Serving evil deities/patron in DND and what means to be good.

[Entessa]

I have been playing for a very long time dnd, I would say 10 years more or less. My DM has had in the past a general fixation that evil patrons/deity you are serving will ultimately always **** you up.

I think it's a kinda linear thought, too linear, but I'm totally on the opposite site of the spectrum - I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag.

The fixation that evil always punishes other evil makes me nowadays be very wary whenever any "evil" offer, or offer that comes from "evil" rise up. In the end, failing to comply with the "good" journey objectives is going to send you into a pit of despair - you should rely on good, but never on evil.

And these days my DM has decided that I now have an evil Patron, whom as a player I don't want to willingly serve because I know the way he thinks. Should have gone for a mere fighter class, shouldn't I?

I don't even know how other DM acts for these kind of things. Oh well.

[KorvinStarmast]

I have been playing for a very long time dnd, I would say 10 years more or less. My DM has had in the past a general fixation that evil patrons/deity you are serving will ultimately always **** you up. That would be due to their being Evil. The nature of evil is not generally benevolent. That's kind of embedded in the meaning of the word.

I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag. Why?


The fixation that evil always punishes other evil makes me nowadays be very wary whenever any "evil" offer, or offer that comes from "evil" rise up. In the end, failing to comply with the "good" journey objectives is going to send you into a pit of despair - you should rely on good, but never on evil. You may find that across a wide variety of cultural story telling traditions, doing good is the underlying message.

And these days my DM has decided that I now have an evil Patron, whom as a player I don't want to willingly serve because I know the way he thinks. Should have gone for a mere fighter class, shouldn't I?
That's up to you. I suggest you work with your DM on the future of your participation. The DM usually runs the "not a PC" parts of the game. If you don't find how the DM runs a patron to your liking I suggest you take a class that doesn't have a patron. Fighter? Sure. Ranger? Why not. Druid? Should work out fine. Rogue? Hard to go wrong.

I don't even know how other DM acts for these kind of things. Oh well. It depends. I work with my players. Not sure what other DMs do.

[Satinavian]

I think it's a kinda linear thought, too linear, but I'm totally on the opposite site of the spectrum - I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag. Neither good nor evil should be automatically stupid because of alignment.

Of course evil can enter mutually beneficial agreements and keep them.

The fixation that evil always punishes other evil makes me nowadays be very wary whenever any "evil" offer, or offer that comes from "evil" rise up. In the end, failing to comply with the "good" journey objectives is going to send you into a pit of despair - you should rely on good, but never on evil.Spunds like good is the only viable choice. But if there is only one option, there is not much of a choice, is there ?

And these days my DM has decided that I now have an evil Patron, whom as a player I don't want to willingly serve because I know the way he thinks. Should have gone for a mere fighter class, shouldn't I?I don't know. Shouldn't players decide the patron ? That one is a character build choice iirc.

[LibraryOgre]

Evil, when you get down to it, is self-serving. It's more or less the essence of evil... taking care of yourself and your associations (people you care for, possessions, etc), regardless of the expense to others.

Now, this does not mean an evil master will always screw over their pawns... but they will if the cost/benefit analysis says they should, and if their ethics say they could (for chaotics, this second is almost always "yes"; LE might have some qualms, unless they have an out). But evil is evil... you gotta be worth keeping, or you're, at best, a drag.

[Batcathat]

Why?

I don't know about the OP's reasoning but personally I prefer if the less moral option has greater rewards a lot of the time. Because otherwise... well, why would anyone choose it? That doesn't mean the good guys should suffer for every move they make, but it shouldn't mean the opposite either.

[KorvinStarmast]

I don't know about the OP's reasoning but personally I prefer if the less moral option has greater rewards a lot of the time. Because otherwise... well, why would anyone choose it? That doesn't mean the good guys should suffer for every move they make, but it shouldn't mean the opposite either.
Why do you prefer to reward evil? (Maybe we are not using the term "reward" in the same sense :smallconfused: ).

[Batcathat]

Why do you prefer to reward evil? (Maybe we are not using the term "reward" in the same sense :smallconfused: ).

Didn't I just explain that? Because if a character has to choose between Good Option A and Evil Option B and the good option has a greater reward (whether a literal reward or in some other fashion), why would the character – why would anyone – ever not choose the good option? People typically don't do something immoral just because, they do it because they think it will benefit them more than the alternative.

[KorvinStarmast]

Didn't I just explain that? Because if a character has to choose between Good Option A and Evil Option B and the good option has a greater reward (whether a literal reward or in some other fashion), why would the character – why would anyone – ever not choose the good option? People typically don't do something immoral just because, they do it because they think it will benefit them more than the alternative.
Are you referring to a material reward, or something more subjective? :smallconfused: (That's where I am thinking that we may not be using the term 'reward' in the same sense here, but I think I am catching your drift).

[Theoboldi]

Didn't I just explain that? Because if a character has to choose between Good Option A and Evil Option B and the good option has a greater reward (whether a literal reward or in some other fashion), why would the character – why would anyone – ever not choose the good option? People typically don't do something immoral just because, they do it because they think it will benefit them more than the alternative.

Or they may be petty. Or cruel. Or selfish to the point of self-destructiveness. Or prejudiced. Or they may believe that acting in a 'good' fashion will automatically disadvantage them. They may see it as a weakness. As something dishonest. Maybe they come from an enviroment where any sign of goodness was punished by their peers. There's more to making choices than just the immediate cost and benefit of a single choice, and more to people than cold logic.

[MoiMagnus]

I don't even know how other DM acts for these kind of things. Oh well.

My GM has a short list of evil Patrons that are well known to be trustworthy, and greatly prosper due to their trustworthiness (and work a lot on their image to make sure that peoples know they are trustworthy). His version of Asmodeus is at the top of this list.

Note that "trustworthy" doesn't mean "not a jerk". They will make sure to get the most out of you, even if that require secretly granting more powers to your foes so that you come begging to them for even more power at a greater cost (which they will defend as "business is business, we sell weapons to everyone able to buy" if discovered). But they're clever enough to keep you content as long as you're a powerful and reliable tool in their toolbox. They won't betray you "just for the fun" or when you slightly inconvenient, but they have multiple plans ready if you ever think you can dethrone them.

A good number of our campaigns end in the half-victory of "well, we won and saved the day, but in exchange we also helped Asmodeus/... to increase its influence, which will screw a lot of other peoples latter".

Oh, and obviously, collaborating with Evil Patrons/Gods, come with a good number of problems from Good aligned entities and their servants.

[Chauncymancer]

I don't know about the OP's reasoning but personally I prefer if the less moral option has greater rewards a lot of the time. Because otherwise... well, why would anyone choose it? That doesn't mean the good guys should suffer for every move they make, but it shouldn't mean the opposite either.

The majority of evil people frankly do not actually make the choice that is in their personal best interest. They make the choice that doesn't involve worrying about anybody else's best interest. Which means leaving a bunch of synergy on the table, but who cares?

[Batcathat]

Are you referring to a material reward, or something more subjective? :smallconfused: (That's where I am thinking that we may not be using the term 'reward' in the same sense here, but I think I am catching your drift).

Could be either. My point is that I find it more realistic when people commit immoral deeds out of some real or perceived benefit and I'm annoyed by fiction where the world itself seems to bend over backwards to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked until only the most moustache-twirling, cartoonish villainy remains (as well as some rather boring heroes. "Good" isn't very impressive if it never costs anything). It's a matter of taste, of course.


Or they may be petty. Or cruel. Or selfish to the point of self-destructiveness. Or prejudiced. Or they may believe that acting in a 'good' fashion will automatically disadvantage them. They may see it as a weakness. As something dishonest. Maybe they come from an enviroment where any sign of goodness was punished by their peers. There's more to making choices than just the immediate cost and benefit of a single choice, and more to people than cold logic.

Sure, people are anything but completely logical. I maintain that the vast majority of immoral deeds – from a thug robbing someone to an emperor ordering war crimes to a sorcerer sacrificing virgins – do so for some sort of perceived benefit.

[Entessa]

That would be due to their being Evil. The nature of evil is not generally benevolent. That's kind of embedded in the meaning of the word.
Why?
You may find that across a wide variety of cultural story telling traditions, doing good is the underlying message.
That's up to you. I suggest you work with your DM on the future of your participation. The DM usually runs the "not a PC" parts of the game. If you don't find how the DM runs a patron to your liking I suggest you take a class that doesn't have a patron. Fighter? Sure. Ranger? Why not. Druid? Should work out fine. Rogue? Hard to go wrong.
It depends. I work with my players. Not sure what other DMs do.

I'm sorry but that's not being evil, that's being cartoonishly evil. Evil will not try to **** you up if you are a good ally, on the other hand it would likely try to preserve you and persuade you that helping evil is the best way to survive. Of course, if evil could achieve an even greater result, it would try to **** you up. But it also depends on the type of relationship you have towards your "partners".

This is not a matter of a message.


Of course evil can enter mutually beneficial agreements and keep them.

Thanks, at least someone else got what I meant to say!



Didn't I just explain that? Because if a character has to choose between Good Option A and Evil Option B and the good option has a greater reward (whether a literal reward or in some other fashion), why would the character – why would anyone – ever not choose the good option? People typically don't do something immoral just because, they do it because they think it will benefit them more than the alternative.

That's exactly my personal issue with the way Evil is portrayed. Evil is convenient and should be the best course of action to profit over everything else. While it seems that the message that is conveyed nowadays is that "good profits everyone including you"! "evil profits only who evil orders". That's not the essence of evil!


Edit 1:


The majority of evil people frankly do not actually make the choice that is in their personal best interest. They make the choice that doesn't involve worrying about anybody else's best interest. Which means leaving a bunch of synergy on the table, but who cares?

Issue is when DM match personal best interest with anybody else best interest. So all the times where good becomes prevalent over everything else.

edit 2:


My GM has a short list of evil Patrons that are well known to be trustworthy, and greatly prosper due to their trustworthiness (and work a lot on their image to make sure that peoples know they are trustworthy). His version of Asmodeus is at the top of this list.

Note that "trustworthy" doesn't mean "not a jerk". They will make sure to get the most out of you, even if that require secretly granting more powers to your foes so that you come begging to them for even more power at a greater cost (which they will defend as "business is business, we sell weapons to everyone able to buy" if discovered). But they're clever enough to keep you content as long as you're a powerful and reliable tool in their toolbox. They won't betray you "just for the fun" or when you slightly inconvenient, but they have multiple plans ready if you ever think you can dethrone them.

A good number of our campaigns end in the half-victory of "well, we won and saved the day, but in exchange we also helped Asmodeus/... to increase its influence, which will screw a lot of other peoples latter".

Oh, and obviously, collaborating with Evil Patrons/Gods, come with a good number of problems from Good aligned entities and their servants.

Hope my DM will think the same. Hopefully.

[Slipjig]

I'd agree with the sentiment that Evil should sometimes be more rewarding than Good, because temptation makes for interesting storylines. People don't go Evil for the lulz (or at least interesting ones don't). They adopt ruthless behaviors and attitudes because it's the best way to get what they want/need.

At the same time, it makes no sense for an Evil patron to screw over effective operatives just because they are Evil (I really hated the "Johnson will ALWAYS screw you" thing in Shadowrun). Effective operatives are a valuable asset. Now, he MAY sacrifice them if he genuinely stands to benefit, but he probably won't do it, say, just to avoid paying them after the mission is done. Even if you are openly self-interested and ruthless, there's a real value in having people know that you pay on time and stick to the deal once it's struck.

I think Lord Vetinari from Discworld is a pretty solid example. He's ruthless enough that he's probably Evil by DnD morality standards, but he's an effective ruler who keeps his city operating and doesn't screw people unless there is a benefit in it.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm sorry but that's not being evil, that's being cartoonishly evil.
Adding an adverb changes nothing. I am glad that you are getting responses that satisfy you. Next time, maybe scrub the OP a bit to clarify your meaning.

[Mechalich]

Evil is often more rewarding (in a material sense) in the short-term. Cheating someone in a trade, for example, is often going to be more immediately profitable than treating them fairly but is likely to preclude future business. Over time, this tends to produce breakdowns, as business that operate outside a set of legal and economic norms acquire huge inefficiencies due to no one being able to assume anyone else in the trade is acting in good faith (for an excellent example of this in action, watch The Wire). In more violent examples, murder is often a quick and effective way to make a problem go away, when said problem is another person, but the knock-on effects tend to come back hard.

In D&D this is even more so, since life is basically a sorting test. Being good means 10,000 years of life in your preferred utopia, while being evil means 10,000 years of horrible torture. Evil alignment is therefore the ultimate delayed gratification failure - though many evil individuals of power are aware of this and work very hard to evade their ultimate fate via various schemes of immortality.

This also means that evil gods are more or less mandated to screw over their worshippers. While a very small number of chosen supporters may acquire favored positions of authority in the domains of their evil divine patrons, almost everyone else is doomed to be 'rewarded' for their fervent support with the aforementioned 10,000 years of torture. Many evil deities go to extreme lengths to control their supporting worshippers as a result. Drow society is so monstrous in no small part because it must be that way in order for Lolth to keep it from realizing that any other option exists and in order to corrupt all drow from an extremely young age so that they drop past the moral event horizon before they even realize they have a choice otherwise.

[JNAProductions]

Adding an adverb changes nothing. I am glad that you are getting responses that satisfy you. Next time, maybe scrub the OP a bit to clarify your meaning.

It changes plenty.

An evil person would be perfectly willing to kill you if it benefited them. They may even do it for personal enjoyment if they can do so without repercussions.

But a cartoonishly evil person would act in cruel ways even when it doesn't make sense. They'll kick puppies in front of the orphanage they just lit on fire-why? Because they're evil! They will then shortly be killed by the guards, or escape and never be able to show their face for dozens of miles around lest they be killed on sight.

You're fine to have a very black-and-white, do good get good world in your games. I see the appeal-but that's not the ONLY way to play or run your settings.

[NichG]

Serving any patron is an exchange of potential agency for specific power and impact now. It's a beneficial deal if you couldn't realize that agency without the patron anyhow, and if what the patron wants is generally aligned with what you want. But serving anything risks coming to a line where you're more valuable to that thing dead or spent or discarded, rather than sustained. So from a survival/not getting screwed over perspective, you always want to maintain the situation where your continued support is essential to the success of your patron. If you can't be indispensable, you might be spent. Good is less likely to do that in an overtly hostile fashion, but expectations of self-sacrifice can be a thing in some cases. Definitely don't follow Evil into tipping point situations (ascension to godhood/ultimate power for your patron, destruction of all their enemies, revival of their ancient allies, etc) without having some kind of plan about how you're going to betray them or survive them betraying you. If you're going to follow Evil, better to do it walking into some kind of bureaucratically tangled endgame where they're still going to need generals and captains and ministers and whatnot to manage their winnings after they win.

[Saintheart]

Didn't I just explain that? Because if a character has to choose between Good Option A and Evil Option B and the good option has a greater reward (whether a literal reward or in some other fashion), why would the character – why would anyone – ever not choose the good option? People typically don't do something immoral just because, they do it because they think it will benefit them more than the alternative.

Because typically the analysis between shall I do good or evil is not single-factored. The cost of one option or the other is an inescapable factor, and delay in gratification a large factor. Without factoring those things in you've basically recreated Pascal's Wager.

Get 10 million dollars if you perform a Good act, but you have to lose a leg. Without anaesthetic. Or get 1 million dollars if you perform an Evil act, and don't have to lose anything. Which one do you rationally choose?

This is the line that Star Wars Dark Side vs. Light Side tries to go with: Dark Side doesn't grant more power but is easier, quicker, and more seductive. It promises power and/or pleasure for less cost in time, effort, self-awareness and self-mastery.

The different aspects of evil are "meant", be it ever so rough or not, to be reflected in the three flavours: Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic. The general rule of thumb being that Lawful Evil is out to uphold an evil system which they profit from, Neutral Evil is out for themselves without regard for a system or being attached to any 'principle' of mayhem, and Chaotic Evil is evil in the sense of out to destroy both good and order.

[RandomPeasant]

Definitions like "Evil is self-serving" are appealing, but they don't really work out. The musician who spends his time having sex, doing drugs, and playing rock and roll is probably pretty self-serving, but calling that guy capital-E Evil is a stretch. Conversely, the empire that conquers a country to "civilize" them is clearly recognizable as Evil, but they are following a mandate that is nominally benevolent. Evil is a result of the consequences of your actions, not your personal motivations.


Being good means 10,000 years of life in your preferred utopia, while being evil means 10,000 years of horrible torture.

