaxia, is there a unified point you're trying to make with your responses to me or are you just trying to poke holes to point out I don't have all the answers? If its the latter, I freely admit that I don't, I'm stumbling through things I don't understand as best I can.

The problem I've been dealing with as best I can for a quite a while now is the concept of a meaningful life under the harshest conditions possible. There are people who have lived lives while effectively being simultaneously tortured and starved to death who still considered life worth living. How in the hell did that happen? The tentative answer I have for that is that there are things that matter more than happiness, that make life worth living when happiness is nothing but a fleeting memory and all the reality before you is suffering and death. If there is a meaning of life like that, then why should I bother with anything less?

Sometimes history is written by the victors, but other times its written by people who were just too stubborn to give up and die when any reasonable person would have been pushed past the point of endurance and sanity. I think that a meaning of life, like a friend, is only really worthwhile if its going to get you through the worst times, not just hang around when things are good.

[Ogre Mage]

Yes, I have been punished for doing good deeds and rewarded for doing terrible things. Whether or not it was appropriate depends on the tones and themes of the campaign.

If the DM sets up a heroic-toned campaign and then continually punishes the players for doing good things, that is bad DMing.

But I played in a campaign where the party was members of a drow noble house in Menzoberranzan. The DM specifically said no good-aligned PCs (lol). We were rewarded for doing terrible things and it was quite appropriate for the campaign. If a PC in that game did a good deed and then was upset they got punished, I would have said they were fools (while striking them with my whip of fangs).:sabine:

[galaxia]

Galaxia, is there a unified point you're trying to make with your responses to me or are you just trying to poke holes to point out I don't have all the answers? If its the latter, I freely admit that I don't, I'm stumbling through things I don't understand as best I can.
Then why are you asking me this? Why does everything a person says have to be summed up in a "unified point"? There are a lot of different angles that can be used to try to sum up what I've written but if what I wrote could be summed up in a sentence or two then that's all I would have written.

I am simply trying to help people with this topic, by offering both clarifications and advice that might help with clarifications. Without understanding what good is and without understanding the issue of intent/motivation, people are going to either run in circles or just base their opinions on erroneous beliefs. People need to realize that there is an unresolvable conflict between society and individual and most of the other things I discussed. They need to understand that individuality is both good and bad, at the same time. Without this knowledge it's difficult, or impossible, to approach the this topic well. How can anyone talk about good deeds and punishment without the foundational knowledge needed to define those concepts? Punishment is something I haven't even gotten to yet because I was trying to get through "good deeds" as a concept first.

Foucault has some very useful things to say about punishment in his book on the subject that go right back into the issues regarding intent that I talked about. The spoiler is that punishment can be quite arbitrary, rather than the masterful justice people typically think of it as. This may be true not only for royal fiat (the pre-intent type of justice) but also for the "modern" intent-based system.

As soon as intent is added to the judicial process it means people have reasons for doing things. Once they have reasons then how can they be guilty of anything? It's a thought-provoking question that also goes to the heart of the issue of fate vs. choice. Fate is typically thought of as a superstitious idea, with things like prophecies. However, more simply, it just means that people don't have choice. They don't have personal agency. Instead, everything they do is what they would always do — because they are who they are. Psychology has a model called the Cognitive Behavioral Model. It has a generic name but it's a useful model. It shows three things: DNA (innate personality), environment, and prior behavior. All three interact. Prior behavior and environment even influence DNA expression. Our DNA is a matter out of our control. It's what we're born with. All of the actions that we take, according to the fatalist view, are inevitable.

Without choice there cannot be guilt. Intent is a myth in this view. How a person feels at the time they take actions might seem like intent but if the person has no actual control then it's not the kind of intent that can be used to justify punishment.


The problem I've been dealing with as best I can for a quite a while now is the concept of a meaningful life under the harshest conditions possible. There are people who have lived lives while effectively being simultaneously tortured and starved to death who still considered life worth living. How in the hell did that happen?
That's a complex question. Hazing is one interesting angle. It can kill people and also typically makes people feel a stronger bond to the group. Stockholm Syndrome is a more extreme example. I don't know much about how solid that is, in terms of psychology's view of it today, but it seems to fit with the hazing.

There is also the issue of biological imperative that I brought up. One of those, beyond the simple self-preservation compulsion, is the belief in psychology that a person's innate happiness level is largely determined by their genetics rather than their circumstances. So, if a person who is typically fairly happy is severely injured and ends up paralyzed from the waist down, psychology believes that most of the people like that will find their personality rebounds to its original level of overall happiness after an adjustment period.

I think this is reductionist, though, if it is taken too literally. There are so many things that can have a permanent happiness-impairing effect. I think it underestimates the importance of positive environmental factors. However, it may very well be that it is true as a basic general rule, just not one that obliterates all of the variables, some of which can have a very negative impact on a person's mental state for more than an "adjustment period".


The tentative answer I have for that is that there are things that matter more than happiness, that make life worth living when happiness is nothing but a fleeting memory and all the reality before you is suffering and death.
I think this is verging on the transcendence belief. Happiness is typically defined as self interest. So, if you're going to find something else as the motivation then it's likely you're going toward the concept of transcendence. I don't believe in that, personally, but people are, of course, free to believe what they like when it comes to life having some sort of meaning beyond the mundane.

Sometimes history is written by the victors
Always. I can't think of an example of dominant cultural belief being determined by those who lack the power to determine it. That seems contradictory.

but other times its written by people who were just too stubborn to give up and die when any reasonable person would have been pushed past the point of endurance and sanity. I think that a meaning of life, like a friend, is only really worthwhile if its going to get you through the worst times, not just hang around when things are good.
There is a big difference between resilience and happiness.

One thing that your post seems to bring up is the difference between long-term happiness planning and shorter-term planning. Many people live according to the model that there is a mortal existence on Earth and an immortal existence in a spiritual realm. With this model it is common to argue in favor of long-term happiness planning, even to the point of justifying a terrible standard of living on Earth. A less extreme version of this is the idea of working hard and sacrificing for a long period of time in order to find greater happiness later, on Earth.

[galaxia]

If the DM sets up a heroic-toned campaign and then continually punishes the players for doing good things, that is bad DMing.
Heroic tales are often about misguided heroism resulting in tragedy.

When I took a Shakespeare class the professor said the tragic flaw of most heroes is that they care too much about something. Their drive to see goodness prevail, their personal conception of it, leads to them causing great harm.*

Instead of this kind of heroism, it seems that what many D&D players think of is the global policeman model. Instead of dramatic heroism, the global policemen maintain order. They don't engage in self-defeating altruism (to uphold the true law, in service of the truth) but, instead, increase their status by upholding the mundane law. This is reflected in the D&D alignment system, which creates a law/chaos dichotomy where "lawful good" is the most moral, at least traditionally (back when Paladins could only be lawful good). It's also the basis of something like Superman and Batman, from what little I've seen of those franchises. Sure, in the Nicholson Batman film, Batman does sacrifice some but he also is rich and powerful. He fits the global policeman model much more than the tragic hero model.

