The Evil League of ... Lawful Good?

[root9125]

If the phrase "Of course the Slaad speaks Bro" makes sense to you, this is not for your eyes.

Hey, all.

I have a universe that, through the ineptitude and haphazard murdering habits of my PCs, is about to be taken over by the forces of Good. They're 90% likely to die. However, I think they like the game, so I will be continuing the campaign with new characters, some number of years into the future.

I want the lawful good empire to be more Lawful Stupid than anything else. Give them an excellent reason to fight it. So terribly Lawful Stupid that even a Chaotic Good player would feel the need to end it.

Can anyone give me ideas, examples in film, anything that would help me build a Too-Lawful-Stupid-To-Live empire?

[Rhiannon87]

This sounds like the plot of Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward. It's a pretty fun fantasy novel, plays with a lot of standard fantasy tropes, stuff like that. The basic plot is something like what you're describing-- good won the battle of good vs evil and took over, and there's a group of "bad guys" who have to save the world by bringing evil back, in order to maintain balance.

The rulers in question are pretty painfully Lawful Stupid. The main antagonist is a ranger-type named Fenwick (I think, it's been a little while since I've read the book) who is really truly Lawful Good. But he's like every terrible paladin cliche of LG ever all rolled into one person. And he's representative of the entire rulership-- they're all so blinded by how very, very good they are that the idea that they could be wrong never occurs to them.

[drengnikrafe]

I wanna say "Judge Dredd", because the absolute obeying of law is extreme. But that's more lawful neutral. I don't know that I know any Lawful Stupid extremes offhand.

[root9125]

Villians by Necessity looks perfect, but no library near me has it, and it's ~$250 new, $40 used on Amazon.

Lol. Not for me.

[vicente408]

I wanna say "Judge Dredd", because the absolute obeying of law is extreme. But that's more lawful neutral. I don't know that I know any Lawful Stupid extremes offhand.

Think of an army of Mikos.

[Edwin]

You could play the lawful stupid equals blindness to what matters angle. As in, the good guys on top are, while painfully law abiding and, well, lawful stupid, their entire system is rotten to the core.

So you would have a bunch of a bit too good for their own sake guys running their empire, while everything not directly tied in with the state has metaphorical rabies.

[Akal Saris]

If you play WoW, the Scarlet Crusade always inspired me when I thought of "Paladins gone too far and a little nuts".

Another example of good gone too far is in the Dragonlance Twins trilogy, where the forces of Good have won, and become increasingly intolerant of anything that might be evil, even starting to persecute for "evil thoughts" and "potential to do evil." If every block has a paladin, imagine all the Detect Evils flying all over the place...

Both of these are a little more grim than what you're looking for though :P

[root9125]

Both of these are a little more grim than what you're looking for though :P

Nothing is more grim than what I'm looking for.

[mikeejimbo]

The humans in Goblins might count, though they've probably gone to the other side, where they simply are evil. (Though they think they're good.)

[Edwin]

If you play WoW, the Scarlet Crusade always inspired me when I thought of "Paladins gone too far and a little nuts".

Another example of good gone too far is in the Dragonlance Twins trilogy, where the forces of Good have won, and become increasingly intolerant of anything that might be evil, even starting to persecute for "evil thoughts" and "potential to do evil." If every block has a paladin, imagine all the Detect Evils flying all over the place...

Both of these are a little more grim than what you're looking for though :P

Cut the scarlets a bit of slack, dude.

They were infiltrated by a friggin' Dreadlord, you know. Not to mention their leader, who's even more corrupted and vile.

The Dragonlance one is kinda nice, though.

[Mando Knight]

Can anyone give me ideas, examples in film, anything that would help me build a Too-Lawful-Stupid-To-Live empire?

You asked for it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Now, lose a few hours of your life reading up on this matter.

[Drakyn]

The humans in Goblins might count, though they've probably gone to the other side, where they simply are evil. (Though they think they're good.)

I think most of the stuff here qualifies as that, since technically speaking if you're doing horrible things, by definition you aren't good. Incompetent and stupid but well-meaning might be an interesting look on it.

[Temet Nosce]

First, extreme punishments with no consideration for circumstances. Lawbreakers will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and that's a long long ways.

Second, the ends always justify the means. They're LG, but if they don't have time well it might be easier to just kill the whole village instead of finding the evil cultists.