But it also means that you are pro horrible torture. The fact that the servants of the god of torture go to the torture plane when they die isn't a punishment, it's the thing they want. They're in it for the torture, otherwise they wouldn't have worshiped the torture god. An eternity of being tied of and beaten with whips isn't my cup of tea, but if you're a masochist it's a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around on a cloud playing a harp.

[Saintheart]

Evil is a result of the consequences of your actions, not your personal motivations.

And there we have the irreconcilable issue at the heart of alignments in D&D (as the game, not as the wider moral concept): is it what you intended, or what you did, that determines alignment?

I don't know if fifth edition in D&D changed the wording, but third's statement about Good vs. Evil is still online:


Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

Being good or evil can be a conscious choice. For most people, though, being good or evil is an attitude that one recognizes but does not choose. Being neutral on the good-evil axis usually represents a lack of commitment one way or the other, but for some it represents a positive commitment to a balanced view. While acknowledging that good and evil are objective states, not just opinions, these folk maintain that a balance between the two is the proper place for people, or at least for them.

Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral rather than good or evil. Even deadly vipers and tigers that eat people are neutral because they lack the capacity for morally right or wrong behavior.


... which unfortunately has a bit of a bet both ways because it mixes intents and actions for the purposes of determining what your alignment is or should be.

[Mechalich]

But it also means that you are pro horrible torture. The fact that the servants of the god of torture go to the torture plane when they die isn't a punishment, it's the thing they want. They're in it for the torture, otherwise they wouldn't have worshiped the torture god. An eternity of being tied of and beaten with whips isn't my cup of tea, but if you're a masochist it's a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around on a cloud playing a harp.

Not exactly. In the D&D afterlife the soul goes to a version of reality that behaves according to the way the soul believes reality should work. If that person is devoted to a specific deity they go to that deity's specific pocket reality. If not they go to the appropriate plane that matches their alignment. Either away, upon arrival the local powers that be decide what happens to said soul. If you worship the torture god, and the torture god believes in a universe of endless suffering for all, you're going to suffer, and suffer hard, and something as simple as physical masochism isn't going to be a sufficient barrier to divine creativity.

The thing about evil people, as conceptualized in D&D, is that they believe they'll come out on top in these worlds that confirm to their evil ideals, that they'll be one of those who'll 'rule in hell.' And, in fact, there is an infinitesimally small chance this actually happens. Souls converted into larvae, lemures, or manes can gradually ascend through various fiendish hierarchies and potentially even achieve godhood after many millennia. It's vanishingly unlikely, of course, and even the road to success is going to be paved with considerable suffering - ex. the transformation into a higher rank of Baatezu involves a period of prolonged specialized torment - but it is possible and evil souls latch onto this. It's at the fundamental core of 'screw you guys, I've got mine.' The evil aligned believe they'll be one of those who'll get theirs, not one of the screwed, and the fact that the chances are 1 in 100000000000 doesn't penetrate.

[Lord Raziere]

I think it's a kinda linear thought, too linear, but I'm totally on the opposite site of the spectrum - I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag.


The problem of such a mindset is that it conflicts with the very basic human principle or practice of reciprocity.

Say you do a minor favor for someone else simply to help them out with no thought of reward. common sentiments expressed in return are things like "thank you, I'm in your debt" or "how can I make it up to you?" and such and so on. indeed much of society and adventuring is founded on this principle. the adventurers slay some beastie for a town or lord and the lord is "thanks that beast giving us trouble, for saving our lives have a lot of gold for your services".

when something is good is done for someone, a natural response is to give back in exchange for it being done. this isn't good or evil, it is simply naturally recognizing that they've benefited from another's help and thus the other person deserves to benefit as well, otherwise the person could feel slighted for their efforts going unrecognized and unrewarded.

the difference is that often between evil, the exchange is reduced and focused down to its materialistic aspect with one side trying to get as much out of the one they helped and the side helped trying to be as cheap as possible with paying them back. it is of course possible that a truly ungrateful evil being could deny a reward or payment entirely- but that is generally not a winning strategy, no person is truly disconnected from the world and there is a difference between evil and stupidity. thus the relationship becomes highly focused on the materialistic exchange that occurs being honored to the letter in such relationships, with bad results occurring if it isn't.

while a good adventurer might refuse a reward, their stomach will beg to differ. they must exchange eventually, for no person is truly disconnected from the world, and good people can instead use the opportunity of exchange to seek meaning and bonds beyond the mere materialistic aspect of such a thing. often a good person can accept a reward, but also be happy that they helped others as well, and that while money is needed, it can be secondary to the good will of helping others, and due to the principle of reciprocity, recognize the good will of someone helping you in return. it is not a bad thing to recognize that sometimes your the person in need of help and thus need something from someone else. the materialistic exchange in such good relationships is a starting point- but can grow beyond it and become greater, and in some situations the materialistic part of the exchange becomes unneeded, but that doesn't mean they stop exchanging with or rewarding each other.

[Batcathat]

Because typically the analysis between shall I do good or evil is not single-factored. The cost of one option or the other is an inescapable factor, and delay in gratification a large factor. Without factoring those things in you've basically recreated Pascal's Wager.

Sure, it's rarely as clear cut as in my example, but other factors doesn't really change the point. If people are expected to pick the less moral option, there should be benefits to it. I'm not saying it always have to be a completely rational choice (it rarely is), but there should be a reason, otherwise you're likely to end up with the "Mohaha! I'm so EVIL!" type of character.

[NichG]

Sure, it's rarely as clear cut as in my example, but other factors doesn't really change the point. If people are expected to pick the less moral option, there should be benefits to it. I'm not saying it always have to be a completely rational choice (it rarely is), but there should be a reason, otherwise you'll likely to end up with the "Mohaha! I'm so EVIL!" type of character.

The benefits don't have to be absolute though, they can be relative to what one character wants or is willing to trade versus what another wants or is willing to trade. The risks also don't have to be the same for all characters who partake.

You've got a guy whose family was executed by a tyrant and he wants revenge on the tyrant's family. Evil deity might say 'you're doing my work anyhow, do it in my name and I'll give you powers that help you be even more creatively cruel with that revenge plot of yours', good deity says 'I won't help you do that, but my priests can offer therapy'.

Totally different situation if the character is, say, trying to find a way to resettle their village displaced by a natural disaster.

A skilled yesman who can become indispensable or amusing is going to be less at risk serving an evil king and profit more than someone who just expects to lean on the king's sense of honor to be rewarded appropriately. Someone addicted to bloodsport is likely going to get a bad deal trying to serve the god of peace. The worst risk/reward combos are when people take a deal because a deal was offered, without consideration of that deal as part of a larger ongoing relationship.

Both good and evil patrons thus represent different challenges, and neither needs to intrinsically give a strictly better reward than the other, because some characters will be good at keeping the evil god amused enough that they're kept around, while others will be good at navigating moral quandaries or being self-sacrificing without being self-destructive.

[Vahnavoi]

That's exactly my personal issue with the way Evil is portrayed. Evil is convenient and should be the best course of action to profit over everything else. While it seems that the message that is conveyed nowadays is that "good profits everyone including you"! "evil profits only who evil orders". That's not the essence of evil!

This is the issue right here: you are wrong. That is the essence of evil in both D&D and the real moral philosophy it borrows from.

You may have heard some variation of the sentiment "Greatest good for the greatest number". In 1st edition AD&D, that's included in the definition of Lawful Good alignment. If you know where that sentiment comes from, it immediately aligns the moral character of the game with particular brand of ethics: utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is a system of consequentialist morality: what makes a thing good is good outcomes. All pro-social things that go to making a Lawful civilization, such as honor, reprocity, altruism etc. are justified through the idea of mutual benefit.

The opposite of that, then, is "Least good for the smallest number" - the pinnacle of that being Chaotic Evil, which promotes the individual self through the suffering of all others.

As a corollary, it's not that being good profits everyone - that's slightly backwards. The correct formulation is that things which profit everyone are Good. Things that don't profit everyone are failing to be Good to lesser or greater degree, while things that purposefully only profit select few at the expense of others are Evil. If your patron god isn't acting to detriment of someone, there's no grounds for calling them Evil.

As with most philosophies, utilitarianism involves biting the bullet, that is, accepting conclusions that feel wrong despite unambiguously logically following. As noted in AD&D books, when applied in a fantastic world with gods and demons, it does not support pacifism or other wishy-washy live-and-let-live attitudes derived from a secular world without such elements. Killing babies and repentant criminals is Lawful and Good if there is a Good afterlife for them to go into, waging war against and committing cultural genocide against orcs, drows etc. is Good because those creatures are xenophobes and egoist-darwinists who actively work to make life miserable for others, colonizing and civilizing barbarian societies and denouncing their religions is Good because your civilization and religion are objectively better, with 95% decrease in sacrificing humans to demonkind. And on the flipside, plenty of actions are Evil only because they don't actually serve your, or even anyone else's, interests, no matter how trivial or stupid they might seem on the surface.

If any of the above feels wrong, it's because you are not an utilitarian and thus not Good.

...

Now, I can already hear a voice in my ears going "but I don't play 1st Edition AD&D!" with a side serving of "who cares what Gygax & co though?".

That may be true, for you. If it is, it's part of the problem. Post 1st Edition, TSR made several deliberate choices about how D&D handles Alignment, and WotC era D&D inherited some of that baggage. Long story short, TSR 1) decided to market the game to kids and 2) to do that, tied game notions of Good and Evil to the moving target of public appreciation. Of course you can't get coherent moral philosophy from that, because kids don't have training in moral philosophy and the public is not of one mind of what morals should apply to games.

If you want the Alignment system to work and, more importantly, work in a way that matches you real life beliefs, you first have to know enough moral philosophy to state what is the nature of Good and Evil that you want to bake into a game, and then argue for why it'd make a good game. Start with establishing whether you want ethics based on consequence of action, ethics based on personal virtue, ethics based on universal laws, or some mix of the three. Then you can actually get forward without wasting time arguing with people who are implicitly following contradictory ethics.

[Saintheart]

Sure, it's rarely as clear cut as in my example, but other factors doesn't really change the point. If people are expected to pick the less moral option, there should be benefits to it. I'm not saying it always have to be a completely rational choice (it rarely is), but there should be a reason, otherwise you're likely to end up with the "Mohaha! I'm so EVIL!" type of character.


The benefits don't have to be absolute though, they can be relative to what one character wants or is willing to trade versus what another wants or is willing to trade. The risks also don't have to be the same for all characters who partake.

You've got a guy whose family was executed by a tyrant and he wants revenge on the tyrant's family. Evil deity might say 'you're doing my work anyhow, do it in my name and I'll give you powers that help you be even more creatively cruel with that revenge plot of yours', good deity says 'I won't help you do that, but my priests can offer therapy'.

Totally different situation if the character is, say, trying to find a way to resettle their village displaced by a natural disaster.

A skilled yesman who can become indispensable or amusing is going to be less at risk serving an evil king and profit more than someone who just expects to lean on the king's sense of honor to be rewarded appropriately. Someone addicted to bloodsport is likely going to get a bad deal trying to serve the god of peace. The worst risk/reward combos are when people take a deal because a deal was offered, without consideration of that deal as part of a larger ongoing relationship.

Both good and evil patrons thus represent different challenges, and neither needs to intrinsically give a strictly better reward than the other, because some characters will be good at keeping the evil god amused enough that they're kept around, while others will be good at navigating moral quandaries or being self-sacrificing without being self-destructive.

Added to that is that people rarely, if ever, think of themselves as evil. That's the standard advice given to or by actors called on to play the Bad Guy in a role. James Coburn was famous for it and when asked why he played so many evil characters he just said "Bad? I don't play bad people. I play people trying to get through their day in the way they see best." Few things are more powerful than the human capacity for self-delusion. Which is to say - the reason to choose doesn't even need to be logical to anyone other than to the person committing the act. i.e. it doesn't need to even be a reason, it just needs to be a rationalisation by the doer. We're all capable of twisting logic to suit our self-image or creating rationalisations for ourselves ... whether those rationalisations are to commit an evil act or support an evil system that we happen to benefit from.

[Millstone85]

An eternity of being tied of and beaten with whips isn't my cup of tea, but if you're a masochist it's a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around on a cloud playing a harp.Got no experience there, but I know that BDSM clubs advertise themselves as "safe, sane and consensual" or some other variation of "we are not a den of rapists".

The Upper Planes could have whole layers dedicated to that ideal, and the Lower Planes to mocking it.

[Vahnavoi]

Added to that is that people rarely, if ever, think of themselves as evil. That's the standard advice given to or by actors called on to play the Bad Guy in a role.

On that note, have nihilist-existentialisy rant denouncing the very idea of objective good at hand. If you have no idea how to make one, don't worry - if you browse threads such as these long enough, some outspoken moral relativist will be happy to provide one for you! :smallamused:

[Batcathat]

Added to that is that people rarely, if ever, think of themselves as evil. That's the standard advice given to or by actors called on to play the Bad Guy in a role. James Coburn was famous for it and when asked why he played so many evil characters he just said "Bad? I don't play bad people. I play people trying to get through their day in the way they see best." Few things are more powerful than the human capacity for self-delusion. Which is to say - the reason to choose doesn't even need to be logical to anyone other than to the person committing the act. i.e. it doesn't need to even be a reason, it just needs to be a rationalisation by the doer. We're all capable of twisting logic to suit our self-image or creating rationalisations for ourselves ... whether those rationalisations are to commit an evil act or support an evil system that we happen to benefit from.

While that is true in reality, I wonder how much would change in a world where objective morality not only exists but can actually be measured. I suppose a lot of people would just not accept it ("Clearly your Detect Evil spell is broken!") but it does seem like it would impact how people view themselves.

[noob]

While that is true in reality, I wonder how much would change in a world where objective morality not only exists but can actually be measured. I suppose a lot of people would just not accept it ("Clearly your Detect Evil spell is broken!") but it does seem like it would impact how people view themselves.

You can place blame on the system and says it is too simplistic and will classify as evil some people improving the situation of everybody due to the fact it judges actions sequentially in isolation of each other.

[Berenger]

I have been playing for a very long time dnd, I would say 10 years more or less. My DM has had in the past a general fixation that evil patrons/deity you are serving will ultimately always **** you up.

I think it's a kinda linear thought, too linear, but I'm totally on the opposite site of the spectrum - I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag.

I frankly don't think any of those extremes makes much sense, unless in a game world with a cosmology specifically designed to make one of the above stances objectively true. In this case, you either play inside a morality tale or some cynical crapsack world. If that is what floats your boat, cool, but that assumption makes this whole discussion a non-starter. So I am going to presume that there is no greater cosmological power in play that enforces either stance.

In this case, which kind of behaviour is punished or rewarded (and by whom) should organically flow from setting and context. A band of sea-raiders which are clearly chaotic evil marauding slavers abroad but upstanding and caring members of a functional society at home are perfectly plausible. A guild of assassins with personal advancement based on internal intrigue and backstabbing is perfectly plausible. An evil god of conquest granting approval, power and an appealing eternal afterlife to his mortal champions is perfectly plausible. A sadistic demon tricking people into pacts enabling him to harvest their corrupted souls and torture them for all eternity is perfectly plausible. A lawful good order of paladins offering its members little more than a miserable life of sacrifice, constant strife and eventual martydom with no guarantee of entrance to some awesome paradise is perfectly plausible. A king rewarding the selfless and heroic deeds of some knight-errant with land, titles and recognition is perfectly plausible. A kind goddess taking the souls of all pleasant and somewhat decent-ish people to her heavenly silver palace on the moon is perfectly plausible. A good or evil deed going completely unnoticed and unacknowledged by any mundane or divine power is perfectly plausible.

[Rynjin]

Adding an adverb changes nothing. I am glad that you are getting responses that satisfy you. Next time, maybe scrub the OP a bit to clarify your meaning.

Given that you seem to be the only person who misunderstands the OP, I'm pretty sure PEBCAK applies here.

[Satinavian]

In D&D this is even more so, since life is basically a sorting test. Being good means 10,000 years of life in your preferred utopia, while being evil means 10,000 years of horrible torture. Evil alignment is therefore the ultimate delayed gratification failure - though many evil individuals of power are aware of this and work very hard to evade their ultimate fate via various schemes of immortality.
Afterlife makes stuff only needlessly complicated and is also setting dependend.

I think it is best to assume that everyone ends up in Dolurrh anyway and concentrate on the pre-death behaviors benefits and rewards.

[Vahnavoi]

While that is true in reality, I wonder how much would change in a world where objective morality not only exists but can actually be measured. I suppose a lot of people would just not accept it ("Clearly your Detect Evil spell is broken!") but it does seem like it would impact how people view themselves.