Of course, this kind of heroism concept does seem to harken back to Gilgamesh. I don't recall Gilgamesh being a tragic hero but rather a global policeman. I may be wrong though. It has been forever since I studied it.

A GURPS book about ancient Greece said that Greek heroic literature found tragedy most often in people becoming too self-important. This is conformity, the old idea of the nail that sticks up being smashed down to maintain the preferred social order. It also can be a caution against the Hamlet-style tragic hero, whose personal conception of the good imperils those around him.

It should be noted, though, that Hamlet was also surrounded by corruption, so the morality is sometimes murky. Hamlet also brings up all the issues of personal agency vs. fate. He needed to out-think his uncle, who sent the poisoners, in order to survive. And yet, some of his other actions were hardly protective of the good. The environmental conditions (being hunted) led to his behavior, according to some appraisals. Others might say that the reason he needed to be killed was because he was a delusional menace — that the corruption was all him, all imagined in his mind (like his father's ghost).

In terms of the Greek conformity issue... Their tales of woe that befall people who get too uppity can be seen as a dialogue between the radical and the moderate. Radicals may joke that they do all the work and the moderates take the credit. Moderates, meanwhile, may say that incremental change is more efficient. Typically, societies praise moderation in order to lessen turmoil. Heroism isn't so moderate so it can scare those who are tied to having the status quo be maintained. Global policemen, by contrast, are typically praised for "saving society". (That is, as long as they succeed.)

*(This is why we have the anti-hero as a concept. The anti-hero is defined by not caring enough. The anti-hero typically morphs into a hero over the course of the plot. Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, is a typical pop culture anti-hero. In pop culture fashion, he provides a happy ending. He also becomes a typical global policeman, which is contrasted with his branding as a terrorist early in the plot.)

[Mordaedil]

Should you punish good deeds?

Yes, as often as always. Why, I hear you ask. Because doing good shouldn't be the easy solution. Doing good should fly in the face of what is worthwhile and practical. Doing good is hard and should be hard to do.

If it is not, it is nothing special. It is no longer good, it is the easy way. It has become pandering. And ego stroking. You are no longer doing good. You are now the oppressive force.

Punishing good means good deeds are worthwhile.

[Unoriginal]

Should you punish good deeds?

Yes, as often as always. Why, I hear you ask. Because doing good shouldn't be the easy solution. Doing good should fly in the face of what is worthwhile and practical. Doing good is hard and should be hard to do.

If it is not, it is nothing special. It is no longer good, it is the easy way. It has become pandering. And ego stroking. You are no longer doing good. You are now the oppressive force.

Punishing good means good deeds are worthwhile.

Yeah, suuuuuuure.


Helping orphans get a new home is only worthwhile if they try to cut off your limbs so you can be sold as a slave to the BBEG.


Doing good isn't some kind of weird martyr cult. Tons of time, doing the right thing is easy or rewarding.

[galaxia]

Should you punish good deeds?

Yes, as often as always. Why, I hear you ask. Because doing good shouldn't be the easy solution. Doing good should fly in the face of what is worthwhile and practical. Doing good is hard and should be hard to do.

If it is not, it is nothing special. It is no longer good, it is the easy way. It has become pandering. And ego stroking. You are no longer doing good. You are now the oppressive force.

Punishing good means good deeds are worthwhile.
I think the main issue you're mainly tackling is risk level vs. reward. The inherent goodness of an act is being conflated with that issue.

If a person helps an old lady cross a street, at no personal risk (beyond the loss of a bit of time and energy), that can't be good behavior — according to the logic outlined in your post.

Really? The "help an old lady across a street" is very likely the most used example for defining mundane good behavior. Yes, argumentum ad populum is a fallacy. However, dictionary definitions, the meanings of the words we use, are defined by consensus. In this case, the consensus is that helping old ladies isn't oppression, nor is it nothing, nor should anyone be punished for it.

Of course, everything can be debated. Some will say it's sexist to define helping in terms of old ladies and not simply old people. Some will say it's chauvinistic toward the elderly, to assume they need help. But, those arguments are quite rare.

If you want to fix the logic, in terms of making it adhere to the dominant social standard, my suggestion is to change it to this: "Players should expect rewards commensurate with the risk they have chosen to experience. If they are good-aligned and make an extra effort to good things, they may receive a bit more." This definition talks separately about the issue of risk vs. reward and also says "may" when it comes to getting a reward for doing good things. May is a good word to use because it implies they'll get something sometimes but not always.

Another answer to this topic's question involves randomness. Instead of seeing the game world as being fully defined by the GM's vision, people should remember that the real world is not constantly and consistently governed by anyone — unless one thinks their deity is that interventionist. In the real world, people can be punished for good deeds sometimes by some people but not always and not by everyone. D&D has a long tradition of randomness being a factor. The quest for perfect balance and perfect player happiness at all times has caused some to forget that. Randomness is helpful for simulating worlds in a more realistic manner. Instead of knowing what will happen in advance, which is what happens when people demand that everything be treated in the same way all the time by the DM, some level of randomness can be involved. People are sometimes rewarded for bad behavior, especially in terms of people who are power-hungry typically being the ones who are given power — and people who are greedy typically being those who are allowed to gain more resources than others. In fact, it's not uncommon for people to be praised as being better people for doing both of those things. In a more idealized RPG setting, the balance can be tilted in the opposite direction, where more altruism-lite behaviors can be more often rewarded. Instead of the greedy power-hungry people being able to get power and accumulate large amounts of resources (using charity as a veneer) vastly more often, the humble and generous would be rewarded the most frequently. However, the randomness factor would still be there to keep things less predictable and give a greater sense of realism. Part of the randomness in D&D can be the existence of multiple deities, each with their own agendas and personalities.

Goodness is not wholly defined by sacrifice unless you subscribe to the pure altruism model I described a few posts back.

[Mordaedil]

You people take that way too seriously and on the face. Chill out a bit.

FYI: I don't consider helping an old woman across the street a good deed. I see it as a matter of course. It shouldn't be a good deed, it should just be what people do to eachother, without expecting recompense.

[galaxia]

You people take that way too seriously and on the face. Chill out a bit.
If you're not interested in the topic no one is forcing you to read it, let alone post anything.

Ridiculing people for making a good-faith effort to help others is bad form. It certainly is not an example of a good deed.

