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Savageman
2008-06-10, 07:40 PM
And I need help!
I was thinking this over today, and I reached some conclusions, but I'm still having trouble. To make this easier, here is a hypothetical situation that demonstrates my problem:
A group of paladins (Lawful Good) wipes out a tribe of goblins (chaotic evil). Men, women, children, the whole lot, except for one, who gets away. He goes on to lead another tribe and when said tribe is big enough he attacks a town, killing all involved, men, women, children. Except for one. He gets away, becomes a paladin to fight evil, and one day leads a group and destroys the tribe that destroyed his home.
So who is evil? Goblins, because they are listed as such, even though the kid who escaped did the same thing the goblin kid did? Honestly, this isn't what bugs me. It did at first, but I was able to come to the answer of "personal alignment" which is basically most people see their side as the "right" side (not really good or evil. Maintaining this allows for LG paladins who slaughter whole tribes of sentient goblins, and CE goblins (since dnd typically operates on a "good" races perspective - humans and dwarves are good, goblinoids bad, etc.). It even allows for "real evil" and "real good" - a villain who knows he's the bad guy - hell, he wants to wipe out all life, there is not a lot of wriggle room there - and a genuinely good person, who abhors killing and just wants to heal people.
The problem, then, is the presence of absolute good and absolute evil. The gods, in other words. Some divine being, supposedly the epitome of lawfulness and good, sanctioned the murder of a whole tribe of goblins by his chosen. To me, at least, it's pretty clear that a whole tribe isn't really evil, they're just trying to survive, just like the humans who killed them.
So how do you deal with gods who are supposed to be the absolutes when it comes to good and evil? Especially active gods? If a god was really good, wouldn't he rule the world, and force it to be good too? Same with evil gods. And there would be no reason to hold off on account of worshippers, at least not for evil gods - unless they draw power from them, which more or less makes the pantheon inactive.
So how do you deal with active gods who exemplify good or evil? Because I am at a loss (note: I am playing 3ed right now. I may upgrade to 4e but not for a while at least).

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-10, 07:45 PM
There are two ways to play alignment: straight, or not at all.

The moment you even *entertain* the notion that Orcs and Goblins are viable cultures with as much right to exist as human culture, you have to chuck not only the concept of "alignment" but most of the assumptions of "adventuring" out the window.

Sequinox
2008-06-10, 08:06 PM
Very good question.

Did you get this from Start of Darkness?

But to the point, if the goblin men women and children were innocent, then they weren't evil. That simple. At least, that's how I view it, and my 3.5 world had a lot to do with that: Every race that was sentient and had the ability to form a government or town or something were not necessarily evil. Were drow evil? The ones performing human sacrifice. Were paladins evil? The ones that massacred villages of innocent goblins were. Were Goblins evil? The ones that killed humans were. Were duergar evil? The ones that killed innocents. Were monsters (non sentients) evil? Yes, because the difference between a monster and an animal/magical beast are whether they kill innocents for pleasure. A white dragon is, in my mind, a monster because it kills for pleasure. That is evil. In my mind, a... A thing classified as monster but doesn't kill for pleasure, only necessity, is like an animal: Neutral.

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

Savageman
2008-06-10, 08:07 PM
crap. seriously? - to the first responder
to the second - i can dig it. but what about gods? they are the source of my constipated consternation.

Prophaniti
2008-06-10, 08:29 PM
One way to approach it is to take a more Greek point of view to the gods. Sure, they're really powerful, and sure they embody various aspects of culture or thought, but just like their mortal followers, they're subject to some very human flaws; Jealousy, closed-mindedness, anger, etc. Thus you have the God of Paladins, an exemplar of Chivalry and Honor, has no qualms about killing goblins because he views them as inferior, or even just because a long time ago, the God of Goblins insulted him.

My usual approach is a mix of this and subjective alignment. The goblin is evil to the human, who is evil to the goblin. Likewise, the god of goblins is evil to the god of humans, who is evil to the former. Another approach, is of course, the standard. Goblins are evil, they may view themselves as right and correct, but by the universe's standards, they are irredeemably evil. Games like this, if you get into deeper roleplaying, tend to get either really complicated, with people worrying about morality all the time, or really racist, with goblin slaughterers everywhere and no Drizzts in sight (because in a game like this, there are no exceptions). Every member of an evil race is evil. End of story.

Vikingkingq
2008-06-10, 09:01 PM
A problem with this scenario is that it assumes that the goblin tribe was just minding its own business. If that's what they're doing, then you're not playing Chaotic Evil well, are you? Chances are, what they're doing is raiding human habitations, killing people, taking their stuff, ambushing merchant caravans, etc.
Or they eat people, or enslave people, or whatever. If they are doing those things, it changes the moral calculus.

nagora
2008-06-11, 04:49 AM
And I need help!
I was thinking this over today, and I reached some conclusions, but I'm still having trouble. To make this easier, here is a hypothetical situation that demonstrates my problem:
A group of paladins (Lawful Good) wipes out a tribe of goblins (chaotic evil). Men, women, children, the whole lot, except for one, who gets away.
Did they do it because they enjoy killing, or because they were fighting evil? In the former case they are evil. In the second case, we have to ask an additional question: are goblins really evil? If they are then they were doing a good thing. If not, then at best the paladins were being neutral.

The best way for the paladins to be sure would be to get the goblins to repent their evil ways and then kill them to prevent their evil nature from undoing their good work. Then the paladins are happy because the world has less evil in it, and the goblins are happy because they get eternal life in one of the nice planes where the evil in their nature can not re-assert itself.

The gods? They're just big NPCs; I don't think the alignment system should or does take any notice of their opinions.

kamikasei
2008-06-11, 07:06 AM
The moment you even *entertain* the notion that Orcs and Goblins are viable cultures with as much right to exist as human culture, you have to chuck not only the concept of "alignment" but most of the assumptions of "adventuring" out the window.

I would call that a gross exaggeration. "Not every orc or goblin is evil" or "just because an individual is evil, doesn't give you carte blanche to kill him without other factors" does not equal "good and evil are meaningless descriptors", nor does it preclude any but the laziest sort of adventuring.

Learnedguy
2008-06-11, 07:14 AM
And this is why I prefer to fight things with an int score of 1 instead of going on personal holocausts:smallwink:

its_all_ogre
2008-06-11, 07:22 AM
gods in dnd are just other NPC's, they are not God.
important distinction.
they do not individually know all, see all, be omniprescent or whatever.