The answer is nearly always "less than people think it would change".

Point one: it's not clear our world lacks measurable, objective morality. See cases for, say, how utilitarianism could work by summing brain states of living humans to deduce if overall happiness is growing or not. Nearly always when people ask the question you ask, they are implicitly assuming that measuring and understanding objective morality is EASY. Look at objective anything else and ask why you think that holds. Because in a world where a) humans exist, b) objective measurable morality exists and c) measuring and understanding objective morality is hard, there is room for misconceptions about morality to exist, including all the misconceptions humans have of it in real life.

Point two: due to issues such as incompleteness theorems, it is unlikely that any theory of everything could explain why it is itself true. Practically, this means that every system of reasoning about the world requires taking some things as self-evident, that is, as axioms. So while accepting existence of objective morality might require accepting some axiom of, say, utilitarianism from the get-go, accepting existence of objective anything requires accepting some axiom of realism from the get-go. It is possible, in real life, to reject realism across the board, and some people do.

Point three: again, for emphasis: it is possible to, in real life, reject realism across the board, and some people DO. Go look at people who think they're living in an illusion, or a simulation, or anything else of the sort.

[Batcathat]

Point one: it's not clear our world lacks measurable, objective morality. See cases for, say, how utilitarianism could work by summing brain states of living humans to deduce if overall happiness is growing or not. Nearly always when people ask the question you ask, they are implicitly assuming that measuring and understanding objective morality is EASY. Look at objective anything else and ask why you think that holds. Because in a world where a) humans exist, b) objective measurable morality exists and c) measuring and understanding objective morality is hard, there is room for misconceptions about morality to exist, including all the misconceptions humans have of it in real life.

That would be objectively measurable, but it still wouldn't be objective morality, since saying "maximum overall happiness is good" is a subjective judgement. We can objectively measure the number of murders too, but that doesn't mean we can objectively say killing is "evil".

[Vahnavoi]

And from a non-realist perspective, no-one has been murdered ever, because no-one has truly lived. You might as well be counting sheep in your dream. Your supposed refutal to the first point is why there were three.

[Batcathat]

And from a non-realist perspective, no-one has been murdered ever, because no-one has truly lived. You might as well be counting sheep in your dream. Your supposed refutal to the first point is why there were three.

I didn't see much reason to comment on them. Yes, if we assume some things are objectively true without actual evidence, that will lead to different conclusions than if we do not. Yes, some people reject reality (though how they would react to evidence in the matter is still an interesting question, I think).

[Vahnavoi]

You forget that in order to say anything at all exist objectively, you have accept some tenet of realism "without actual evidence", because if you do not, there is no "actual evidence" anyone could give you to convince you otherwise. "External reality exists" is an axiom of empiricism, not something you can empirically prove.

[Batcathat]

You forget that in order to say anything at all exist objectively, you have accept some tenet of realism "without actual evidence", because if you do not, there is no "actual evidence" anyone could give you to convince you otherwise. "External reality exists" is an axiom of empiricism, not something you can empirically prove.

Fair enough. I'm arguing with the assumption that I actually exist and perceive reality more or less correctly and you're correct I can't really know that's true. It's an interesting philosophical question but I think it's still meaningful to talk about objective evidence within (my perception of) reality, for the same reason that a judge won't acquit someone because the prosecutor failed to prove that the defendant exists.

[Vahnavoi]

It has a practical application for gaming. Shortly: since games are fictive rule-based constructs, once you know which axioms you follow in real life, you can reverse them to explore different worlds than the one you believe you exist in. For purposes of a game, moral statements are not different from other statements of fact: their truth value hinges only on approval of the participants. Which means exactly no-one needs to prove objective morality (or objective anything else, for that matter) is true in real life in order to have it in a game.

[Batcathat]

It has a practical application for gaming. Shortly: since games are fictive rule-based constructs, once you know which axioms you follow in real life, you can reverse them to explore different worlds than the one you believe you exist in. For purposes of a game, moral statements are not different from other statements of fact: their truth value hinges only on approval of the participants. Which means exactly no-one needs to prove objective morality (or objective anything else, for that matter) is true in real life in order to have it in a game.

That is true, but I still think it presents some challenges. I don't believe magic or elves exists in reality, but I can imagine what their existence would mean well enough to include it in a game. I can't really wrap my head around what objective morality (not just divinely enforced morality, but an actually objectively true one) would mean for a world. But of course, my limitation doesn't impact anyone else, if they think they can envision it.

[Vahnavoi]

I don't find any form of objective utilitarianism hard to envision because any application of such would involve weighing pros and cons in a way that modern law, risk assessment matrices etc. already do. The only difference is accepting the pros and cons have universal fixed positive or negative values easily expressible in numbers, which is literally how several game systems already work. Utilitarianism being math-friendly is why it's a good candidate for games.

Deontological ethics where things are Good or Evil based on what the Big Book of Rules says is even more trivial, because come on now.

[Batcathat]

I don't find any form of objective utilitarianism hard to envision because any application of such would involve weighing pros and cons in a way that modern law, risk assessment matrices etc. already do. The only difference is accepting the pros and cons have universal fixed positive or negative values easily expressible in numbers, which is literally how several game systems already work. Utilitarianism being math-friendly is why it's a good candidate for games.

That is true. Now I sort of want to run a game using the cosmology from the Good Place...


Deontological ethics where things are Good or Evil based on what the Big Book of Rules says is even more trivial, because come on now.

I mean, sure. But if the only difference is that "Murder is Bad" is objectively true in some metaphysical sense, that doesn't really seem meaningful. It'd be like saying that "Green is the Prettiest Color" would be objectively true. Interesting trivia, but zero impact on the setting.

[NichG]

While that is true in reality, I wonder how much would change in a world where objective morality not only exists but can actually be measured. I suppose a lot of people would just not accept it ("Clearly your Detect Evil spell is broken!") but it does seem like it would impact how people view themselves.

Probably it'd be the same as anyone living in a society with a high degree of surveillance, a high degree of omnipresent propaganda, but a low degree of day to day enforcement.

Breakaways can say that it's an objective system but that doesn't mean it's a (lowercase) good one for people to follow. It just means some cosmic forces were powerful enough to bake this particular one into the laws of physics, but if you don't accept might = right then that doesn't make their system any more just than your personal system, or one proposed by some philosopher.

But breakaways would be less common than other societies. Maybe 90% nod their head and use alignment to fit it/not attract trouble/just get on with their day, but the remaining 10% would be more vehement and creative and self-righteous about opposing it than they would have otherwise been.

[MoiMagnus]

I mean, sure. But if the only difference is that "Murder is Bad" is objectively true in some metaphysical sense, that doesn't really seem meaningful. It'd be like saying that "Green is the Prettiest Color" would be objectively true. Interesting trivia, but zero impact on the setting.

As soon as you have magic able to detect alignment, it does matter.
"Murder is Bad" is not to be compared to "Green is the Prettiest Color" but to "Leaves are Green". Green exists "objectively" because of our biology (that's how our eyes work). Good/Evil would exists objectively because of how soul/magic works.

[If you want to have fun with that and make it as imperfect as real life colours, so have peoples have slight variation on how morality work for them, and you can even have the equivalent of colourblind peoples, so peoples whose acts are wrongly registered as Good or Evil because their soul doesn't work as it should.]

[RandomPeasant]

Got no experience there, but I know that BDSM clubs advertise themselves as "safe, sane and consensual" or some other variation of "we are not a den of rapists".

The Upper Planes could have whole layers dedicated to that ideal, and the Lower Planes to mocking it.

Well, yes, because in the real world people aren't Evil. Obviously we can't discuss real-world issues directly, but when you think about the ideologies you disagree with the most in the real world, they probably nonetheless agree with you about precepts like "murder is bad". In D&Dland, that is not the case. There is a god of murder, and the people who worship him think that murder is good. It's not, as Mechalich seems to suggest, that they are simply confused or suckers who think they will end up on the good end of the murder afterlife. They like murder and want to be in the murder afterlife. It's like worshipping Khorne in 40k. You or I might think that a life of endless violence and mayhem sounds horrible, but Khornites like that. They don't think they will stab their way to the top, they are just pro stabbing.


As soon as you have magic able to detect alignment, it does matter.

No it doesn't. The argument that Utilitarianism (or whatever ethical system) is correct at no point depends on whether or not you can see that some people have an [Evil] tag. The fact that there is a physical property that has the same name as terms we use for moral judgement is weird and confusing, but it doesn't change any moral arguments. If you think going to a particular afterlife is a desirable or undesirable outcome, that might change the results of Consequentialist ethical reasoning, but someone who believes in a Categorical Imperative has no particular reason to decide that something that violates it is okay simply because detect good says so.

[Telonius]

All it takes for a person to register as Evil, is "hurting, oppressing, and killing others." There has to be a target, but the target is not necessarily all others. It could be localized. "Non-Elves," "people who are weaker than you," or "goblinoids," for example. If you don't have that target on your back, Evil won't necessarily mess with you or betray you. The Overlord does need minions, after all. If that's true of Evil people, it's true of Evil deities too. Help out the Elvish Supremacist deity clear out a bunch of Orcs? You might get a pat on the back, a pocketful of gold, and an invitation to come back whenever you feel like killing some more greenskins. You do have your omnicidal deities (particularly towards the CE end), but that's not the whole of the alignment.

[RedMage125]

Definitions like "Evil is self-serving" are appealing, but they don't really work out. The musician who spends his time having sex, doing drugs, and playing rock and roll is probably pretty self-serving, but calling that guy capital-E Evil is a stretch.
I think the key is where the line is drawn. Because Neutral on the Good-Evil axis is also a bit selfish. The distinction is how willing they are to hurt others to get what they want. Your musician example is probably some kind of Neutral if he pretty much only cares about himself, but tries not to do any harm to anyone else, either. Conversely, if he's the arrogant "I'm special and get to treat everyone like dirt, and I don't care who gets hurt as long as I get to have my fun" kind, he may actually be of Evil alignment.


This is the issue right here: you are wrong. That is the essence of evil in both D&D and the real moral philosophy it borrows from.

You may have heard some variation of the sentiment "Greatest good for the greatest number". In 1st edition AD&D, that's included in the definition of Lawful Good alignment. If you know where that sentiment comes from, it immediately aligns the moral character of the game with particular brand of ethics: utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is a system of consequentialist morality: what makes a thing good is good outcomes. All pro-social things that go to making a Lawful civilization, such as honor, reprocity, altruism etc. are justified through the idea of mutual benefit.
There's another issue here: you're wrong. At least with regards to the default assumptions of the most recent editions of D&D going back to at least 2e.

In that default paradigm, Good/Evil/Law/Chaos are not points of view, but objective forces which shape the cosmos. There are planes suffused with these energies. There are beings literally made of them (fiends, celestial, etc). Yhese energies can be objectively observed, measured, and quantified. And the Evil in the hearts of mortals is literally the same energy. Case in point, the Detect Evil spell detects the same energy (albeit in different amounts) in a Balor, an Unholy Sword, and a greedy/miserly old man.

Not only that, but there are certain acts and actions which have objective weight with regards to alignment. Dealing with Fiends is Evil. In several editions, creation of undead is objectively Evil.

That means that Consequentialist ethics are really not a good analogy. Default D&D mores more closely resemble Deontological Ethics (albeit not perfectly, but it's the closest). In 3e, the edition that I have found spells out alignment issues with the most detail, it is specified that Intent and Context can factor in (as long as it's not one of those objectively weighted acts). So consequences only really matter as they provide a framework for Context. To wit, from the 3e BoVD...killing a creature of consummate, irredeemable Evil is never an evil act, even if done for selfish reasons. So if you murder a red dragon because you want its treasure, it's not an evil act. But if you kill a red dragon because you want to save lives and stop its destructive rampage, it's a Good act.




Now, I can already hear a voice in my ears going "but I don't play 1st Edition AD&D!" with a side serving of "who cares what Gygax & co though?".

That may be true, for you. If it is, it's part of the problem.
How is "I don't play 1st edition" an actual "problem"?


If you want the Alignment system to work and, more importantly, work in a way that matches you real life beliefs, you first have to know enough moral philosophy to state what is the nature of Good and Evil that you want to bake into a game, and then argue for why it'd make a good game. Start with establishing whether you want ethics based on consequence of action, ethics based on personal virtue, ethics based on universal laws, or some mix of the three. Then you can actually get forward without wasting time arguing with people who are implicitly following contradictory ethics.
Here I disagree only in personal methodology.

My preference for DMing is to stick fairly close to the RAW, with all house rules presented to the players at the beginning. This is out of a sense of fairness. I want my players to be able to consult the books, and have an expectation that the game will work in a way they understand.

To that end, as a DM, I suspend my own personal beliefs about Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, and adhere to what the RAW says (which was easiest in 3e, when those were more clearly defined). Again, this is solely to create a fair sense of transparency between player expectations and actual play.

So "making the game work in a way that matches my real world beliefs" isn't even always a goal for all people. And, IMO, unless all your players know and understand your real world beliefs, it may end up being a goal counterproductive to smooth gameplay.



Deontological ethics where things are Good or Evil based on what the Big Book of Rules says is even more trivial, because come on now.

And yet, that's the ethical system that most closely resembles the default model of D&D.

[hamishspence]

To wit, from the 3e BoVD...killing a creature of consummate, irredeemable Evil is never an evil act, even if done for selfish reasons. So if you murder a red dragon because you want its treasure, it's not an evil act.

Even at the time, that was a bit problematic simply because red dragons weren't irredeemable - nothing was, not even fiends.

So, to be fully accurate, the statement had to drop the "irredeemable" bit, and restrict it to "creatures of consummate evil".

Then Fiendish Codex 2 came out, which said Murder was always a Corrupt act, and didn't make any specific exceptions.

[MoiMagnus]

No it doesn't. The argument that Utilitarianism (or whatever ethical system) is correct at no point depends on whether or not you can see that some people have an [Evil] tag. The fact that there is a physical property that has the same name as terms we use for moral judgement is weird and confusing, but it doesn't change any moral arguments. If you think going to a particular afterlife is a desirable or undesirable outcome, that might change the results of Consequentialist ethical reasoning, but someone who believes in a Categorical Imperative has no particular reason to decide that something that violates it is okay simply because detect good says so.

What I was trying to say is that if some Ethical system is "correct in-universe", and on top of that is backed by some physical/magical property that allows to measure Good/Evil according to this, then it will have some significant impact on the settings, and will fundamentally influence civilisation and the social structure.

The fact that it has a testable component ensure that it is able to shape civilisations (with significant impacts on politics and on the justice system). The fact that it is "objectively correct" will likely favour in some ways civilisations that chose to follow the Good alignment fully by pushing them toward the corresponding utopia, though that part depends on what it actually means for an ethical system to be correct.

Sure, someone who believes in a Categorical Imperatives might not change his mind if "detect good" says otherwise. But they might have been raised differently if "detect good" says that said Categorical Imperatives is incorrect. Or at the very least that will be uphill conflict of this character against the huge majority of the in-universe population that will "believe" that "detect good" determine what's right and wrong, since in most practical cases "detect good" would agree with the common sense of what's right and wrong.

I was mostly answering to the "but zero impact on the setting." part from Batcathat's comment.

[NichG]

What I was trying to say is that if some Ethical system is "correct in-universe", and on top of that is backed by some physical/magical property that allows to measure Good/Evil according to this, then it will have some significant impact on the settings, and will fundamentally influence civilisation and the social structure.

The fact that it has a testable component ensure that it is able to shape civilisations (with significant impacts on politics and on the justice system). The fact that it is "objectively correct" will likely favour in some ways civilisations that chose to follow the Good alignment fully by pushing them toward the corresponding utopia, though that part depends on what it actually means for an ethical system to be correct.

Sure, someone who believes in a Categorical Imperatives might not change his mind if "detect good" says otherwise. But they might have been raised differently if "detect good" says that said Categorical Imperatives is incorrect. Or at the very least that will be uphill conflict of this character against the huge majority of the in-universe population that will "believe" that "detect good" determine what's right and wrong, since in most practical cases "detect good" would agree with the common sense of what's right and wrong.

I was mostly answering to the "but zero impact on the setting." part from Batcathat's comment.

It's like the existence of credit ratings.

Most people will play the game to maintain a good credit rating because it might matter in the future. Most people will teach their kids to care about credit ratings and take them seriously. Many aspects of society may use a credit rating as a proxy for trust, like apartments doing a credit check before renting, and may punish a bad credit rating beyond the original scope of the idea. But in the end, the norms of behavior and trustworthiness aren't absolutely constrained to it, and different cultures and subcultures may cleave to it more, less, or position themselves in intentional opposition to it, based on their circumstances.