Update: Since you edited your post to have some relevant content, I'll respond to that:


FYI: I don't consider helping an old woman across the street a good deed. I see it as a matter of course. It shouldn't be a good deed, it should just be what people do to eachother, without expecting recompense.
Your use of the word should should be a clue.

Should means there is a choice. Should means that people choosing to do what they're supposed to do means they are choosing good behavior.

Even if you try to pair sacrificial altruism with fate there is a logic problem. Fate provides no choice so any sacrificial behavior no longer is impressive. That means there is no basis for doling out rewards. If you use sacrificial altruism on its own and argue that there is choice then you have to admit that any chosen good behavior is good. Helping an old lady cross a street involves typically very minor sacrifices but they are sacrifices. Time. Energy. Maybe she has bad breath. Maybe she's the mother of a paranoid and dangerous mob boss whose paranoia could spill over on you for just being near her. Maybe she'll be so overly demanding that you can't accommodate her wishes and her mob boss son will get angry with you. Maybe she'll distract you and you'll both get run over by a bus. The list goes on. The unknown involves risk. Unless you have precognition you don't know what will happen when you try to help that old lady.

The flip side, though, is the principle of reciprocity. That is the idea that people will help you when you need help if you help them. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it's not. (Many times, people will only behave according to this principle if they feel enough pressure from society.) There are also the various benefits, like a self-esteem boost for feeling helpful. There are many possible rewards, many of which are highly unlikely.

There is research about altruism using very simplified "game" mechanisms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

Also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC–PP_game

[JoeJ]

Don't forget that this is a game. No good deeds are actually being preformed. Any discussion of rewards or punishment needs to take into account that we're talking about imaginary good deeds that benefit imaginary people. You can encourage the character to act purely altruistically, with no thought of reward, but the player doesn't not have that option. The player is not the one doing the good deeds; the character is. The most the player can do is pretend to help imaginary people. (Or pretend to harm imaginary people, if they choose to go that route.)

That being the case, if the game isn't fun there's no good reason to keep playing. There's no moral argument to be made that the players should sacrifice their enjoyment of the game for the greater good of imaginary people. So if you're a DM and you allow good (or any alignment) characters but then make it so that it's not fun for those players to play their characters, then I think you're being a jerk.

[Drascin]

It depends. Do you want players to do good deeds?

Basically, here's the thing: reinforcement works. If a player does a thing in a campaign, and every time it ends badly, he will quickly come to realize this thing does not work in this campaign and stop doing it. It's the same way that adversarial DMing breeds resentful hyperparanoid players and hyper-railroading DMing breeds passive players. People don't like to beat their heads against a wall - because the wall will win every time.

Now, if most of the time doing good works but this specific instance doesn't due to something specific, that's a different matter. But if good deeds generally end badly, people will (largely unconsciously) come to the realization that this game is against you doing good deeds and stop doing it.

[Mordaedil]

Anyway, my point is that good deeds leading to automatically being the right answer supposes that the evil solution always leads to the wrong answer, thus evil deeds must be punished. In such a world, where is the benefit in playing evil? If there is no inherent benefit in evil, why does not everyone just get along? The answer to that, in my opinion is because doing good is harder. It's not always the right way and it doesn't always pay out, besides if it did, it wouldn't feel rewarding.

I get the temptation to reward good for being good, I really do, but ultimately it blanches out the game world and evil becomes evil simply for the sake of evil. There lies no good reason behind it, supposing the previous statements are true. If you say "it's not that simple", then congrats, therein lies my point. Nobody is the villain in their own story. People usually gravitate towards evil for a good reason.

If doing good does well by someone and you get rewarded by them for doing it, sure, yes, that is the consequence of acting good in favor of that person. No problem there. But you know, it kind of comes down to what kind of game you are running.

If you are running a game where the villains rule the city the heroes are in and they work undercover and take a great risk performing a good deed, then yes, rewarding the players for such makes it feel more triumphant. But doing this too often could risk weakning the feeling and tension you are attempting to build with the city. Sometimes the risk and effort to perform a good deed in a cruel society doesn't mitigate the ends. But I'm not really saying you should chop off the hands of the players at every opportunity and be unnecessarily cruel to them either, I'm advocating punishment within reason (also while playing the devil's advocate for a bit)

The harder the players have to work to achieve something, the better it feels when they finally achieve it.

EDIT: ^^^The funny thing is that I don't disagree with the above post either, there's always a balancing act to follow and you should keep tone in mind for when you run your game.

[Misereor]

Should DMs punish good deeds?

The players should definitely not get off the hook just because what they did was good.
Being good isn't a free ride. If it came with a guaranteed reward, everyone would do it.

Real life story:
My little sister, when she was 12 or 13, found a wallet with about 6,000$ in cash.
She went home, told our mom, and together they found the address and number of the owner, and called him.
When he came over my sister met him at the door and gave him his property. He took it, counted the money, and left without giving my sister a finder's fee or even saying thank you. (He did give off a strong entitled hipster vibe according to my sister, which she later has recognized in a lot of virtue signalling douchebags.)

While my sister's feelings were hurt, I've always been glad she got to have that experience.
Our parents sat her down and explained to her, that doing the right thing doesn't guarantee a reward. In life everyone has to decide whether they want to do something good for a reward, or because it's the right thing to do. It is about deciding what kind of person you want to be. And then they gave her some money and told her they were proud of her, but the main thing is that my sister got to understand this lesson in a way she wouldn't have if she hadn't had that experience to relate to.

[Unoriginal]

If you always punish good deeds, you end up in a cross between Star Trek's Mirror Universe, a Kafka-esque nightmare, and one of those horror stories where the whole universe conspire to horrifically torture some people and let their tormentors win for no reason, with a side dish of global dystopia.

If you always reward good deeds and if evil is always punished immediately and tangibly, you end up in a tension-less tooth-rotting-saccharine world where there can be no conflict or adventure because anything bad that happens will get solved by itself.

[CantigThimble]

Always. I can't think of an example of dominant cultural belief being determined by those who lack the power to determine it. That seems contradictory.

Whose interpretation of ancient history do we use more, the Egyptian and Mesopotamian ones or the Hebrew one? Is that because the Hebrew tribes conquered Egypt and Mesopotamia, threw down their temples and raised their own? No, it was because they clung to their beliefs long past the point where they ought to have given in and changed and eventually each other civillization crumbled.


I am not a transcendentalist. I don't believe that anything exists beyond death, but I am exploring the possibility that many aspects of the way transcendental ideas are acted out in the world make life better than it is when trying to act out materialist principles.