A group of people who end up getting tagged [Evil] because their actions in defending themselves against invaders technically constitute murder rather than self-defense due to some obscure aspect of the situation or some technicality that the attacking side exploited is likely to say 'you know what, our greatest heroes are all [Evil] now anyhow, it no longer has a negative connotation in our society and its actually a badge of honor'.

[Psyren]

I have been playing for a very long time dnd, I would say 10 years more or less. My DM has had in the past a general fixation that evil patrons/deity you are serving will ultimately always **** you up.

I think it's a kinda linear thought, too linear, but I'm totally on the opposite site of the spectrum - I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag.

The fixation that evil always punishes other evil makes me nowadays be very wary whenever any "evil" offer, or offer that comes from "evil" rise up. In the end, failing to comply with the "good" journey objectives is going to send you into a pit of despair - you should rely on good, but never on evil.

And these days my DM has decided that I now have an evil Patron, whom as a player I don't want to willingly serve because I know the way he thinks. Should have gone for a mere fighter class, shouldn't I?

I don't even know how other DM acts for these kind of things. Oh well.

I'm... really not sure what your question is here (or if you're even asking one) but I'll try.

The key for any patron/deity, good or evil - especially evil - is that they should take the long view. Take Asmodeus for example, he's the epitome of Lawful Evil in multiple settings and even game systems. For him, ingratiating and insinuating himself into cahoots with the forces of good is perfectly acceptable in the short term, and keep in mind his "short term" can last for generations. He knows that every time someone like Iomedae or Mystra etc comes to him for help, he's one infinitesimal step closer to everlasting world domination.

What this means is that if you're trying to square the self-destructive nature of evil with a character who serves evil masters, that's actually easy to do - any comeuppance the character gets from doing so doesn't have to occur until after their death. In fact, they may not believe in any such comeuppance at all, only seeing examples of evildoers who lived lives of extravagance and plenty. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0763.html) That's enough reason for many of them to try.

[Batcathat]

What I was trying to say is that if some Ethical system is "correct in-universe", and on top of that is backed by some physical/magical property that allows to measure Good/Evil according to this, then it will have some significant impact on the settings, and will fundamentally influence civilisation and the social structure.

The fact that it has a testable component ensure that it is able to shape civilisations (with significant impacts on politics and on the justice system). The fact that it is "objectively correct" will likely favour in some ways civilisations that chose to follow the Good alignment fully by pushing them toward the corresponding utopia, though that part depends on what it actually means for an ethical system to be correct.

Sure, someone who believes in a Categorical Imperatives might not change his mind if "detect good" says otherwise. But they might have been raised differently if "detect good" says that said Categorical Imperatives is incorrect. Or at the very least that will be uphill conflict of this character against the huge majority of the in-universe population that will "believe" that "detect good" determine what's right and wrong, since in most practical cases "detect good" would agree with the common sense of what's right and wrong.

I was mostly answering to the "but zero impact on the setting." part from Batcathat's comment.

If all the objective morality does is to be detectable, you don't really have "Detect Evil" as much as "Detect People I Disagree With" in practice. To be fair, it's not entirely useless but I doubt it would change the setting in any major way (at least not compared to how magic in general already changes the setting. Or should, any way).

[RandomPeasant]

Even at the time, that was a bit problematic simply because red dragons weren't irredeemable - nothing was, not even fiends.

It's also pretty recognizable as an ideology that is not remotely acceptable in the real world. "We can kill them and take their stuff because they are bad and cannot be saved" is not something that the good guys say. It doesn't matter how much you appeal to "but it's objectively real", that sort of reasoning rightly makes people (especially people from groups that have historically been persecuted) deeply uncomfortable.


What I was trying to say is that if some Ethical system is "correct in-universe", and on top of that is backed by some physical/magical property that allows to measure Good/Evil according to this, then it will have some significant impact on the settings, and will fundamentally influence civilisation and the social structure.

But that's not because it's an ethical system. It's because it is a property of the universe. [Good] and [Evil] would have the exact same effect on civilization if they were [Sherp] and [Flarg], because the effect is that people (who the argument assumes to be applying some sort of broadly consequentialist reasoning) would rather go to the Good afterlives than the Evil ones. That doesn't mean that the ethics that get you into Elysium are "objectively correct", it means they objectively get you in to Elysium, which is something you might or might not decide you want.


But they might have been raised differently if "detect good" says that said Categorical Imperatives is incorrect.

Again, imagine that it's not "detect evil" but "detect flarg". Why should someone who has a philosophical framework that argues that it is best to follow the Categorical Imperative change their conclusions if you point out that both murderers and people who agree with them detect as [Flarg]? detect evil can't make an ethical system "objectively correct", because A) that's not really a coherent claim for how we think about ethical systems and B) insofar as it is, our views on ethical correctness aren't drawn from detectability. It makes it observable, and I agree that "Observability Ethics" in various forms would probably get a lot of followers based on its ability to route you to a favorable eternity, but that's a result of material considerations, not moral ones. People in D&Dland are still going to have moral debates, they will simply use terminology that does not line up with what spells detect, because reusing terminology like that is just confusing.

[Mechalich]

It makes it observable, and I agree that "Observability Ethics" in various forms would probably get a lot of followers based on its ability to route you to a favorable eternity, but that's a result of material considerations, not moral ones. People in D&Dland are still going to have moral debates, they will simply use terminology that does not line up with what spells detect, because reusing terminology like that is just confusing.

I think the overwhelming majority of people don't really separate material and moral considerations in any sort of strict way. Almost all religious systems are deeply concerned with the material considerations of the post-death state, with moral considerations serving as a determinant (often but not always the most important determinant) as to what those material considerations are going to be.

However, D&D did posit that people who were intimately familiar with the D&D cosmology and the afterlife - that is the Planars, who literally lived within it - were deeply engaged in debate, not about morality per se, but about meaning and the overall point of all of it. After all, D&D allows for all sorts of weirdness. For example, anyone with access to Plane Shift, or just enough money to get a friendly caster to send them along can simply go and live in their preferred version of the afterlife at any time (and Planescape materials explicitly made the point that large numbers of people did in fact do this). This actually makes even more sense for evil people. If you really think that Baator's tyrannical hierarchy is how the universe should operate, you can get a massive head start on your devilish ascension by showing up to serve while still alive then when you're reduced to one of the larvae.

The people behind Planescape understood how fundamentally weird the D&D cosmology really is and a huge portion of the Factions offer philosophical variations on: 'this is still only a test,' 'this is all BS,' or 'we're still missing something fundamental here.'

[MoiMagnus]

But that's not because it's an ethical system. It's because it is a property of the universe. [Good] and [Evil] would have the exact same effect on civilization if they were [Sherp] and [Flarg],

....

Again, imagine that it's not "detect evil" but "detect flarg". Why should someone who has a philosophical framework that argues that it is best to follow the Categorical Imperative change their conclusions if you point out that both murderers and people who agree with them detect as [Flarg]?

It seems I'm not good at explaining what I want to say, sorry for being confusing.
What I meant by the following


The fact that it is "objectively correct" will likely favour in some ways civilisations that chose to follow the Good alignment fully by pushing them toward the corresponding utopia, though that part depends on what it actually means for an ethical system to be correct.

Is that the difference being [Good]/[Evil] and [Sherp]/[Flarg] is that this [Good]/[Evil] being objectively correct by definition, civilisations that follow [Good] will strive, be better places for everyone, be closer to a utopia, etc than civilisations that follow [Evil]. And after thousands and thousands of years, you can expect peoples to notice it. While [Sherp]/[Flarg], but not actually being "objectively correct", don't have this guaranty of actually being the best way for peoples to behave.

If [Good] somehow includes "never kill anyone, even to protect someone else" in it, then you would need a lot of narrative convenience for it to actually be backed up by the universe into being "objectively correct" (probably heavily relying on some afterlife things). But the guaranty of being "objectively correct" means that anyone reaching sufficiently high level of omniscience and infinite wisdom in this universe would agree that this [Good] behaviour was actually the best behaviour to have (even if their previous ideologies and opinions disagreed with it).

[Mechalich]

Is that the difference being [Good]/[Evil] and [Sherp]/[Flarg] is that this [Good]/[Evil] being objectively correct by definition, civilisations that follow [Good] will strive, be better places for everyone, be closer to a utopia, etc than civilisations that follow [Evil]. And after thousands and thousands of years, you can expect peoples to notice it. While [Sherp]/[Flarg], but not actually being "objectively correct", don't have this guaranty of actually being the best way for peoples to behave.

Most Prime Material D&D worlds are balanced, by both extraplanar influences and divine action. Worlds of this nature are in some sense actively prohibited from significant progression in any direction along the alignment axis. OOTS, actually, posited this explicitly - a majority of the gods can vote to destroy the world at any time, so if the world deviates too far in any direction a coalition of neutral deities joins with the disadvantaged alignment and destroys the moral. Moral progress in any direction on the global level is impossible.

The short version: life is a test, and the test proctors - the gods - make is so that the test conditions remain the same. This is actually quite monstrously unfair, since the most likely reason for any sapient being in a D&D world to be evil is that they were raised in a society that is controlled by evil and lack the unbelievably immense courage to choose an inevitably fatal stand against the prevailing societal conditions. The average Drow, for example, is born into a society that works tirelessly to shape them toward cruelty, paranoia, and psychopathy almost from birth, twisted to the point where they believe that the very possibility of the Upper Planes is a lie, and dooms them to misery in the Demonweb Pits where Lolth sets demons to abuse all but the top 1% of her priestesses until their souls finally surrender to the spiders.

The number of beings in D&D worlds who actively 'break bad' and chose evil pathways as adults, especially those not struggling with some sort of severe mental illness, is proportionally tiny compared to those who are 'raised bad.'

[NichG]

It seems I'm not good at explaining what I want to say, sorry for being confusing.
What I meant by the following



Is that the difference being [Good]/[Evil] and [Sherp]/[Flarg] is that this [Good]/[Evil] being objectively correct by definition, civilisations that follow [Good] will strive, be better places for everyone, be closer to a utopia, etc than civilisations that follow [Evil]. And after thousands and thousands of years, you can expect peoples to notice it. While [Sherp]/[Flarg], but not actually being "objectively correct", don't have this guaranty of actually being the best way for peoples to behave.

If [Good] somehow includes "never kill anyone, even to protect someone else" in it, then you would need a lot of narrative convenience for it to actually be backed up by the universe into being "objectively correct" (probably heavily relying on some afterlife things). But the guaranty of being "objectively correct" means that anyone reaching sufficiently high level of omniscience and infinite wisdom in this universe would agree that this [Good] behaviour was actually the best behaviour to have (even if their previous ideologies and opinions disagreed with it).

There's a lot of ways that's not just a matter of practicality, but doesn't even make conceptual sense.

If people have different priorities about the society they live in, there will not be one single optimal utopia that will be the best for everyone. There will be tradeoffs. So what the Detect spell could determine is the alignment of someone's actions with the optimal path to a specific end state, but people are still conceptually capable of disagreeing about whether that end state is personally desirable.

Furthermore, a lot of ethical and moral considerations have to do not with the way the world is, but the way the world could be. For example, you could get an implementation of this 'civilizations that follow [Good] always end up better off than other civilizations' by having a powerful entity who periodically destroys the civilizations furthest from [Good], and who pre-emptively kills anyone who doesn't like the direction that the [Good] civilizations are going in. Practically speaking, in that world, not doing the things that entity wants is likely to bring harm upon self and others - basically you have to do it. But even if you don't actually have the power to do so, you can still pose the question 'if we could depose that entity, would the world be a better place for it?' or 'if we could change that entity's mind about what constitutes [Good], would that be better?', and answer that question in a variety of other ethical/moral frameworks, and even find different answers to that question. That sort of counterfactual question is often where an ethical framework is going to do heavy lifting for a society that is capable of innovation, since it allows people to evaluate if maybe there are some things which are assumed to be constants, but which would be worth changing if one could - and thereby help direct potential efforts for change.

Finally, people can be leaning on an ethical system for different reasons. Maybe doing the [Good] thing prevents your civilization from being destroyed, so you do the [Good] thing. But what if you use the degree to which people do the [Good] thing or [Evil] thing to determine who you ask to babysit your kid? Even if doing the [Good] thing is the optimal path towards some particular utopian end-state, that doesn't necessarily imply that those who do the [Good] thing are going to be better choices of who to trust on an individual level (or even that necessarily trusting the [Good] people is itself a [Good] act - as long as we're allowing narrativium to assert force on the world, its entirely possible to envision a world where it is [Evil] to trust those who are [Good] and [Good] to trust those who are [Evil], and only by dancing that particular arbitrary dance will your civilization be allowed to continue to prosper).

[RedMage125]

Even at the time, that was a bit problematic simply because red dragons weren't irredeemable - nothing was, not even fiends.

So, to be fully accurate, the statement had to drop the "irredeemable" bit, and restrict it to "creatures of consummate evil".

Then Fiendish Codex 2 came out, which said Murder was always a Corrupt act, and didn't make any specific exceptions.
Chromatic dragons were more or less irredeemable, the ones that were Evil at any rate. Anything with the "Always X" alignment tag pretty much falls into that category. Yes, even with "Always X", there was that <1% that deviated. But then, such a creature wouldn't count as "a creature of consummate Evil" then, would it?

The canon succubus paladin gets thrown around. But people forget that she was still an Outsider with the [Chaotic] and [Evil] subtypes. She would take damage from Holy Smite, Unholy Blight, as well as the Lawful and Chaotic versions thereof. If she were to be killed, a new (presumably Chaotic Evil) succubus would form in the Abyss.

3e defined "murder" as "killing a sentient being for selfish or nefarious purposes" (BoVD). Which is distinct from "killing" in general. Hence why I phrased what I did the way I did. If one was to murder a red dragon (and for the purposes of this discussion, this dragon is not one of those "<1%") because one desired it's loot, it is still not a Good act. But due to the nature of the removal of a powerful creature of Evil, it isn't an Evil act, either. That person who just wanted the loot could be in the same party as the guy who wants to kill the dragon for selfless and heroic reasons. One of those characters committed a Good act, one committed a Neutral act. Intent and Context matter.


It's also pretty recognizable as an ideology that is not remotely acceptable in the real world. "We can kill them and take their stuff because they are bad and cannot be saved" is not something that the good guys say. It doesn't matter how much you appeal to "but it's objectively real", that sort of reasoning rightly makes people (especially people from groups that have historically been persecuted) deeply uncomfortable.
I quite agree that it isn't acceptable in the Real World, and no one is making the argument that it is.

Again, a key factor is to note that it "wasn't an evil act". There's a wide gulf between Evil and Good. Neutral is a thing that exists, and is an absence of either Evil or Good.

D&D is a construct of fantasy. And not to go full "But Dragons" fallacy here, but it is one of the default assumptions that objective cosmic forces of Good/Evil/Law/Chaos exist, and that those same cosmic forces are found in mortals. That is why alignment isn't truly "morality" or "ethics", it's which of those cosmic forces one is aligned with. If you reject that default assumption for your home game, then yes, there's a domino effect of cascading consequences. A lot of other, related things, to include the mores of the value of "Good/Evil/etc" of certain acts, no longer adhere to the maxims set forth in the default rules.

It's not a failing of the D&D rules, not even a failing of alignment, that those things no longer resonate when a DM has made a change to the default assumptions those rules were built on. It just means there are more adjustments that need to be made to accommodate the house rule of said DM.




But that's not because it's an ethical system. It's because it is a property of the universe. [Good] and [Evil] would have the exact same effect on civilization if they were [Sherp] and [Flarg], because the effect is that people (who the argument assumes to be applying some sort of broadly consequentialist reasoning) would rather go to the Good afterlives than the Evil ones. That doesn't mean that the ethics that get you into Elysium are "objectively correct", it means they objectively get you in to Elysium, which is something you might or might not decide you want.

That's a little reductionist. The values of [Good] and [Evil] align fairly well with typical Western mores. Does that mean it lines up perfectly for everyone? No. but neither is it a "failing of the rules" when they don't. As a construct of fantasy, the designers actually do have the authority to declare "X is Good or Evil in D&D". Appeal to Authority is only a fallacy when the authority being appealed to does not have the actual authority to make a claim. As a construct of fantasy, the designers do.

Now, D&D thrives on house rules, and there is no "wrong way to play" (unless the people at the table are not having fun). So people can and should change what they want. I, personally, believe it's a maxim that all house rules, any deviation from RAW, should be made known to players before play actually begins. But the point is that the designers who write the RAW absolutely have the authority to set and delineate things like this for the "default" setting of the game.