My perspective on the idea of a meaning of life is this: At what point does life stop being worth living?
Does it stop being worth living when you can't afford a yacht and unlimited caviar? Some people might say yes, but such a meaning of life is only possible for insanely wealthy people, it's obviously a terrible system of value to try to apply generally.

Does life stop being worth living if you don't have a decent job and live in a first world country? Again, it seems like it must be possible to have a more resilient meaning of life than this, and given the whims of fate we are subject to, we really should.

Is life no longer worth living if you're living hand to mouth in a third world country with little hope of improvement? Here's where many people would draw the line I think. And it's easy to understand why they would. Such a life is difficult and painful and likely to remain so. Can you really get enough happiness out of such a life to counterbalance all the suffering?

The logical conclusion of this is to look at someone in a situation like Gulag. How can that life be worth living? And yet somehow, some people find it to be so.

I think that Nietzsche quote is accurate. The idea that happiness is what humans really want out of life is an idea that only appears in extraordinarily well off cultures. The people who make those claims stand at the end of a line of thousands of people who died thankless deaths after endless toil to make any kind of civilization possible and telling all those ancestors that they were doing it wrong and there's really no reason why they should have kept trying to push forward under such conditions. If my philosophy can't justify their lives, then its no more than the arrogant delusion of a spoiled child. The important question is, what is the 'why' that justified their 'how', what is the meaning of life that could justify both their lives and your own life moving forwards?

[MoiMagnus]

Should DM punish good deed?

It depend which. The DM should punish behavior that goes against what he (and the players) want the campaign to look like, and reward when players improve the campaign.

If you want a campaign with hero of justice, you should not punish good deeds. If you want a campaign of pragmatic adventurers, you can punish good deeds. There is only problems if you announce one and make the other. If the plot says that you are the hero, being punished for making hero-like stuff will be very unpleasant.

However, there is an important point: punishing the character and punishing the player are two different things. You can punish the character while acknowledging that the player made the good choice.

Ex: You have a quest for a relic. You can either keep it, or give it back to the NPC. If you keep it, you will have super-powers. If you give it back, you will not have any reward. However, if you give it back, the NPC will no be a good guy protecting peoples around the world, and you will frequently hear about the people he is able to protect thanks to you. Mechanistically, you punished the character, because he no longer have super-power. However, without changing anything relevant to your universe, you've said to the player "it was the good choice".

[Pex]

Heart/mind is a false dichotomy. Emotions are part of rationality, despite much lore to the contrary. When we burn our hand on a stove and get angry that anger isn't irrational. It's a rational response to the damage and pain from the stove injury. It reinforces the learning experience.

If someone is mean to us and we get angry that is a rational response to being treated badly.

Emotions aren't some weird layer of fairyland like the Star Trek writers who wrote Spock typically presented it as. They're not insanity that has to be repressed.

However, it is true that they also must be controlled, balanced with logic. One memorable quote from a psychology book talked about the difference between someone who is mature emotionally and someone who isn't. Give the emotionally uncontrolled person a loaded gun while angry with someone and you're more likely to see that person get shot. Another easily understood dichotomy is the difference between someone who has untreated mania and that person when they're on their medication. Untreated, they are liable to act in a manner that seems irrational. It's not, though. It's simply the rationality of more basic impulses, less restrained by higher logic. Also, just because higher logic is a higher layer doesn't mean it's better. Sometimes the more "basic" impulses have things going for them and complex social etiquette can be a drawback.

Emotions aren't delusion. They are a primitive way our bodies help us to understand the world. Primitive but essential. We would act less rationally without them.

Another problem with your dichotomy is that the heart is an organ that pumps blood through the body, not one that has anything to do with one's cognition. I know you know that but it's really better to use accurate terminology. Inaccurate terminology is one of the easiest tools for spreading inaccurate beliefs.

It's not only about logic and emotions. It's also about selfishness (Mind) and sacrifice (Heart). The Objectivist values Mind because it is his to control and recognizes others' Mind as theirs. It claims Heart demands others also follow Heart. Not to do so is wrong so you must be made to care. Mind rejects its own Heart because it believes anything that does not contribute to your own happiness is wrong. It doesn't allow giving importance to another for anything.

[CantigThimble]

It's not only about logic and emotions. It's also about selfishness (Mind) and sacrifice (Heart). The Objectivist values Mind because it is his to control and recognizes others' Mind as theirs. It claims Heart demands others also follow Heart. Not to do so is wrong so you must be made to care. Mind rejects its own Heart because it believes anything that does not contribute to your own happiness is wrong. It doesn't allow giving importance to another for anything.

This is incomplete. It is also possible, and likely, for mind to recognize the value of heart. Most objectivists I know recognize the immense value of other people to their own happiness, and as a result they will do for others what some might consider a 'sacrifice', but they consider to be entirely worthwhile because they value their relationships to those people.

The objectivist orientation is to nest value of others within value of oneself, that is to say, valuing others is good only insofar as you are doing it because you value yourself. They reject the altruist idea that value of self should be nested within value of others (or value of 'group'), that is, you are only of value if you are sacrificing yourself for others.

Being an objectivist somewhat ironically made me act in more outwardly altruistic ways, aside from achiving a bare minimum level of comfort, doing things for others brings me far more happiness than doing things for myself.

[BW022]

Of course it entirely depends upon the campaign, players, story, and goals.

If you are playing with younger children... I'm going to keep the story pretty black-and-white. Probably with first-time players also, or at least until they are more familiar with being good in general.

If I'm playing high-fantasy, really short-term campaigns, or Organized Play events... I'm likely going to try keeping that consequences of actions fairly one-to-one. Help the villagers, get a reward. Do some heroic dead... get an action point.

However, in certain gritty fantasy settings, horror settings, politically heavy settings, and with longer term campaigns and experienced players... sure. Most truly heroic acts are those you do knowing that you'll be face consequences and doing it anyway. If you take a stand against your upper church clergy for not helping the poor, if you go against your lord's instructions and risk war with the orcs to save rescue a kidnapped child, if you give a magical item to the widow of the a slain town guard, etc. these are good acts for which you'll be "punished" for. However, in these cases... these are really sacrifices. They also have a chance that in the future, you might be rewarded or the act will (over the long term) turn out to be a net plus. Often, they simply lead to more roleplaying/adventure opportunities/challenges. Ok... you've started a war with the orcs... now how do you stop it? Ok... you've been kicked out of your church... do you expose their leaders and try to lead a revolt, form your own "sect", or spread your faith just on a personal level?

In most cases, players enjoy playing in such situations which is why more gritty campaign settings (or entire gaming systems) exist.

[JNAProductions]

To answer the thread title: Depends on the tone of the game.

In your average, heroic game, HELL NO. Good deeds should be rewarded, or at the very least not have bad consequences.