Like I said before: "My preference for DMing is to stick fairly close to the RAW, with all house rules presented to the players at the beginning. This is out of a sense of fairness. I want my players to be able to consult the books, and have an expectation that the game will work in a way they understand.

To that end, as a DM, I suspend my own personal beliefs about Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, and adhere to what the RAW says (which was easiest in 3e, when those were more clearly defined). Again, this is solely to create a fair sense of transparency between player expectations and actual play."

My personal views don't, actually align perfectly with the RAW. But my players aren't sitting down at a table to play "RedMage's moral soapbox postulating", they're sitting down to play "D&D".



Again, imagine that it's not "detect evil" but "detect flarg". Why should someone who has a philosophical framework that argues that it is best to follow the Categorical Imperative change their conclusions if you point out that both murderers and people who agree with them detect as [Flarg]? detect evil can't make an ethical system "objectively correct", because A) that's not really a coherent claim for how we think about ethical systems and B) insofar as it is, our views on ethical correctness aren't drawn from detectability. It makes it observable, and I agree that "Observability Ethics" in various forms would probably get a lot of followers based on its ability to route you to a favorable eternity, but that's a result of material considerations, not moral ones.
I refer back to what I said about how alignment is not truly morality or ethics, but which of the cosmic forces one is "aligned with".


People in D&Dland are still going to have moral debates, they will simply use terminology that does not line up with what spells detect, because reusing terminology like that is just confusing.

Disagree. People still would use those terms, and there's still room for moral debate and shades of gray. The difference is, those cosmic forces are objective, dispassionate, and while they take Intent and Context into account, they are not fooled by sophistry or justifications.

To wit: A man learns of a prophecy, that during a conjunction of moons (which happens in 7 years), an orphan in their second decade of life will summon Demogorgon onto the Material Plane. To prevent this from coming to pass, this man travels all over, killing every orphan between the ages of 3 and 14. He is not swayed from his mission, he lets no one stand in his way, but commits no other evil or selfish acts. He truly believes he is serving the Greater Good. He may think of himself as Good, or at least Neutral (as he surely recognizes he is doing terrible deeds to achieve his ends). But the repeated, and above all unrepentant murder of dozens and dozens of innocent children means his alignment would be Evil. He would certainly be shocked to find that he is uncomfortable to hold a Holy weapon, to find that he pings a Detect Evil spell, and so on. He wholeheartedly believes himself to be a servant of the Greater Good.

That is completely possible within the standard RAW of 3.5e alignment. The existence of the ability to observe and detect [Good/Evil/etc] doesn't make everyone automatically aware of their own alignment. Nor does it make everyone act as some kind of caricature of that alignment. Alignment is not an absolute barometer of action or affiliation.

[Saintheart]

God I hate alignment threads.

[hamishspence]

3e defined "murder" as "killing a sentient being for selfish or nefarious purposes" (BoVD). Which is distinct from "killing" in general. Hence why I phrased what I did the way I did. If one was to murder a red dragon (and for the purposes of this discussion, this dragon is not one of those "<1%") because one desired it's loot, it is still not a Good act. But due to the nature of the removal of a powerful creature of Evil, it isn't an Evil act, either. That person who just wanted the loot could be in the same party as the guy who wants to kill the dragon for selfless and heroic reasons. One of those characters committed a Good act, one committed a Neutral act. Intent and Context matter.


"because one desired it's loot" is pretty selfish and nefarious.

And conversely, this:


A man learns of a prophecy, that during a conjunction of moons (which happens in 7 years), an orphan in their second decade of life will summon Demogorgon onto the Material Plane. To prevent this from coming to pass, this man travels all over, killing every orphan between the ages of 3 and 14. He is not swayed from his mission, he lets no one stand in his way, but commits no other evil or selfish acts. He truly believes he is serving the Greater Good. He may think of himself as Good, or at least Neutral (as he surely recognizes he is doing terrible deeds to achieve his ends). But the repeated, and above all unrepentant murder of dozens and dozens of innocent children means his alignment would be Evil.

if the character is motivated purely by the threat Demogorgon poses to others, not themselves, would appear to a case where killing for an unselfish, non-nefarious reason, is "still murder" - so the BOVD definition apparently isn't the be-all and end-all.

[RandomPeasant]

I think the overwhelming majority of people don't really separate material and moral considerations in any sort of strict way.

I would agree, as I think most people are Consequentialists in practice, but that doesn't really help. If the reason people do the things that get them into Elysium is because those things get them into Elysium, they're not doing those things because they are "objectively correct", they are doing them because they very contingently lead to a good outcome. And you could imagine how, even within the paradigm of D&D, a sufficiently powerful actor could change those incentives. If I promise to go around kidnapping petitioners and sending them to the opposite side of the Great Wheel, and have somehow accumulated sufficient power to do so for the majority of petitioners, that would change people's behavior, because their morality isn't "objectively correct", it merely has very powerful contingent forces on its side.


Is that the difference being [Good]/[Evil] and [Sherp]/[Flarg] is that this [Good]/[Evil] being objectively correct by definition, civilisations that follow [Good] will strive, be better places for everyone, be closer to a utopia, etc than civilisations that follow [Evil].

You're assuming your conclusion. Nothing in the rules says that actions that detect as [Good] are the best way to behave. Certainly some of them are, but there are other places where the alignment system demands that you not do things that benefit your civilization. Undead, for instance, represent an enormous economic advantage, but their creation and use is [Evil].


But the guaranty of being "objectively correct" means that anyone reaching sufficiently high level of omniscience and infinite wisdom in this universe would agree that this [Good] behaviour was actually the best behaviour to have (even if their previous ideologies and opinions disagreed with it).

Again, that's not how it works. If you believe in the Categorical Imperative, you don't believe that because you are pretty sure it is what the laws of the universe say. You believe it for some meta-ethical reason that may or may not be amenable to argument from detect spells.


This is actually quite monstrously unfair

Indeed. One could reasonably argue that the "test" is not "behave in a way that gets you into the afterlife you want", but "accumulate enough power to murder the gods". Of course, D&D declares usurping the power of the gods to be explicitly [Evil], despite the existence of gods of murder, torture, and betrayal. Because the way D&D morality works is so bonkers nonsense that D&D writers sometimes forget that it is not simply a reflection of their real-world moral beliefs.


"because one desired it's loot" is pretty selfish and nefarious.

There's really just no way to square the circle he's trying to square. The thing he is defending is monstrous, and a moral system that outputs "Good" or even "not Evil" for it is also monstrous, and not to be considered of any value or meaning regardless of what terms it has borrowed to justify itself.

[RedMage125]

"because one desired it's loot" is pretty selfish and nefarious.
It is indeed. That's why I used the term "murder".

By the RAW killing a creature of "consummate, irredeemable evil", even for selfish reasons was not an evil act. That's not the same as saying "it's a Good act". Which seems to be the statement you think I made that you are arguing.


And conversely, this:

if the character is motivated purely by the threat Demogorgon poses to others, not themselves, would appear to a case where killing for an unselfish, non-nefarious reason, is "still murder" - so the BOVD definition apparently isn't the be-all and end-all.

Negative. Killing innocents wasn't the only way to prevent this prophecy from coming to pass. Killing dozens and dozens of innocent children because that seems easier than building up forces to fight Demogorgon, or creating a system of vigilance to be aware of and put a stop to such a ritual, or trying to find another way to keep this from coming to pass...that's murder. Killing the children was a "shortcut". And prioritizing one's own expedience over the lives of innocents. That is absolutely selfish and nefarious, regardless of justifications.



You're assuming your conclusion. Nothing in the rules says that actions that detect as [Good] are the best way to behave. Certainly some of them are, but there are other places where the alignment system demands that you not do things that benefit your civilization. Undead, for instance, represent an enormous economic advantage, but their creation and use is [Evil].
It's disingenuous to pretend that the [Evil] of that is arbitrary, though. The "creation of a mockery of life and purity" is "a crime against the world" (to quote the RAW). The default setting of D&D is a world with both fantastic elements like magic, and objective, cosmic forces of Good/Evil/etc. Those forces are not just "detectable", they're able to be weaponized (Holy Smite, Unholy Blight, Holy Word, Blasphemy, Hallow, Consecrate, etc ad nauseum). Contacting planes suffused with [Evil] and summoning its denizens is [Evil], too. The idea that some magicks are tainted by objective [Evil] is not an isolated incident with undead.

There's also circumstantial evidence that there's some connection between an undead creature and the soul of the person. To wit, if your buddy dies in a dungeon, and you cut off his hand from his corpse, to get a Resurrection spell in town. While you're headed back to town, a necromancer animates the handless corpse as a zombie. Resurrection will not work on the hand to bring him back. Nor will True Resurrection. That zombie has to be destroyed before mortal magic can bring him back. Like i said, it's only circumstantial evidence, and not hard evidence, but it seems to imply some kind of connection there.




Again, that's not how it works. If you believe in the Categorical Imperative, you don't believe that because you are pretty sure it is what the laws of the universe say. You believe it for some meta-ethical reason that may or may not be amenable to argument from detect spells.
Taken by itself, I quite agree with this statement.




Indeed. One could reasonably argue that the "test" is not "behave in a way that gets you into the afterlife you want", but "accumulate enough power to murder the gods". Of course, D&D declares usurping the power of the gods to be explicitly [Evil], despite the existence of gods of murder, torture, and betrayal. Because the way D&D morality works is so bonkers nonsense that D&D writers sometimes forget that it is not simply a reflection of their real-world moral beliefs.
Are you referring to Ur-Priests? Because that's reducing a lot of complexity down. D&D RAW allows for clerics get power from a "cause". Gods are not required. Ur-Priests, on the other hand, are individuals who had that option, and still chose to steal and siphon power from gods anyway. Power that, according to the PrC entry, was power that the gods "normally channel to devout clerics". And they steal power from numerous deities to avoid detection, so they're not only taking from the gods of murder, torture, and betrayal.

Imagine if a guy who lived somewhere, and had access to a publicly available free Wi-Fi, but he chose, instead, to hack into his neighbor's private wifi, taking up his bandwidth, specifically because he wanted to mess with his neighbor. That's not a good person.




There's really just no way to square the circle he's trying to square. The thing he is defending is monstrous, and a moral system that outputs "Good" or even "not Evil" for it is also monstrous, and not to be considered of any value or meaning regardless of what terms it has borrowed to justify itself.

So alignment "is monstrous and not to be considered of any value or meaning"? By anyone?

Well, I guess that ends the discussion. This guy's opinion must be universal fact. There's no way anyone could believe otherwise.

Good thing alignment isn't actually a "moral system" then, huh? Which I have been saying this whole time.

[Satinavian]

3e defined "murder" as "killing a sentient being for selfish or nefarious purposes" (BoVD). Which is distinct from "killing" in general. Hence why I phrased what I did the way I did. If one was to murder a red dragon (and for the purposes of this discussion, this dragon is not one of those "<1%") because one desired it's loot, it is still not a Good act. But due to the nature of the removal of a powerful creature of Evil, it isn't an Evil act, either. That person who just wanted the loot could be in the same party as the guy who wants to kill the dragon for selfless and heroic reasons. One of those characters committed a Good act, one committed a Neutral act. Intent and Context matter.I would clearly rule murdering a red dragon purely for loot as evil. Being evil does not make one acceptable targets, nor does being powerful.


And i can easily justify my point via RAW. Unfortunately that des not mean i am right on the matter because the official alignment statements are full of contradictions and an overall mess without any clear guiding principle. Sometimes outcomes matter, sometimes intentions. Sometimes alignments are team jerseys and hurting the other team is the important part, sometimes it is about the deeds itself and how those are traditionally judged irl instead. Sometimes it is just stuff some author felt strongly about. The only people who are really wrong about alignment are those who claim to have understood it and that their reading is the correct one.


Now that D&D rules say that alignment is objective in universe and that how players and DMs read it is clearly subjective at the table leads to problems. Problems bad enough that i am questioning the benefit of keeping it at all.

[MoiMagnus]

You're assuming your conclusion. Nothing in the rules says that actions that detect as [Good] are the best way to behave. Certainly some of them are, but there are other places where the alignment system demands that you not do things that benefit your civilization. Undead, for instance, represent an enormous economic advantage, but their creation and use is [Evil].


Nothing is the rules says that [Good] is objectively correct either.

If [Good] is not the best way to behave, or if peoples that have omniscience and infinite wisdom disagree with it, they'll fundamentally disagree with this [Good] being "objectively correct" in the universe. Because for me that's the essence of being "objectively correct". The principle itself of being "objectively correct" is that peoples can only disagree with it if they are lacking some important knowledge (like being unable to see the whole picture). [And that's also why I don't think there are objectively correct moral systems IRL]

So yes, in a sense I'm assuming my conclusion, you're not wrong. Because I was debating on what the axiom we're taking is. On what being "objectively correct" actually means.

[RandomPeasant]

I would clearly rule murdering a red dragon purely for loot as evil. Being evil does not make one acceptable targets, nor does being powerful.

Not only that, but "it's okay to kill them and take their stuff because they are the bad people" is a statement that, in the real world, is the exclusive province of horrible villains. If alignment says that taking that kind of action isn't an Evil act, alignment has failed as any kind of moral judgment, and it's guidance is not worth listening to.


On what being "objectively correct" actually means.

The question you need to ask is if "objectively correct" is a property it even makes sense to talk about moral systems having. For a moral system to be "objectively correct" by the standard you're offering, it must be the case that there is some set of goals that are universally held. Which is another way of saying that that there is an "objectively correct" set of moral priorities. Which means the argument is circular. Put another way, if someone holds as their moral axiom that more people should die of disease, there is no amount of argument or evidence that will lead them to conclude that preventing the spread of a plague is desirable.

[Vahnavoi]

I mean, sure. But if the only difference is that "Murder is Bad" is objectively true in some metaphysical sense, that doesn't really seem meaningful. It'd be like saying that "Green is the Prettiest Color" would be objectively true. Interesting trivia, but zero impact on the setting.

Remember, the context of this discussion was you asking "how much would objective morality change?" and my answer was "almost always less than people think".

Now you're professing that for an entire set of moral theories, you can't see how those theories being true would incentivize people to change behaviour.

{Scrubbed} people who genuinely believe "green is the prettiest color" will put a lot more green things everywhere. Those kinds of statements are only trivial to people who lack internal motivation to act on them.

This is not exotic, we see this in real life all the time, concerning the most mundane of things. F.ex., a person may intellectually know exercise would make them healthier, they may have a mountain of evidence backing that claim up, when asked they may consciously and verbally affirm that belief... and still fail to act on that belief, because the emotional component that would drive the action is amiss or misaligned with what the world is telling them.

In other words: it's not the setting to which objective deontological morality has zero impact. It's people like you who are not impacted. And we can posit people like you for every imaginable system of objective ethics. Don't take this as a personal attack, it's merely logical follow-up to you yourself ascribing your inability to imagine some kinds of worlds to a personal defect.

---


There's another issue here: you're wrong. At least with regards to the default assumptions of the most recent editions of D&D going back to at least 2e.

{Scrubbed}


That means that Consequentialist ethics are really not a good analogy.

Positing happiness and suffering are measurable physical quantities or "cosmological forces" is not a problem for utilitarian ethics in the slightest. On the contrary, utilitarians would salivate at the thought of finding elementary particles of such information. Existence of cosmological forces does not eliminate consequentalism in favor of deontology, it makes them complementary and congruent, because now you've posited a causal force for moral actions: you have to follow the rules because you get punished or rewarded as consequence of breaking or following them.


How is "I don't play 1st edition" an actual "problem"?

{Scrubbed}


My preference for DMing is to stick fairly close to the RAW, with all house rules presented to the players at the beginning. This is out of a sense of fairness. I want my players to be able to consult the books, and have an expectation that the game will work in a way they understand.

You could achieve the exact same level of fairness by picking an actual moral philosophy to calibrate alignment to and tell your players to read a book about that. That would be in line with 1st Edition, since it specifically calls for the game master to hammer out the exact details of Good and Evil based on their real subjective morality, because a game book isn't supposed to be a complete treatise on morality. Nothing of practical worth changes about this for 2nd Edition and WotC era D&D. Alignment still requires GM adjucation to work. The splatbooks that try to expand on the details are contradictory with each other due to being work of multiple authors with no true shared vision and being hampered by aforementioned petty corporate and moralistic reasons. Alignment with, say, Books of Exalted Deeds and Vile Darkness is more detailed than core, but not appreciably better or easier to use than core.


And yet, that's the ethical system that most closely resembles the default model of D&D.

All games resemble deontological morality, because games are fundamentally rule-based excersizes. {Scrubbed}

---


But that's not because it's an ethical system. It's because it is a property of the universe.

Under moral realism, moral facts are properties of the external universe - the entire universe IS an ethical system. If you aren't willing to entertain that, you have nothing useful to say about objective morality.


[Good] and [Evil] would have the exact same effect on civilization if they were [Sherp] and [Flarg], because the effect is that people (who the argument assumes to be applying some sort of broadly consequentialist reasoning) would rather go to the Good afterlives than the Evil ones. That doesn't mean that the ethics that get you into Elysium are "objectively correct", it means they objectively get you in to Elysium, which is something you might or might not decide you want.

These kinds of word substitution thought experiments are fundamentally flawed. All words are empty symbols at start. They gain meaning through association. If "Sherp" correlates with life and happiness, and "Flarg" with death and suffering, it will not take a long time before naive consequentalism considers "Sherp" just another word for Good and "Flarg" just another word for Evil. For real examples of the same thing, see: sweet versus bitter, light versus dark, white versus black etc. People regularly observe moral dimensions in material qualities and then abstract that to the point where the word for the material quality can be used as a pointer to moral quality. The distinction between material facts and moral facts you are drawing in your real moral philosophy is neither universally agreed on nor necessary in an objectively consequentalist universe.


People in D&Dland are still going to have moral debates, they will simply use terminology that does not line up with what spells detect, because reusing terminology like that is just confusing.

{Scrubbed}People equivocate and use the same words for multiple distinct and even contradictory concepts all the damn time. {Scrubbed}

[RedMage125]

I would clearly rule murdering a red dragon purely for loot as evil. Being evil does not make one acceptable targets, nor does being powerful.

And i can easily justify my point via RAW.
How you would choose to make a ruling at your table as a DM is up to you, but as far as RAW...no.

Here's the verbatim quote from the text:
"In a fantasy world based on an objective definition of evil, killing an evil creature to stop it from doing further harm is not an evil act. Even killing an evil creature for personal gain is not exactly evil (although it’s not a good act), because it still stops the creature’s predations on the innocent. Such a justification, however, works only for the slaying of creatures of consummate, irredeemable evil, such as chromatic dragons."


Not only that, but "it's okay to kill them and take their stuff because they are the bad people" is a statement that, in the real world, is the exclusive province of horrible villains. If alignment says that taking that kind of action isn't an Evil act, alignment has failed as any kind of moral judgment, and it's guidance is not worth listening to.
Let's see...reducing all complexity and specifics to make a caricature of what was said and then attack that...check.
Continue to make the same point over and over, without ever addressing the counter-points...check.

I'll keep trying anyway. "It's not Evil, but also not Good to kill things and take their stuff" is something that explicitly only applies to the big, capital-E Evil creatures. Which again, still assumes the default mores of D&D are present. That Good/Evil/etc are objective forces. That some creatures actually can be inherently one or the other by their nature, and there are acts that have weight towards those forces, irrespective of sophistry and justification.

And again, alignment is not "morality". Not truly. It's which of those cosmic forces one is aligned with. It gets confusing, because a lot of people misunderstand it as such, but that's the case. Additionally confusing is that even people who DO understand alignment have, for years, used shorthand terms like "Moral axis" for the Good-Evil axis, and "Ethical axis" for the Law-Chaos one. While convenient to use as a shorthand, it tends to lead people into thinking it's literally true, and that alignment is some kind of "moral code".



The question you need to ask is if "objectively correct" is a property it even makes sense to talk about moral systems having. For a moral system to be "objectively correct" by the standard you're offering, it must be the case that there is some set of goals that are universally held. Which is another way of saying that that there is an "objectively correct" set of moral priorities. Which means the argument is circular. Put another way, if someone holds as their moral axiom that more people should die of disease, there is no amount of argument or evidence that will lead them to conclude that preventing the spread of a plague is desirable.
While in a lot of ways, it would be tautological, it is important to remember that, since D&D is a construct of fantasy, the devs do, in fact have the authority to set down default rules of "[X] is Good, [Y] is Evil in D&D". Which closes the "circular logic" loop. If you're deviating from default assumptions, then yes, you probably need better justification. But for those adhering to those default assumptions...it's not fallacious.



{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

My point was that in most editions of D&D, what you're saying does not apply.



Positing happiness and suffering are measurable physical quantities or "cosmological forces" is not a problem for utilitarian ethics in the slightest. On the contrary, utilitarians would salivate at the thought of finding elementary particles of such information. Existence of cosmological forces does not eliminate consequentalism in favor of deontology, it makes them complementary and congruent, because now you've posited a causal force for moral actions: you have to follow the rules because you get punished or rewarded as consequence of breaking or following them.
No, Good and Evil are cosmic forces that exist in observable, measurable quantities. And consequences only matter as far as they frame Context. Consequentialist ethics, in simple terms, means that the consequences of an act determine whether it is Good or Evil. Which is not true in the default idiom of D&D.

Example: Bob the Fighter has decided that he will straight-up kill the 17th person he sees on the street today. When he does, it just so happens that the person he killed happened to be a serial killer who was on his way to take a new victim. If D&D followed a Consequentialist model, then what Bob did would not be an evil act (given that D&D, unlike our real world, allows for a lot more violence in the pursuit of Good). But, by D&D RAW, Intent and Context matter. Bob was doing something random, chaotic, selfish, and evil. He had decided to murder someone "just because".
Contrariwise, if Bob was a a PC who had discovered the identity of said serial killer, and confronted them, been attacked, and killed in self-defense, it would not have been an evil act.

Consequentialism worries only that the serial killer is now no longer a threat. D&D alignment mores dictate that the context of how that happened is relevant, as well as intent of the person performing the act, according to an objective standard of Good/Evil/etc, determines the alignment weight of the act.



{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I reject your assertion as being any kind of "fact". By no objective measure is that factually true.

Different editions of D&D are just different. The idea that people who don't play your preferred edition "is part of the problem" is kind of "one true way-ism", is it not?


You could achieve the exact same level of fairness by picking an actual moral philosophy to calibrate alignment to and tell your players to read a book about that. That would be in line with 1st Edition, since it specifically calls for the game master to hammer out the exact details of Good and Evil based on their real subjective morality, because a game book isn't supposed to be a complete treatise on morality. Nothing of practical worth changes about this for 2nd Edition and WotC era D&D. Alignment still requires GM adjucation to work. The splatbooks that try to expand on the details are contradictory with each other due to being work of multiple authors with no true shared vision and being hampered by aforementioned petty corporate and moralistic reasons. Alignment with, say, Books of Exalted Deeds and Vile Darkness is more detailed than core, but not appreciably better or easier to use than core.
I disagree on so many fronts. The idea that "give your players homework to study real world moral and ethical frameworks, which still causes debates among the people who study them for their entire lives" is somehow "easier to do than use core assumptions" is an assertion I cannot get behind. Furthermore, D&D is a game. It's supposed to be fun. And for most players, in my experience, having a DM say "Oh, I know the rules say this works [X] way, but I've decided to change that" without prior notice is not fun. And most DMs, even when they do tell players all their house rules up front, do not dive headlong into a discussion of their entire moral/ethical philosophy.



All games resemble deontological morality, because games are fundamentally rule-based excersizes. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Given your previous assertions, it was not clear you were making a joke, no. Especially given how denigrative you are to the idea of a deontological model in favor of a consequentialist one.

[Satinavian]

How you would choose to make a ruling at your table as a DM is up to you, but as far as RAW...no.

Here's the verbatim quote from the text:
"In a fantasy world based on an objective definition of evil, killing an evil creature to stop it from doing further harm is not an evil act. Even killing an evil creature for personal gain is not exactly evil (although it’s not a good act), because it still stops the creature’s predations on the innocent. Such a justification, however, works only for the slaying of creatures of consummate, irredeemable evil, such as chromatic dragons."

Exactly as i wrote. The official statements are nothing but a contradicting mess without any prevalent guiding principle. The statement from the quote is obviously more in line with the team jersey morality, but that makes it not more relevant than all the points where murder for the sake of selfenriching are clearly labeled evil without putting in such an exception.

[RedMage125]

Exactly as i wrote. The official statements are nothing but a contradicting mess without any prevalent guiding principle. The statement from the quote is obviously more in line with the team jersey morality, but that makes it not more relevant than all the points where murder for the sake of selfenriching are clearly labeled evil without putting in such an exception.

It's not contradictory, because it's only about the distinction regarding beings to whom Evil is inherent.

For example, even if a group of orcs are Chaotic Evil, killing them only for the desire to take their stuff is still murder, and thus still an evil act.

Because "killing for selfish and nefarious reasons is an Evil act" is a general rule. As is "some beings exist, for whom Evil is an intrinsic part of their nature". This example is a clarification of the intersection of these rules, and is an example of Specific>General. In that, "specifically killing those beings of consummate Evil, even for selfish reasons, is not an Evil act, but still not a Good one". It actually warns against the idea of trying to justify murder by specifying the only case in which it could be "not Evil", and clarifies that it's still "not Good".

[RandomPeasant]

Now you're professing that for an entire set of moral theories, you can't see how those theories being true would incentivize people to change behaviour.

Your whole example isn't showing that. If the analogy is to exercise, people aren't acting or not acting because of a moral theory. They are doing so because of a direct consequence. Imagine that, instead of being an inherent property of the multiverse, you were routed to an afterlife based on the evaluation of a guy named Greg. We can't reasonably call Greg-ism "objectively correct", because it's simply the philosophy of some guy. But it has the exact same effect as the "objectively correct" morality of D&Dland.


Under moral realism, moral facts are properties of the external universe - the entire universe IS an ethical system. If you aren't willing to entertain that, you have nothing useful to say about objective morality.

You've just moved your circular reasoning up a level. Yes, in a universe with detect good, moral realism leads to the conclusion that observation ethics based on detect good are correct. But the existence of detect good no more obligates you to be a moral realist than it obligates you to be an observation ethicist in your first place. So there's really no argument here, just an observation that if you believe things that lead you to agree with alignment you agree with alignment. But the issue is the people who don't believe those things.


If "Sherp" correlates with life and happiness, and "Flarg" with death and suffering, it will not take a long time before naive consequentalism considers "Sherp" just another word for Good and "Flarg" just another word for Evil.

And what about all those people who aren't naive consequentialists? I'm not going to claim that it is impossible to have a moral framework that aligns with detect good. Alignment is accurate in many places, even if the overall system is broken. But you don't have that moral framework because of alignment, and its existence doesn't make that framework more correct, because that framework isn't based on it.

[RedMage125]

Your whole example isn't showing that. If the analogy is to exercise, people aren't acting or not acting because of a moral theory. They are doing so because of a direct consequence. Imagine that, instead of being an inherent property of the multiverse, you were routed to an afterlife based on the evaluation of a guy named Greg. We can't reasonably call Greg-ism "objectively correct", because it's simply the philosophy of some guy. But it has the exact same effect as the "objectively correct" morality of D&Dland.
The distinction is that, as a construct of fantasy, the devs actually have the authority to declare such as "true" in said construct. And then within the construct, those things are objective.

And if you're changing those base assumptions, yes, a lot of what follows will not be coherent, and needs to be changed as well.



You've just moved your circular reasoning up a level. Yes, in a universe with detect good, moral realism leads to the conclusion that observation ethics based on detect good are correct. But the existence of detect good no more obligates you to be a moral realist than it obligates you to be an observation ethicist in your first place. So there's really no argument here, just an observation that if you believe things that lead you to agree with alignment you agree with alignment. But the issue is the people who don't believe those things.
People who don't believe in those things, and wish to alter those default core assumptions from their game when they DM are of course going to have issues if they try to continue to use mechanics build in those core default assumptions.

So what you're saying is just as circular. "If I reject the default assumptions on which alignment is predicated, alignment ceases to function as intended, and in fact, causes dissonance with the new assumptions I have put in place". While correct, as far as statements go, it is not a valid indictment of alignment. Because one only did half the work. It's like altering the starting point of a 5k run by moving it further away from the finish line, and then complaining that the finish line wasn't truly 5km from the starting point, and acting like it's proof that the principles of 5k runs are flawed.



But you don't have that moral framework because of alignment, and its existence doesn't make that framework more correct, because that framework isn't based on it.

Taken in isolation and out of context, I agree with this sentiment. But I agree because alignment is not a morality framework, nor is it attempting to be.

Morality can exist in a D&D setting that uses default alignment. And it can be independent of the objective values of "Good", or even "Law".

What I find engaging about that is using it to create antagonists that still fit within the confines of "Good" by alignment mores. I once had a side plot that involved a LG paladin of Bahamut (who gradually evolved from allied NPC to quest giver/patron for the party) who eventually became the de facto ruler of a city, and instituted a regime based on his values. When the players returned to the city, they found a people who were basically oppressed by an overbearing moral authority who restricted freedoms and had little tolerance for individuality and expression "for their own good". Was this regime ethical? Certainly not. Did it stay within the confines of how D&D defines "Good"? Certainly, yes.

[MoiMagnus]

The distinction is that, as a construct of fantasy, the devs actually have the authority to declare such as "true" in said construct. And then within the construct, those things are objective.

Additionally within the context of fiction, and in particular RPGs, the author/GM can enforce fate/karma/narrative convinience/etc for this correctness to never be contradicted.

Which come back to the initial point of OP: his GM forcing any pact with an [Evil] entity to turn badly for whoever does it. IMO that's the kind of thing an ethical system to be "objectively correct" means in a RPG. (And that has a lot of negative consequence for player agency, but that's not the point of this answer to discuss it).

It's a variation of "divinely enforced morality", but where the enforcement is outside of the universe, by the author/GM.

[NichG]

Additionally within the context of fiction, and in particular RPGs, the author/GM can enforce fate/karma/narrative convinience/etc for this correctness to never be contradicted.


Up to the point a player interacts with it and forms an opinion, sure. All it takes to make that objective correctness be contradicted is for a PC to be punished for doing the bad thing and then say 'good, I liked that, punish me more' or rewarded for doing the good thing and saying 'wow, that outcome sucks, I hate it'.

To put it another way, if the author of fiction enforces the 'correctness' of a moral system in-universe, they aren't just forcing the consequences to align with that system, they're also constraining the characters that they write about to already be in agreement with that system's goals.

An author can write anything, but they can't decide arbitrarily that what they've written is coherent.

[RandomPeasant]

Up to the point a player interacts with it and forms an opinion, sure. All it takes to make that objective correctness be contradicted is for a PC to be punished for doing the bad thing and then say 'good, I liked that, punish me more' or rewarded for doing the good thing and saying 'wow, that outcome sucks, I hate it'.

Or just to say "I don't think this punishment is enough to decide that what I did was wrong". If you get fined $100 for stealing, but stealing the thing was worth $200 to you, it wasn't "objectively incorrect" for you to steal the thing. Ethics just fundamentally aren't objective. You can have "doing this gets you to Elysium" be an objective part of the universe, but you can't declare "people want to go to Elysium" to be an objective part of the universe. Especially when your universe includes people who don't want to go to Elysium. Even Good people don't necessarily want to go to Elysium, they might want to go to Celestia or Ysgard instead.

[RedMage125]

Or just to say "I don't think this punishment is enough to decide that what I did was wrong". If you get fined $100 for stealing, but stealing the thing was worth $200 to you, it wasn't "objectively incorrect" for you to steal the thing. Ethics just fundamentally aren't objective.
That's just kind of a caricature of Moral Relativism tho. Not even a good representation of what Moral Relativism means in the context of an actual study of Ethics.

And that last statement is kind of the crux of distinction between ethical standpoints. Deontological ethics essentially state that there are objective fundamentals in ethics.



You can have "doing this gets you to Elysium" be an objective part of the universe, but you can't declare "people want to go to Elysium" to be an objective part of the universe. Especially when your universe includes people who don't want to go to Elysium. Even Good people don't necessarily want to go to Elysium, they might want to go to Celestia or Ysgard instead.

This is actually a very good point towards what I have been saying. That alignment isn't morality or ethics. Alignment isn't intended to say "people want to go to Elysium", but more of "here is the objective framework that determines which of the cosmic forces you are aligned with, which is one of the key determining factors of what afterlife you will go to".

Deities kind of skew the afterlife part of the equation. A non-cleric dwarf may be Neutral in alignment, but a devout follower of Moradin. He may still, as a follower of Moradin, be allowed into the afterlife in Moradin's demesne in Celestia. That's more about adhering to the moral/ethical tenets of Moradin's faith than what alignment he was.