In a more gritty, darker game, maybe. Depends on the circumstances.

Overall, though, the main question is "Do you, the DM, want to encourage the players to do good?" If the answer to that is yes, then don't punish good deeds. If it's no, then maybe punish them.

Also, check with your players. If they want to do good, but keep getting punished, they might not be having fun anymore. Talk to them.

[Derpaligtr]

To answer the thread title: Depends on the tone of the game.

In your average, heroic game, HELL NO. Good deeds should be rewarded, or at the very least not have bad consequences.

In a more gritty, darker game, maybe. Depends on the circumstances.

Overall, though, the main question is "Do you, the DM, want to encourage the players to do good?" If the answer to that is yes, then don't punish good deeds. If it's no, then maybe punish them.

Also, check with your players. If they want to do good, but keep getting punished, they might not be having fun anymore. Talk to them.

Completely disagree.

In a heroic game, good still doesn't equal lawful.

Doing something good can lead to a punishment within our world and within many worlds of D&D.

Too many people mix up law/good/chaos/evil and then have bland worlds and even blander plots.

Doing something good is not always lawful. Doing something evil, sometimes is lawful. Sometimes doing something chaotic is good, sometimes it's evil. You can't say that good shouldn't have punishment as there is no hard rule saying good should be protected.

Rob from the rich and give to the poor? The mooks of the rich come back and attack that town.

Save a little girl from being hit by a soldier? The soldier arrests your character for interfering with police work. Fighting back? That's resisting arrest.

Use magic to purify water in an area that has been having problems? Now the mob boss/politician/whomever wants you to work for them in order to keep them safe and to forget about the town.

Save a princess without making a deal with her father? Well, you get a pat on the back and some money, but the ones that were contracted out aren't going to be happy... You did a good dead but now you have some people that wants your head.

When it boils down, punishment just means plot hook that the players caused and they have no one to blame but themselves. Especially when one is expecting a reward for doing good and then didn't get what they expected. Usually because they thought of things out of character and not in character.

Good isn't some plot shield, that's not part of the rules of the game. What's more, that's boring, even for a heroic game.

[cerin616]

This is going to depend heavily on the player. I have a tendency to reward and punish good and bad acts within the limits of reason. But sometimes a good act wont end up well for the player. Maybe sparing the bad guy made him come back even stronger.
I had a paladin in a campaign who looked at this as making the good deed even more impact though. "I know this is going to make our life more difficult, but that doesnt matter. what matters is that we do what is right."

Its things like that you can use to really challenge if your players are good, or if they are neutral and see good as an easy way to make a buck.


The acts also tend to impact a longer term reputation. You do good things often enough and word starts to get around. Good people are more likely to trust you because "they recognize the symbol you wear from a story they heard" or maybe that epic weapon in the shop is cheap/free because "one time my boy got caught by some bandits, and he told me about the heroes that saved him."

People in town are scared of you because you look similar to the group of bandits that ben saw from a hill. The guard keeps a close eye on you because reports from the next city over described similar people stealing from local shops. etc.

[Angelalex242]

Here's the thing. Mortals may 'punish' good deeds by being ungrateful bastards.

The gods of good, however, never forget a good deed. So when the Cleric of Lathander spares the bandit and the bandit later stabs him in the back, Lathander himself will see to it the Cleric doesn't die. Even if a Celestial has to personally show up.

[MaxWilson]

It depends. Do you want players to do good deeds?

Basically, here's the thing: reinforcement works. If a player does a thing in a campaign, and every time it ends badly, he will quickly come to realize this thing does not work in this campaign and stop doing it. It's the same way that adversarial DMing breeds resentful hyperparanoid players and hyper-railroading DMing breeds passive players. People don't like to beat their heads against a wall - because the wall will win every time.

Now, if most of the time doing good works but this specific instance doesn't due to something specific, that's a different matter. But if good deeds generally end badly, people will (largely unconsciously) come to the realization that this game is against you doing good deeds and stop doing it.

Related question: do you want players who do "good deeds" only out of expectation of (immediate?) external reward from the DM?

Do the players want to play characters with these motivations?

Is reinforcement by the DM the right kind of reinforcement?

The OP asked this question and got some responses. I've had bad things happen to my PCs because of good deeds and it was still a fun game, because my goal for playing that PC was still met ("explore what Murnig would do in situation XYZ"). Judging by thread responses, I'm not the only one. I would find it unpleasant if good deeds reliably led to bad outcomes ("give money to poor people and they always despise you for it" was the example given upthread), but I don't want reliably good outcomes either. I just want plausible outcomes. In real life, giving money to poor people sometimes makes them happy and lets them better themselves, sometimes makes them beg you for more in increasingly ungrateful ways, sometimes makes no real difference to their situation because they blow the money in unwise ways... you never know until you try it. I would get the most enjoyment out of a game where the game world had variety similar to real life.

There are some people who won't do good deeds without assurances of immediate tangible rewards, so yes, you can get more putatively "good deeds" by giving out quest rewards, as the comic linked by the OP sarcastically suggests. But they won't really be good deeds in any meaningful sense, and won't bring the same emotional satisfaction to the table. Don't do this unless you are content with an emotionally shallow game.

[Ganymede]

It is like the choice of slaughtering or sparing your foe. Showing mercy might create an ally, or it might create an ambush in the future. Finishing your foe off might stave off a future betrayal, or it might introduce complications later.

Choices have consequences. Consequences make for fun stories.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It is like the choice of slaughtering or sparing your foe. Showing mercy might create an ally, or it might create an ambush in the future. Finishing your foe off might stave off a future betrayal, or it might introduce complications later.

Choices have consequences. Consequences make for fun stories.

But to be meaningful, the consequences have to be meaningfully related (in predictable ways) to the action. Otherwise you're denying agency.

[Finieous]

My view is that my games happen in a universe with actual cosmic forces of Good. Good deeds thus tend to be rewarded, and Evil deeds get punished, or turns in on itself.

The Bandit the PCs released instead of murdered turns up later on when they are captured to help them escape. Word of their kindness and mercy spreads and they get help from quarters least expected.

If they murder someone, word of that gets out and people come looking for them, or treat them with cruelty in return.

There is a reason most players play CN or E PCs (or characters with good written on their sheets, but in name only, and are evil or ruthless bastards in actual play). It's because DMs all too often use gotcha moments (the released prisoner comes back to get them when they sleep, or the NPC they romance tries to kill them etc). Players eventually start taking a ruthless and selfish approach to everything and acting like emotionless pscyotic murder hobos.

Rewarding good deeds stops that from happening.

Quoted in full because the counterpoint is so interesting (to me). My theory is that many players tend to have a strong anti-authority streak, at least when they play D&D. Case in point: I've never seen as little murder-hoboing and as many selfless acts of good as I've seen in Midnight (https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Second-Fantasy-Flight/dp/1589942167) campaigns. That's a setting in which the whole premise is that good is (and has been, and will be) punished rather thoroughly. Because of that, I think, it's one in which murder-hoboing has little appeal.

[MaxWilson]

If you're not interested in the topic no one is forcing you to read it, let alone post anything.

To be fair, you did invite his (her?) response by quoting him (her?) and then writing a long post (rebuttal?).


Your use of the word should should be a clue.

Should means there is a choice. Should means that people choosing to do what they're supposed to do means they are choosing good behavior.

Even if you try to pair sacrificial altruism with fate there is a logic problem. Fate provides no choice so any sacrificial behavior no longer is impressive. That means there is no basis for doling out rewards. If you use sacrificial altruism on its own and argue that there is choice then you have to admit that any chosen good behavior is good. Helping an old lady cross a street involves typically very minor sacrifices but they are sacrifices. Time. Energy. Maybe she has bad breath. Maybe she's the mother of a paranoid and dangerous mob boss whose paranoia could spill over on you for just being near her. Maybe she'll be so overly demanding that you can't accommodate her wishes and her mob boss son will get angry with you. Maybe she'll distract you and you'll both get run over by a bus. The list goes on. The unknown involves risk. Unless you have precognition you don't know what will happen when you try to help that old lady.

The flip side, though, is the principle of reciprocity. That is the idea that people will help you when you need help if you help them. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it's not. (Many times, people will only behave according to this principle if they feel enough pressure from society.) There are also the various benefits, like a self-esteem boost for feeling helpful. There are many possible rewards, many of which are highly unlikely.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but you're coming on a bit strong on this thread. You're using specialized jargon and an aggressive tone which seems to suggest that other people should adopt your jargon and possibly your conclusions. But in this thread we're talking about preferences and moral values, which aren't subject to negotiation no matter how much of your own opinion you offer people.

I know you think you're doing a good deed by proselyting your opinions here, but frankly, I wind up tuning you out in the same way I tune out paranoid schizophrenics: it's too much work to figure out what they're talking about, and I already know I'm not going to wear the tinfoil hat they're urging me to wear (or whatever).

Just something for you to consider when you're writing a long reply... don't let me stop you from doing it anyway if that's what you feel like doing.

[Ganymede]

But to be meaningful, the consequences have to be meaningfully related (in predictable ways) to the action. Otherwise you're denying agency.

Well yeah. The consequences have to flow logically from the action.

The consequences don't always have to be predictable, though. The ripples of causality spread out in unusual ways; if you kill two NPCs but spare their child, the child might grow up to be Batman.

[Derpaligtr]

Here's the thing. Mortals may 'punish' good deeds by being ungrateful bastards.

The gods of good, however, never forget a good deed. So when the Cleric of Lathander spares the bandit and the bandit later stabs him in the back, Lathander himself will see to it the Cleric doesn't die. Even if a Celestial has to personally show up.

Ehh... The gods of good aren't always all that good (by our definition of good).

In many settings, slaughtering baby orcs is a good action as you are ridding the world of orcs. Allowing defenseless orcs to go free could land a cleric in hot water.

For the most part, the gods in D&D aren't actually "perfect beings". They are just really really really powerful beings who have their own positive and negative traits... They just get to choose what is considered "good" and "evil" and those don't always line up with what the real world says (because they are powerful fictional characters that have flaws).

[CantigThimble]

Quoted in full because the counterpoint is so interesting (to me). My theory is that many players tend to have a strong anti-authority streak, at least when they play D&D. Case in point: I've never seen as little murder-hoboing and as many selfless acts of good as I've seen in Midnight (https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Second-Fantasy-Flight/dp/1589942167) campaigns. That's a setting in which the whole premise is that good is (and has been, and will be) punished rather thoroughly. Because of that, I think, it's one in which murder-hoboing has little appeal.

That's a really interesting point I think. It might just be that many players tend towards playing chaos and in a cosmically good setting, good is law and chaos is evil.

[KorvinStarmast]

My perspective on the idea of a meaning of life is this: At what point does life stop being worth living? When you can't get good beer.
This is incomplete. So is Objectivism, last time I checked. :smallbiggrin: (Give Rand credit for trying, but ... OK, won't digress).

Here's the thing. Mortals may 'punish' good deeds by being ungrateful bastards. Which brings us full circle to the original idea that no good deed goes unpunished, I think. :smallwink:

[MaxWilson]

Anyway, my point is that good deeds leading to automatically being the right answer supposes that the evil solution always leads to the wrong answer, thus evil deeds must be punished. In such a world, where is the benefit in playing evil? If there is no inherent benefit in evil, why does not everyone just get along? The answer to that, in my opinion is because doing good is harder. It's not always the right way and it doesn't always pay out, besides if it did, it wouldn't feel rewarding.

Well, you could, for example, delay the reckoning. Give the evil guys enough rope to hang themselves with by allowing them lots of freedom (opposed by other people who choose to oppose evil), and then at the end of the day, heal all of the wounds caused by the evil guys, punish the evildoers who have continued in evilness (and show mercy to those who sickened of their own evil and began doing good), and give everyone as much happiness and responsibility as they are able to accept, given who they've shown themselves to be and how they deal with power.

At the end of the day you can still give Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer nice apartments with color TV and good food, but you know you can't give them responsibility over families or students or nations because they won't do the right things for them. At that point, both you (the ultimate authority) and they know that because they've shown it by their deeds--maybe you could have made that declaration sooner (without even ever putting Hitler in Germany in the first place) but there would have been an uneasy feeling of being judged for things that you never did, so instead you let them show everyone what they're really made of. The scope of their ultimate existence will be much smaller than the ultimate existence that, say, Michael Carpenter (fictional character from Dresden Files) or Gandhi would have, because Michael and Gandhi have shown that they will use power responsibly.

So anyway, you can make doing good worthwhile in the long run without disrupting the value of the test. Such an arrangement would not be unprecedented.

[strangebloke]

I think there's a big break here between punishing 'characters' and punishing 'players.'

If the party helps an orphanage and thereby attracts the attention of Sithorak, lord of evil, starting a whole new secret quest line that will bring your characters to the brink of insanity...

...that can be a reward for the players.

Challenges are fun and throwing roadblocks in the way of the players is a good thing. Roadblocks, adversity, all contribute to a sense of impending doom that just makes real rewards so much more sweet.

[Derpaligtr]

I think there's a big break here between punishing 'characters' and punishing 'players.'