[NichG]

That's just kind of a caricature of Moral Relativism tho. Not even a good representation of what Moral Relativism means in the context of an actual study of Ethics.

And that last statement is kind of the crux of distinction between ethical standpoints. Deontological ethics essentially state that there are objective fundamentals in ethics.


A deontological framework can say e.g. 'within this framework, this is what you should do, just because' and still be self-consistent. It can't however say 'within this framework, this is what you should do, and everyone agrees with that and believes it'. That's the issue here, beyond questions about whether there are e.g. objective consequences to certain standards of behavior in the universe. You can say of someone 'but, objectively, they're wrong', but if their actions are consistent with their own ethical views and values, the consequences consistent with what they want to bring about in the world, etc, then the statement 'they're wrong' doesn't bind to very much.

[Batcathat]

This is actually a very good point towards what I have been saying. That alignment isn't morality or ethics. Alignment isn't intended to say "people want to go to Elysium", but more of "here is the objective framework that determines which of the cosmic forces you are aligned with, which is one of the key determining factors of what afterlife you will go to".

If that was the intention, it was probably a bad idea to name the alignments after morality concepts like "good" and "evil". That's like saying "So, these are red dragons and green dragons. But they're not actually red or green, it's just something we call them."

[Vahnavoi]

.
My point was that in most editions of D&D, what you're saying does not apply.

Something I directly expressed awareness of in the text you quoted. {Scrubbed}



No, Good and Evil are cosmic forces that exist in observable, measurable quantities. And consequences only matter as far as they frame Context. Consequentialist ethics, in simple terms, means that the consequences of an act determine whether it is Good or Evil. Which is not true in the default idiom of D&D.

Example: Bob the Fighter has decided that he will straight-up kill the 17th person he sees on the street today. When he does, it just so happens that the person he killed happened to be a serial killer who was on his way to take a new victim. If D&D followed a Consequentialist model, then what Bob did would not be an evil act (given that D&D, unlike our real world, allows for a lot more violence in the pursuit of Good). But, by D&D RAW, Intent and Context matter. Bob was doing something random, chaotic, selfish, and evil. He had decided to murder someone "just because".
Contrariwise, if Bob was a a PC who had discovered the identity of said serial killer, and confronted them, been attacked, and killed in self-defense, it would not have been an evil act.

Consequentialism worries only that the serial killer is now no longer a threat. D&D alignment mores dictate that the context of how that happened is relevant, as well as intent of the person performing the act, according to an objective standard of Good/Evil/etc, determines the alignment weight of the act.

The moment you posit Good and Evil as cosmic forces of causal power, you make them a factor in consequentialist evaluation. The idea that deontology and consequentialism are opposed hinges on the idea that there is no causal link between following rules and outcome of actions, which is not true if context and intent direct cosmic forces and influence things like which afterlife you end up in. If deciding to straight up murder a random person attracts cosmic force of Evil as a consequence of you deciding to do so, then under consequentialist ethics that decision is Evil even if it accidentally eliminates some other Evil.

A cosmic moral force is not even necessary to reach this conclusion in consequentialist ethics: projected forward in time, it's reasonable to predict that random murder causes net decrease in overall life and happiness and thus should not be done. On the flipside, it's reasonable to predict that projected forward in time, doing careful investigations and only killing if your own life and happiness are in immediate danger is less likely to cause net decrease in overall life and happiness, and thus is okay to do.


I reject your assertion as being any kind of "fact". By no objective measure is that factually true.

How confident are you in that statement? (https://shaneplays.com/rpg-history-tsr-code-of-ethics-dd-comics-code-authority-rules/)


Different editions of D&D are just different. The idea that people who don't play your preferred edition "is part of the problem" is kind of "one true way-ism", is it not?

No, because the problem isn't that people don't play my preferred edition. It's that they're arguing moral philosophy from incoherent premises due to 1) their source material being influenced by petty corporate and moralistic motives and 2) not knowing enough moral philosophy to clearly state their own premises and see where they conflict with a game. The conclusion of the post you quoted wasn't that everyone should play 1st Edition AD&D, it was that people should clarify what moral position they want a game to reflect, starting with clarifying whether they want consequentialist, deontological or aretological morals.


I disagree on so many fronts. The idea that "give your players homework to study real world moral and ethical frameworks, which still causes debates among the people who study them for their entire lives" is somehow "easier to do than use core assumptions" is an assertion I cannot get behind.

1) learning "core assumptions" of D&D is homework. Learning rules of any complex games is.

2) the fictional moral philosophy of D&D causes exactly the same quantity and quality of debates as real moral philosophies, because it borrows relevant parts from real moral philosophy and mythology. Evidence: this and every other alignment debate thread on these forums.

So the idea that "core assumptions of D&D" are easier to use than other sources is dubious at best.


Furthermore, D&D is a game. It's supposed to be fun. And for most players, in my experience, having a DM say "Oh, I know the rules say this works [X] way, but I've decided to change that" without prior notice is not fun. And most DMs, even when they do tell players all their house rules up front, do not dive headlong into a discussion of their entire moral/ethical philosophy.

3) just because D&D is "supposed to be fun" does not mean its actual alignment rules are fun - that goal is aspirational and empirically dubious.

4) the idea that learning and discussing real moral philosophy cannot be fun is likewise dubious. It's especially dubious if you insists alignment is fun, because, again, alignment provenly sparks same quality and quantity of debate as real moral philosophy.

5) The rules that say how things work literally say the DM can decide to change them to fit their setting. Yes, even without prior notice. Several other core mechanics, not just alignment, rely on this high priority rule to actually make the game function, and it is all justified by the DM doing it to keep the game fun. Your experience is anecdotal at best and at worst, just suggests you are bad at making on-the-spot judgement calls that are fun to your players.

6) Appealing to "most DMs" is not a good argument, because it's not clear "most DMs" are doing a good job at DMing. There are better reasons to not spend too much time in set-up phase of a game than argument from popularity.


Given your previous assertions, it was not clear you were making a joke, no. Especially given how denigrative you are to the idea of a deontological model in favor of a consequentialist one.

The context and point of that joke was how easy it is to imagine a world of objective deontological morality. {Scrubbed} what I actually said to you is that consequentialism and deontology can be complementary and congruent.

---


Your whole example isn't showing that. If the analogy is to exercise, people aren't acting or not acting because of a moral theory. They are doing so because of a direct consequence.

Health is a factor in plenty of moral theories and direct consequence being of moral value is the point of various consequentialist moral theorems. The actual example was of people failing to act according to such theorems despite their outspoken beliefs - of not doing things despite consequrnce.


Imagine that, instead of being an inherent property of the multiverse, you were routed to an afterlife based on the evaluation of a guy named Greg. We can't reasonably call Greg-ism "objectively correct", because it's simply the philosophy of some guy. But it has the exact same effect as the "objectively correct" morality of D&Dland.

You are presupposing that Greg's evaluation is not inherent property of the multiverse. It's possible to imagine a world where Greg's subjective authority and judgement have objective physical underpinnings and thus can be said to be objectively correct.


You've just moved your circular reasoning up a level. Yes, in a universe with detect good, moral realism leads to the conclusion that observation ethics based on detect good are correct. But the existence of detect good no more obligates you to be a moral realist than it obligates you to be an observation ethicist in your first place. So there's really no argument here, just an observation that if you believe things that lead you to agree with alignment you agree with alignment.

I already addressed this entire line of reasoning in my discussion with BatCatHat. Shortly: any logical system past certain level of complexity cannot be both coherent and complete. Coherent but incomplete systems can have statements which are true but cannot be shown to be true within that system without, say, committing tautology. Hence some statements have to be accepted without proof, as axioms. This is just as true of your brand of moral non-realism or constructivism as it is of moral realism. Nothing about your observation actually obligates anyone to abandon moral realism or refutes the possibility of it being true. All it means is that a world with objective morality can still have people who don't believe in objective morality, the exact same thing I said to BatCatHat.


But the issue is the people who don't believe those things. And what about all those people who aren't naive consequentialists?

What about those people? They are simply wrong about the world they live in, provided naive consequentialism is true. There is no issue for alignment, because it does not posit all people are Good - on the contrary, the overall system posits majority of people are not. People failing to believe or act on objective morality is a possible explanation for that, not an error or contradiction.


I'm not going to claim that it is impossible to have a moral framework that aligns with detect good. Alignment is accurate in many places, even if the overall system is broken. But you don't have that moral framework because of alignment, and its existence doesn't make that framework more correct, because that framework isn't based on it.

That's like saying humans don't have perceptions of hot and cold because of physical temperature. When and where objective framework of alignment is observable to humans, there is a causal link between that and the subjective moral frameworks humans develop. What you say only makes sense on a metagame level, where the existence of objective morality can be attributed to subjective decision by a game designer or game master

[Mechalich]

2) the fictional moral philosophy of D&D causes exactly the same quantity and quality of debates as real moral philosophies, because it borrows relevant parts from real moral philosophy and mythology. Evidence: this and every other alignment debate thread on these forums.


I would contest this, especially on the issue of quality. D&D's moral system, like so much of the meta-setting world-building, both explicit and implied, connected to D&D, is simply bad. For comparison, debates about the economics of D&D worlds are common, and they are terrible because the economics of D&D worlds makes no sense. Debates about morality play out similarly.

While it is certainly possible, and even often highly illuminating, to utilize fantasy settings to setup up intriguing moral conundrums that vary from human understanding of how our universe works and/or is believed to work, D&D does not do so effectively. There are seeds of interest in D&D - notably the recognition that any 'universal' morality structure is going to get awfully weird if there are hundreds of sapient species with wildly variant psychologies involved, but it's just too complicated and contradictory to provide a solid foundation for debate.

[MoiMagnus]

I would contest this, especially on the issue of quality. D&D's moral system, like so much of the meta-setting world-building, both explicit and implied, connected to D&D, is simply bad. For comparison, debates about the economics of D&D worlds are common, and they are terrible because the economics of D&D worlds makes no sense. Debates about morality play out similarly.

The comparison with the debate about D&D economics is quite interesting.

Especially since D&D economics assume that a lot of objects have an objective value in gold pieces (with spells asking for material components of a specific values). You can explain this objective value as
+ being divinely enforced (the gods require a sacrifice of something worth a lot in your money, though that's a little awkward for arcane magic),
+ or that you're in a high magic universe where transmutation is common enough for deviations from the "price according to magic laws" of an item being quickly solved by transmuters changing gold into that item or that item into gold to correct this.
+ or the some GM's intervention of "problems don't happen because they don't and that's an axiom, and PCs who try to exploit this broken system will change their mind after an OOC discussion".

[RandomPeasant]

If that was the intention, it was probably a bad idea to name the alignments after morality concepts like "good" and "evil". That's like saying "So, these are red dragons and green dragons. But they're not actually red or green, it's just something we call them."

Exactly. If you're willing to admit that Good does not, in fact, have any inherent attachment "what is the morally correct choice" it does solve the problem of things that are not morally correct (or even morally defensible) actions being called "Good". But it also means that you are explicitly admitting that the system is using confusing terms for no reason. If detect good is not a moral judgement, there is no reason for it not to be detect sherp.


The idea that deontology and consequentialism are opposed hinges on the idea that there is no causal link between following rules and outcome of actions, which is not true if context and intent direct cosmic forces and influence things like which afterlife you end up in.

Deontology and consequentialism aren't opposed. They're orthogonal. If following rules has objective consequences, that doesn't inherently align them. It could very easily be that the set of consequences the consequentialist cares about aren't the result of following the rules the deontologist cares about. It could even be that they are wholly untethered from the results of following any particular set of rules, or that the rules the deontologist follows do not consistently result in any particular set of consequences.


If deciding to straight up murder a random person attracts cosmic force of Evil as a consequence of you deciding to do so, then under consequentialist ethics that decision is Evil even if it accidentally eliminates some other Evil.

Only if your version of consequentialism is "don't take actions that attract Evil". But that is far from the only version of consequentialism you could have. You could, for instance, say "only take actions that reduce the amount of Evil", in which case it might be fine to murder random people if that could be shown to prevent a sufficiently large Evil. Or it could be "maximize the amount of grapefruit in the world", in which case you would care not at all if an action attracted cosmic forces of Evil provided it also improved your grapefruit harvest.


3) just because D&D is "supposed to be fun" does not mean its actual alignment rules are fun - that goal is aspirational and empirically dubious.

It's also not really clear what the limiting principle there is. It's true that D&D is supposed to be fun, but surely it must be possible for some parts of it not to be fun. When I cook food, the intention is for it to be delicious, but that doesn't mean I never burn things, and it certainly wouldn't be a valid response to give to someone who told me what I had cooked tasted bad and they wanted to order pizza instead.


You are presupposing that Greg's evaluation is not inherent property of the multiverse. It's possible to imagine a world where Greg's subjective authority and judgement have objective physical underpinnings and thus can be said to be objectively correct.

You can also imagine one where they don't. The point of postulating Greg is to argue that something determining the afterlife you get does not inherently make it "objectively correct". In particular, if people are acting a way because of the consequences of their actions, their behavior isn't based on objective correctness, because if those actions had different consequences they would behave differently. You could also imagine asking about a soulless creature, which has no afterlife, and is therefore unconcerned with whether their actions point them towards Elysium or Baator. If such a creature does not follow your morality, it cannot be said to be "objectively correct".


Nothing about your observation actually obligates anyone to abandon moral realism or refutes the possibility of it being true.

And nothing about your observations obligates anyone to accept moral realism or proves that it could be true. Yes, my position is just as circular as yours. That's the point. It's not like physics, where you can get to the ground truth of how the universe behaves. Morality is inherently a subjective domain, and no amount of you calling someone wrong is going to convince them to not have the preferences they have.


They are simply wrong about the world they live in, provided naive consequentialism is true.

That's a meaningless statement, because naive consequentialism isn't a thing that can be true (or, to be fair to it, false). It's simply a framework for evaluating whether actions are ethical or not. It could be that living according to naive consequentialism results in getting a generally-desirable afterlife, but that doesn't make it "true". People could, after all, decide that they personally did not desire that afterlife.

[RedMage125]

A deontological framework can say e.g. 'within this framework, this is what you should do, just because' and still be self-consistent. It can't however say 'within this framework, this is what you should do, and everyone agrees with that and believes it'. That's the issue here, beyond questions about whether there are e.g. objective consequences to certain standards of behavior in the universe.
D&D alignment isn't even trying to do the latter. It's entirely possible to have people who believe what they do is good and right, or "for the greater good", and be Evil in alignment.


You can say of someone 'but, objectively, they're wrong', but if their actions are consistent with their own ethical views and values, the consequences consistent with what they want to bring about in the world, etc, then the statement 'they're wrong' doesn't bind to very much.
That's getting closer to what Moral Relativism really means, but still missing the point. People in a D&D setting that uses alignment by default RAW can have different ideas about what is "moral" or "ethical". Just because they don't end up with an alignment of "X Good" doesn't mean they're "objectively wrong", it means they're objectively "not of Good alignment". Alignment isn't morality, not truly.

All the discussions of culture and values and the afterlife keep forgetting the case of deities. Deities can take all of their worshippers into their domain after death, not just the ones who match alignment. And only clerics have ever needed to be similar in alignment to their deity. Even in Forgotten Realms, the setting where deities are probably the most involved, lay worshippers don't need to match alignment in order to be accepted. Now, some sense needs to be made, because a Chaotic Evil person probably isn't living his life according to the tenets and ethos of Lathander (and would be judged Faithless or False). But a Lawful Neutral mercenary could very well be welcome in the domain of Tempus (a chaotic deity).


If that was the intention, it was probably a bad idea to name the alignments after morality concepts like "good" and "evil". That's like saying "So, these are red dragons and green dragons. But they're not actually red or green, it's just something we call them."
They still adhere to typical Western mores of Good/Evil/etc. The distinction is, that it's not the same as, nor does it preclude, distinct moral and ethics viewpoints.


Something I directly expressed awareness of in the text you quoted{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}
No, you mentioned something about 1e, and carried on like this was something that was somehow the only "true" way to view or run things, and that other versions either did not exist or were not correct. And when discussing the rules, such as in a forum setting like this, RAW delineates what is and is not "fact".

Also, I would never, in any viewpoint, be a Gryffindor. So...100 points from Slytherin for your mistake, then.



The moment you posit Good and Evil as cosmic forces of causal power, you make them a factor in consequentialist evaluation. The idea that deontology and consequentialism are opposed hinges on the idea that there is no causal link between following rules and outcome of actions, which is not true if context and intent direct cosmic forces and influence things like which afterlife you end up in. If deciding to straight up murder a random person attracts cosmic force of Evil as a consequence of you deciding to do so, then under consequentialist ethics that decision is Evil even if it accidentally eliminates some other Evil.