If the party helps an orphanage and thereby attracts the attention of Sithorak, lord of evil, starting a whole new secret quest line that will bring your characters to the brink of insanity...

...that can be a reward for the players.

Challenges are fun and throwing roadblocks in the way of the players is a good thing. Roadblocks, adversity, all contribute to a sense of impending doom that just makes real rewards so much more sweet.

TBF, punishing players and punishing characters tend to be the same thing when done within the game. When you punish a character, you also tend to punish the player in some way...

If you don't give the character a shiny toy to play with, the player may feel cheated.

Now, out of world punishment is a different thing. Some things I've seen DMs do in order to punish just the player is...



Saying they can't come to the next session (their character is lost and won't be there)
Telling the player to bring food/snack for everyone or they won't get XP
Ignoring the player when they try to do anything or bring up something in character.


Pretty cringetastic but I've seen this happen.

I'm not a fan of punishing players, but I will plot hook the hell out of characters.

[strangebloke]

TBF, punishing players and punishing characters tend to be the same thing when done within the game. When you punish a character, you also tend to punish the player in some way...

If you don't give the character a shiny toy to play with, the player may feel cheated.

You're only punishing the players if that's your goal.

For example, one of my PCs got killed by an assassin. It was fair, the character had a chance to save themselves, but they used poor strategy and had bad rolls. The assassins were after them because of something good the party had done.

Seyetto the Sorcerer got 'punished' for his good action.

Lucy, Bob, and George the players were pretty shell-shocked, but it made them very determined to take down the assassin order. When they actually did take down the assassins (another character dying in the process) it was a huge moment of triumph.

[Finieous]

If you don't give the character a shiny toy to play with, the player may feel cheated.


Yet another reason not to run games for monkeys and toddlers!

[Contrast]

I feel many of the people in the thread have focused too much on real world philosophical dilemmas and not enough on the actual question at hand which was if it made for a better game.

On the one hand, whenever I play RPG computer games I find it hilarious when you get presented with moral choices as choosing the good option almost always gives you the best outcome (for both yourself and others), even if it appears it might be worse (a common thing might be that the 'evil' option will give you some more of the currency which is pointless because you're swimming in money while the 'good' option will result in you getting given rare items you can't otherwise get or other in game benefits further down the line).

This obviously begs the question of why exactly anyone would be evil...which might be something you'd want to consider in terms of how you're running your game and if you want to encourage your players to act a certain way.

Of course if you prefer your games to have more emphasis on the primacy of character led decision making then you're probably going to have to let unscrupulous characters (PCs and NPCs) take advantage of people and benefit.

It really depends on your table and the type of game you're trying to run.

[JackPhoenix]

If I was the DM in your camapaign I'd tend to fudge it so your good deed got you a reward instead of murdered, and your murderous deed got you in serious trouble and backfired.

I run games where there are forces of cosmic Good though, and cosmic Evil. These are actual (unbeknown to the PCs) forces at play. Ill do everything in my power to have evil deeds lead to negative consequences (not all the time of course) and ditto, will look for contrivances to rewards heroics and good deeds.

It serves a higher purpose other than just cosmic metaphyscis also. It stops murderhobism dead in its tracks or at the very least dissuades it, and it promotes a heroic game of high adventure and self sacrifice in the face of evil.

Dragonlance campaign world does this explicity too with similar metaphyscis. 'Evil turns in on itself.' It also works the same in Krynn the other way as well (too much Good is also bad - see the Kingpriest).

You know what? I wouldn't like that. Consequences should follow actions... my character got mauled by tiger and later killed by a ghoul because by distracting them from the others, I've became the only valid target. Now, it's arguable if it's truly a good deed if it's a part of combat tactics (the character in question could take the hit too, and just attacking propably would've been more effective, so... hard to say), but if you tackle a ghoul, and the ghoul gets a lucky crit and rips your throat out, it's just how things go. I wouldn't be happy about random divine intervention saving my hide, because it lessens the impact of the sacrifice, makes me trust the GM less (I don't like fudging either for or against the players, and I roll openly so everyone can see what's going on... and I can tell you, in my latest game, when the group was at their last hit points, I actually hesitated before each attack roll, because I knew any hit could lead to TPK or another character death, but fair's fair), and worse, if evil deeds regularly lead to negative results not necessarily directly related to them, I would question why it isn't a known fact of the world, and why evil still happens, if they're punished all, or most of the time.

If I play evil character, I'm not playing stupid evil character, and I don't murder random villagers for "teh evulz" (unless we're playing a band of orcish raiders, or something), so I'll make pretty dam sure my evil deeds can't be linked to me. If the GM contrives a way to punish me for it anyway, regardless of any actual logic, I'd propably leave the game.

Playstyle differences, I guess. My group have mature players (ahem... mostly), and the only problem with murderhoboism was that the players don't resort to it even when it is appropriate. Heh.

[Derpaligtr]

Yet another reason not to run games for monkeys and toddlers!

2e and 3e was probably the worst, back then people took more stock on random treasure tables and I saw a 35 year old man throw his dice and leave the game when the magic weapon was an hammer instead of a long sword.

[Pex]

2e and 3e was probably the worst, back then people took more stock on random treasure tables and I saw a 35 year old man throw his dice and leave the game when the magic weapon was an hammer instead of a long sword.

Context matters. How many opportunities has it been for there to be a magic long sword but there weren't any? No magic item exists without the DM's permission, so I would question a DM who purposely denies a player a magic long sword after a subjective lots of number of opportunities to have done so when using a long sword is that player character's shtick.

[DRD1812]

If you always punish good deeds, you end up in a cross between Star Trek's Mirror Universe, a Kafka-esque nightmare, and one of those horror stories where the whole universe conspire to horrifically torture some people and let their tormentors win for no reason, with a side dish of global dystopia.

If you always reward good deeds and if evil is always punished immediately and tangibly, you end up in a tension-less tooth-rotting-saccharine world where there can be no conflict or adventure because anything bad that happens will get solved by itself.

I think this is the best explanation of the conundrum I've seen in this thread. I think that, if you game for any length of time, "good always gets the good ending" and "evil always destroys itself." Varying up that formula brings variety and spontaneity to a game, and feels somehow more true to life than the alternative.

[Sigreid]

One of the stranger (to me) ideas that I've seen pop up on this forum is that if the party commits a crime then CSI Forgotten Realms will be dispatched. High level casters will use powerful magics to find the culprit. And mighty heroes will be dispatched to bring them to justice.

IMO, if the party destroys and robs a caravan far from civilization, or just doesnt leave any witnesses, they should probably get away with it. If a witness escaped or they start hitting a lot of caravans, the merchant, guild or local lord may hunt them or place a bounty. One though, with no witnesses? Well, these things happen and the risk of losing the occasional caravan is part of the cost of doing business.