A cosmic moral force is not even necessary to reach this conclusion in consequentialist ethics: projected forward in time, it's reasonable to predict that random murder causes net decrease in overall life and happiness and thus should not be done. On the flipside, it's reasonable to predict that projected forward in time, doing careful investigations and only killing if your own life and happiness are in immediate danger is less likely to cause net decrease in overall life and happiness, and thus is okay to do.
You're just slapping the word "consequentialist" onto what amounts to a deontological framework. Or rather, applying a broad spectrum of "likely overall consequences of a deed" in order to make a framework of "x actions are Good or Bad", which is a deontological tenet.
Consequentialism refers only to the results. In the example, a murderer was stopped, making the act Good, by consequentialist mores. But Bob's Intent and Context was just that he was killing person #17 for his own jollies. Which is murder, and by D&D mores, would be an Evil act. Like I said, D&D alignment does not perfectly model deontological ethics, but D-ethics comes the closest if one is trying to understand objective values of "Good" and "Evil". But there's more to it than that.



How confident are you in that statement? (https://shaneplays.com/rpg-history-tsr-code-of-ethics-dd-comics-code-authority-rules/)

Well, I read your link, and...still pretty confident. Despite your claim, nothing in that link says that "TSR changed alignment for 2e to have objective Good/Evil/etc in order to comply with petty corporate motivations". There isn't even anything ABOUT alignment, nor the creation of Second Edition in this article. Most of the evidence and internal TSR memos are from after 2e was published (1989). In fact, the only piece of evidence that even predates Second Edition is the first, one-page memo, which still doesn't say anything of the sort, just some things people have to stick to in their writing.

So yeah...I still call your bluff on the claim you made.


No, because the problem isn't that people don't play my preferred edition. It's that they're arguing moral philosophy from incoherent premises due to 1) their source material being influenced by petty corporate and moralistic motives and 2) not knowing enough moral philosophy to clearly state their own premises and see where they conflict with a game. The conclusion of the post you quoted wasn't that everyone should play 1st Edition AD&D, it was that people should clarify what moral position they want a game to reflect, starting with clarifying whether they want consequentialist, deontological or aretological morals.
People should absolutely have an understanding of what kind of game they're playing, and how whatever house rules are going to be in effect will be applied. That's just a DM doing their job right.

But whether or not the DM personally believes in consequentialist or deontological ethical mores could be irrelevant. I'm not the only DM who sets aside my notions of Good/Evil/etc when I DM. I go by what the RAW says for those things, like I said, because I want my players to be able to understand that what the book says will apply. That works for me. And I've never once had an issue with alignment at my table. In over 20 years of participating on various D&D forums over the years, I can honestly say that 100% of stories people share about "alignment is bad because it does X" are people deviating from the RAW. And while I don't think "everyone should play by RAW", I do believe that if someone deviates from the rules, then those rules aren't the cause of the issue. Like I said to another poster, if you reject the founding assumptions of the default RAW of alignment, and run your game a different manner, it's no surprise that the remaining mechanics for alignment become nonsensical and do not resonate with you.

Depending on the edition played, removing/changing alignment could be a real bear. But it's necessary to do the whole job if one is going to do part of it. Blaming alignment for "being bad" because one rejected the default assumptions and changed the way it works and now the mechanics don't fit the way that person is doing it is absurd.



1) learning "core assumptions" of D&D is homework. Learning rules of any complex games is.

2) the fictional moral philosophy of D&D causes exactly the same quantity and quality of debates as real moral philosophies, because it borrows relevant parts from real moral philosophy and mythology. Evidence: this and every other alignment debate thread on these forums.

So the idea that "core assumptions of D&D" are easier to use than other sources is dubious at best.
OBVIOUSLY, learning rules of a game involves reading and comprehension. But there ARE rules in the game which cover this. As opposed to your suggestion, which was "read the way the game works, but also read this Ethics textbook", and you called that "easier to do" than "read the way the game works, and done". Full stop. That was the point.



3) just because D&D is "supposed to be fun" does not mean its actual alignment rules are fun - that goal is aspirational and empirically dubious.

4) the idea that learning and discussing real moral philosophy cannot be fun is likewise dubious. It's especially dubious if you insists alignment is fun, because, again, alignment provenly sparks same quality and quantity of debate as real moral philosophy.
Some people don't like alignment, and I don't judge. I think everyone should play the edition they like, the way they like. D&D thrives on customization and houserules. I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion, or make them like it. Where I get adamant, is people making false and absurd claims about the rules, and/or acting like their opinion is somehow "fact".



5) The rules that say how things work literally say the DM can decide to change them to fit their setting. Yes, even without prior notice. Several other core mechanics, not just alignment, rely on this high priority rule to actually make the game function, and it is all justified by the DM doing it to keep the game fun. Your experience is anecdotal at best and at worst, just suggests you are bad at making on-the-spot judgement calls that are fun to your players.
I don;t know why you decided to take a dig at me and the way I run my games. But no, actually, I don't have issues with on-the-spot judgment calls. I am referring to, as a general principle, the idiom that I (and many people in the community here) hold to, which is "all house rules and deviations from what the rules say should be made clear up front". "Gotcha DMing" is sloppy, lazy, and, IMO, adversarial to players (and that's player's, not just characters).


The context and point of that joke was how easy it is to imagine a world of objective deontological morality. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote} I actually said to you is that consequentialism and deontology can be complementary and congruent.
That was the perception you gave. I can acknowledge that I may have had an incorrect one. But that is certainly how you came across, especially with the statement "Deontological ethics where things are Good or Evil based on what the Big Book of Rules says is even more trivial, because come on now" (copy/pasted from your post). Do you see how you gave that impression? Even if I didn't get that you were making a joke, and I can admit when I'm wrong, but I hope you see why I thought that.

[King of Nowhere]

I want to skip the whole alignment discussion to give my input on the original topic, that of working for evil patrons.
And there is a whole evil overlord list of suggestions for how to be effective and avoid bond villain stupidity. And a lot of those rules are about being good to your mooks, treating them well, not screwing them over needlessly.
Because you want to keep your mooks. Because you want to get competent mooks, not just the terminally dumb who are too dumb to realize you are screwing them, and will be too dumb to perform their tasks. A reputation for fairness is valuable in the criminal environment.

Regarding reward, good tend to have more intangible rewards. Evil will get you money right now. Good will get you allies, people who owe you favors, reputation, a more functional society to live in...
There isn't a clear cut rule. The world is not linear. Sometimes you can get away with some evil with no risk; for example, you take some robbers and you keep their loot, claiming they did spend it all. If you keep half their loot and claim they spent the rest, you get the good PR and you get to keep stolen money.
Other times the evil option will be downright stupid. Like keeping the robber's loot which includes some very recognizable jewelry, thus implicating yourself.
If a dm goes out of his way to have evil deeds be punished and good deeds be rewarded, he's not doing a good job. It's basically a form of railroading

[icefractal]

I think it's a kinda linear thought, too linear, but I'm totally on the opposite site of the spectrum - I think the DM should greatly award evil actions (especially if intelligent) and leave the good guys with an empty bag. (Yes, I did read the thread, but the OP is perfect for what I want to respond to)

I'm going to disagree with this. While indeed, there's no reason that evil has to be self-sabotaging, neither is it unrealistic - it happens plenty IRL. And while good deeds can go unrewarded, they can also go plenty rewarded, or often "about as rewarded as evil deeds".

There's this trend in fiction to always make the evil option more effective, in order to create a dilemma. And I understand that, but it's not realistic, and being used so often I'd say it actually counts as misinformation to the viewers/readers. Like, no, I'm not saying it will "corrupt" them, but if a bunch of books all started treating "Brushing your teeth with maple syrup works great" as an obviously true thing, that would be undesirable for the same reasons.

For example, people like to pretend zero-sum thinking is the logical/cynical choice, but there can be negative sums. Which also ties in with - "people don't do evil things for no reason" - that is true, but they often do them for ****ty reasons.

Take, for example, this:
"[Person] has rejected my romantic advances. Therefore I'll stalk them and leave threats until they're forced to leave town. Oh ****, I got caught and am now in prison."
There was a clear reason ("nobody gets away with rejecting ME!"), but the end result was pure negative utility - nobody came out ahead here, and from any "rational self benefit" position it was entirely a bad idea.

[Batcathat]

[SIZE=1]And I understand that, but it's not realistic, and being used so often I'd say it actually counts as misinformation to the viewers/readers.

That might be true, but compared to "the universe will bend over backwards to reward the 'Good' choice because good always triumphs" I'd say it's at the very least less unrealistic. The most realistic is answer is obviously "It depends on the situation", so automatically leaning in either direction isn't ideal.

And yes, having benefits to the "evil" choice is used to create a dilemma, but at least that means it's a meaningful dilemma. If the hero has to choose between option A (morally good and rewarding!) and option B (morally bad and unrewarding!) I'm not gonna be on the edge of my seat...

[NichG]

That might be true, but compared to "the universe will bend over backwards to reward the 'Good' choice because good always triumphs" I'd say it's at the very least less unrealistic. The most realistic is answer is obviously "It depends on the situation", so automatically leaning in either direction isn't ideal.

And yes, having benefits to the "evil" choice is used to create a dilemma, but at least that means it's a meaningful dilemma. If the hero has to choose between option A (morally good and rewarding!) and option B (morally bad and unrewarding!) I'm not gonna be on the edge of my seat...

Neither is really a very interesting kind of dilemma IMO, because in either case you're kind of begging the question by presuming agreement over the two frameworks to begin with - e.g. you're creating a scenario where this analysis is meaningful only if people agree on what the moral choice is, and if people agree on what the rewarding/unrewarding outcome is. So you don't really even find out much about the character here, because you assume so much. If this is the kind of question you want to ask, e.g. 'who is the character and what do they value?', then thinking in terms of possible paths and outcomes rather than moral/immoral actions and rewards/punishments will be better anyhow.

Having an evil god go to a paladin and say 'how many castles do I need to bribe you with to kick this puppy?' isn't interesting. Having a paladin's deity say 'Hey, there's this situation that I actually do not know what would be the highest good, but I'm too distant from mortal concerns to see this clearly. As my trusted representative on the mortal plane, I need you to go and decide policy for us - from now until forever, your decision here will determine what our faith considers to be the best good in this sort of situation. No pressure though!' is more interesting.

[Batcathat]

Neither is really a very interesting kind of dilemma IMO, because in either case you're kind of begging the question by presuming agreement over the two frameworks to begin with - e.g. you're creating a scenario where this analysis is meaningful only if people agree on what the moral choice is, and if people agree on what the rewarding/unrewarding outcome is. So you don't really even find out much about the character here, because you assume so much. If this is the kind of question you want to ask, e.g. 'who is the character and what do they value?', then thinking in terms of possible paths and outcomes rather than moral/immoral actions and rewards/punishments will be better anyhow.

Having an evil god go to a paladin and say 'how many castles do I need to bribe you with to kick this puppy?' isn't interesting. Having a paladin's deity say 'Hey, there's this situation that I actually do not know what would be the highest good, but I'm too distant from mortal concerns to see this clearly. As my trusted representative on the mortal plane, I need you to go and decide policy for us - from now until forever, your decision here will determine what our faith considers to be the best good in this sort of situation. No pressure though!' is more interesting.

Sure, I agree, but I don't see how any of it goes against what I said. Perhaps I should've clarified that when I say "reward" it doesn't have to be anything material or even concrete, merely some sort of reason for picking something other than what your morals tell you to. And yes, obviously in a (good) story the choice is usually a lot more subtle than one between Good But Punishing Action A and Evil But Rewarding Action B.

(And of course, "evil" actions can be done because of someone's morals rather than in spite of them, many are, my example was not intended to cover every single kind of dilemma).

[Easy e]

OP- You should stop playing D&D and start playing W40K Black Crusade. In that game EVIL is rewarded.

[NichG]

Sure, I agree, but I don't see how any of it goes against what I said. Perhaps I should've clarified that when I say "reward" it doesn't have to be anything material or even concrete, merely some sort of reason for picking something other than what your morals tell you to. And yes, obviously in a (good) story the choice is usually a lot more subtle than one between Good But Punishing Action A and Evil But Rewarding Action B.

(And of course, "evil" actions can be done because of someone's morals rather than in spite of them, many are, my example was not intended to cover every single kind of dilemma).

I guess what I'm saying is, if you push past 'will they hold to their morals?' as the question, you can ask the more interesting question 'what are their morals, and how might those be different than we would expect?'. The whole thing of trying to manufacture drama by getting paladins to fall, etc, lives in that former question and I think in the end its kind of an uninteresting question. More interesting would be the second thing you mention, where surprising actions are taken because someone's morals differ in important ways from those of the audience. This person kills puppies not because they're being paid enough that their morals against puppy slaying don't hold up, but because somehow in their view of the world the continued existence of puppies is something that should not be. Understanding that (or coming to a point where a character understands it about themselves) is a greater puzzle than a simple will they/won't they.

And it doesn't even have to be some alien or unexpected morality. It can just be a matter of bringing the audience (e.g. players, including the player of that character) to a situation in which what they think they know about themselves and the characters is called into question at a fundamental level. E.g. something where everyone thinks they would agree that something is good, but the details of the situation mean that when everyone thinks about it, somehow they all come to different answers in the end. Even different ones than they would have predicted themselves to come to earlier.

[Batcathat]

I guess what I'm saying is, if you push past 'will they hold to their morals?' as the question, you can ask the more interesting question 'what are their morals, and how might those be different than we would expect?'. The whole thing of trying to manufacture drama by getting paladins to fall, etc, lives in that former question and I think in the end its kind of an uninteresting question. More interesting would be the second thing you mention, where surprising actions are taken because someone's morals differ in important ways from those of the audience. This person kills puppies not because they're being paid enough that their morals against puppy slaying don't hold up, but because somehow in their view of the world the continued existence of puppies is something that should not be. Understanding that (or coming to a point where a character understands it about themselves) is a greater puzzle than a simple will they/won't they.

Like I said "Will they pick the moral option or the beneficial one?" is one type of dilemma and I don't think it's any inherently more or less interesting than any other one. My point was that if that's the dilemma, there should be reasons to pick the "evil" option or it's kind of meaningless as a dilemma.

[NichG]

Like I said "Will they pick the moral option or the beneficial one?" is one type of dilemma and I don't think it's any inherently more or less interesting than any other one. My point was that if that's the dilemma, there should be reasons to pick the "evil" option or it's kind of meaningless as a dilemma.

Whereas I guess I'd rather say 'stop trying to use that kind of dilemma so much'. Or maybe more strongly 'its not worth distorting the greater fiction of the game around trying to make this particular cliche work, because the cliche isn't so valuable that getting it to work pays for the damage done to all the more interesting possibilities you could have done instead'

[Batcathat]

Whereas I guess I'd rather say 'stop trying to use that kind of dilemma so much'. Or maybe more strongly 'its not worth distorting the greater fiction of the game around trying to make this particular cliche work, because the cliche isn't so valuable that getting it to work pays for the damage done to all the more interesting possibilities you could have done instead'

Eh. I agree it shouldn't be used too much and certainly it shouldn't warp the greater fiction in order to work, but I don't think it's a cliche as much as just a type of situation that happens (though for most of us, it's more likely to be "should I refill the coffee maker after taking the last cup when my meeting's about to start?" rather than "should I rescue my love interest or the city being held hostage?").

But sure, the GM/author shouldn't just slam a moral dilemma into the story where it doesn't fit, just because they'd like to have one, but that's true of any narrative device.

[Mechalich]

Eh. I agree it shouldn't be used too much and certainly it shouldn't warp the greater fiction in order to work, but I don't think it's a cliche as much as just a type of situation that happens (though for most of us, it's more likely to be "should I refill the coffee maker after taking the last cup when my meeting's about to start?" rather than "should I rescue my love interest or the city being held hostage?").

But sure, the GM/author shouldn't just slam a moral dilemma into the story where it doesn't fit, just because they'd like to have one, but that's true of any narrative device.

The conflict between satisfying the needs of the individual versus the needs of the group - which is what a lot of these sorts of moral dilemmas boil down to is fairly fundamental in humans because we are social creatures and require (except in rare cases associated with considerable mental deviation from the norm), membership in a group to survive and function. This gets naturally extended to conflicts between group A and group B, especially if they are genuinely zero-sum (slight aside, one of the unusual things about D&D is that there are no zero sum resources, you can always use magic to create more of something or access an infinite plane full of said thing).