On the other hand, getting a reputation for being a stand up guy will lead to more people standing up for you or simply choosing to deal fairly with you instead of gouging you.

[Segev]

One of the stranger (to me) ideas that I've seen pop up on this forum is that if the party commits a crime then CSI Forgotten Realms will be dispatched. High level casters will use powerful magics to find the culprit. And mighty heroes will be dispatched to bring them to justice.

IMO, if the party destroys and robs a caravan far from civilization, or just doesnt leave any witnesses, they should probably get away with it. If a witness escaped or they start hitting a lot of caravans, the merchant, guild or local lord may hunt them or place a bounty. One though, with no witnesses? Well, these things happen and the risk of losing the occasional caravan is part of the cost of doing business.

On the other hand, getting a reputation for being a stand up guy will lead to more people standing up for you or simply choosing to deal fairly with you instead of gouging you.

This is good advice. Unfortunately, a lot of writers, GMs, and even readers/players tend to assume that the world revolves around the main characters. Whether for good or for ill. The PCs do something wrong? They'll either get away scott free because the world is no match for their genius, or they'll be hounded by the full resources of every enforcement agency the world has. The PCs do a good deed? It will be twisted by the worst of villains, by hook, crook, or happenstance, or it will be lauded to the highest of heavens. It's never just a good deed that makes one person like them more.

Everybody and everything cares about what the PCs do. They never can hide in obscurity, even though many great achievements happen because of that ability. The ability to leave things unnoticed.

Remember that the PCs can be important without having to be the biggest thing anybody cares about.

[Unoriginal]

One of the stranger (to me) ideas that I've seen pop up on this forum is that if the party commits a crime then CSI Forgotten Realms will be dispatched. High level casters will use powerful magics to find the culprit. And mighty heroes will be dispatched to bring them to justice.

IMO, if the party destroys and robs a caravan far from civilization, or just doesnt leave any witnesses, they should probably get away with it. If a witness escaped or they start hitting a lot of caravans, the merchant, guild or local lord may hunt them or place a bounty. One though, with no witnesses? Well, these things happen and the risk of losing the occasional caravan is part of the cost of doing business.

On the other hand, getting a reputation for being a stand up guy will lead to more people standing up for you or simply choosing to deal fairly with you instead of gouging you.

Do enough bad deeds, and YOU are the bad guys people hire adventurers to take care of.

Sure, do it once with no witness, in a lawless area, and you'll probably get away with it.

But the more you are a problem, the more people will want to solve this problem. And I've never seen adventurers, good or evil, who would just quit after winning once.

There is also a cost/reward element as well as a means/opportunities one. If you steal 1000 gold coins and kill 20 people from a caravan, even if it's only once and away from a town, it's not outlandish to have someone spend 100 gp to try and get the gold back/stop the thing that slaughtered 20 people/figure out what happened.

Point is, the response should be proportional to the deed. Accounting for emotions, too. If you kill a Paladin's merchant brother, when they both loved their family dearly, you're going to be in more troubles than if you rob and kill an independent small-time smuggler who was hated by everyone.


This is good advice. Unfortunately, a lot of writers, GMs, and even readers/players tend to assume that the world revolves around the main characters. Whether for good or for ill. The PCs do something wrong? They'll either get away scott free because the world is no match for their genius, or they'll be hounded by the full resources of every enforcement agency the world has. The PCs do a good deed? It will be twisted by the worst of villains, by hook, crook, or happenstance, or it will be lauded to the highest of heavens. It's never just a good deed that makes one person like them more.

Everybody and everything cares about what the PCs do. They never can hide in obscurity, even though many great achievements happen because of that ability. The ability to leave things unnoticed.

Remember that the PCs can be important without having to be the biggest thing anybody cares about.

This is true as well.

Then again, being utterly outraged at the first sign that a NPC would dare not respect them is often a symptom of trouble-causing players.

[Nifft]

If you always punish good deeds, you end up in a cross between Star Trek's Mirror Universe, a Kafka-esque nightmare, and one of those horror stories where the whole universe conspire to horrifically torture some people and let their tormentors win for no reason, with a side dish of global dystopia.

If you always reward good deeds and if evil is always punished immediately and tangibly, you end up in a tension-less tooth-rotting-saccharine world where there can be no conflict or adventure because anything bad that happens will get solved by itself.

Yeah, if the universe always bends consequences to perfectly reward or punish, then you're not playing a game with any verisimilitude.

IMHO the best games are the ones where the DM relentlessly applies plausible consequences to player actions.

If that means sometimes getting away with criminal activity, that's perfectly fine.

If that means doing the right thing isn't always optimal, that's fine too.


To me it's less about "punishing good deeds" and more about presenting a world with plausible consequences, so the players can make educated judgments about the risks that various activities entail.

Not all good deeds will be rewarded, but some will, especially if the deeds are fairly represented and widely known -- unless of course your "good deed" is offensive to someone very powerful. If you want to be a Robin Hood type rebel, it might be wise to conceal your good deeds.

Not all wicked deeds will be punished, but some will, especially if you transgress against the powerful.

[Sigreid]

Do enough bad deeds, and YOU are the bad guys people hire adventurers to take care of.

Sure, do it once with no witness, in a lawless area, and you'll probably get away with it.

But the more you are a problem, the more people will want to solve this problem. And I've never seen adventurers, good or evil, who would just quit after winning once.

There is also a cost/reward element as well as a means/opportunities one. If you steal 1000 gold coins and kill 20 people from a caravan, even if it's only once and away from a town, it's not outlandish to have someone spend 100 gp to try and get the gold back/stop the thing that slaughtered 20 people/figure out what happened.

Point is, the response should be proportional to the deed. Accounting for emotions, too. If you kill a Paladin's merchant brother, when they both loved their family dearly, you're going to be in more troubles than if you rob and kill an independent small-time smuggler who was hated by everyone.



This is true as well.

Then again, being utterly outraged at the first sign that a NPC would dare not respect them is often a symptom of trouble-causing players.

We seem to be in agreement, actually. It's even realistic. In our world criminals get caught for either bragging about their exploits or doing it enough times for people to catch on. And yes, a personal vendetta can arise. It's more the idea that every caravan race brings 18th level clerics and wizards with divination magic and a high level death squad.

[Maxilian]

No and no, just simply have the world react, sometimes reaction to good actions come with its cons, and sometimes evil things come with its pros, just depends on the case.

(I mean i had a group of players work with a Paladin to find the killer of its brother, but the killer of its brother was the PC group, but the PC didnt know that the guy the killed 3 session before was the paladin's brother, as the guy was kind of an ass too -there's always that guy in the family-)