Third, they're always right and will take care of you. Slavery should absolutely thrive (more than under any other system in fact). Career will not be up to the individual but to the government, and distractions are illegal (no music, no art, etc... nothing that distracts one from what is lawful and good).

Other possibilities include a strict caste system with no way to advance, extreme differences between the rich and poor (with of course there being many more poor than rich), and a tendency to use up the populace in the name of the kingdom.

[root9125]

You asked for it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Now, lose a few hours of your life reading up on this matter.

I had an exam to study for.
*rage!!!*

[Gorilla2038]

Personally, i always thought Mao's Communism was a good example of Lawful stupid: Lets kill 100 million people by starvation, for there own good!

Other good historical examples: Spartan army at Thermopylae (refusing to march the army because of an omen), Angkor Wat (city falling because it was against the religon to have troop in the capital), Pol Pot(he was evil in a true sense, but his policies were were lawful stupid).

Not sure if thats helpful, but it might be.

[Edwin]

Other good historical examples: Spartan army at Thermopylae (refusing to march the army because of an omen),

That's one very specific example.

Other than that, Spartans were notoriously prone to attacking left and right, even when it was not in their best interests.

Trojan wars, people?

Historical accuracy none-withstanding.

[Weimann]

I can't give examples of movies or books, I'm afraid. However, I can reason a bit.

Judge Dredd is a pretty good example of Lawful Neutral behaviour. He cares only for the upholding of the rules, and nothing for their consequences. He refers to the law above all, without making personal reflections of judgements.

A Lawful Good community should care about the upholding of order (which doesn't in all cases have to be the upholding of the rules) and should also weigh a moral aspect into it all. A ten-year-old thief who has obviously not eaten in a week might not need to be hanged.

Extrapolating from this, a Lawful Stupid society might place extra hard focus on the latter part? Eager to uphold morality and good conduct, they enforce not only literal laws, but also strict behavioural codes that might or might not be supervised by police. Smoking and drinking is forbidden, as is shouting at or offending someone else. Forbidden not only in public, but completely, as anger and delinquency can only breed hate and mistrust.

What they don't grasp is that the ability to get angry isn't removed with the removal of the expressions of anger. It is just turned inwards. Festering. After not very long, you'll end up with a community of people who smile their fake smiles and then go home and feel guilty over not being happy, when they right fully should be. They become either listless husks, or bombs ready to blow at any minute.

That's how I imagine it, anyway.

[Somewhere]

Equilibrium?

[chiasaur11]

I wanna say "Judge Dredd", because the absolute obeying of law is extreme. But that's more lawful neutral. I don't know that I know any Lawful Stupid extremes offhand.

Also, he's awesome Lawful Stupid with reasonably notable evil tendencies.

So, yeah. Not the ideal here.

[Edwin]

I can't give examples of movies or books, I'm afraid. However, I can reason a bit.

Judge Dredd is a pretty good example of Lawful Neutral behaviour. He cares only for the upholding of the rules, and nothing for their consequences. He refers to the law above all, without making personal reflections of judgements.

A Lawful Good community should care about the upholding of order (which doesn't in all cases have to be the upholding of the rules) and should also weigh a moral aspect into it all. A ten-year-old thief who has obviously not eaten in a week might not need to be hanged.

Extrapolating from this, a Lawful Stupid society might place extra hard focus on the latter part? Eager to uphold morality and good conduct, they enforce not only literal laws, but also strict behavioural codes that might or might not be supervised by police. Smoking and drinking is forbidden, as is shouting at or offending someone else. Forbidden not only in public, but completely, as anger and delinquency can only breed hate and mistrust.

What they don't grasp is that the ability to get angry isn't removed with the removal of the expressions of anger. It is just turned inwards. Festering. After not very long, you'll end up with a community of people who smile their fake smiles and then go home and feel guilty over not being happy, when they right fully should be. They become either listless husks, or bombs ready to blow at any minute.

That's how I imagine it, anyway.

This is sort of what I was saying.

You would end up with a small group of people in power, who thinks that their Utopia is all well and great, but everyone not in same position is unhappy, mainly because they see the real result of the the Lawful-stupid ruling the world.

The Lawful-stupid people in power, being lawful-stupid, of course refuses to realize this, and so the PC's must topple them. By whatever means necessary, including Villains by necessity hooks.

[Sleepingbear]

For the wages of sin is death...
There is danger in using part of a quote and out of context.
Extrapolate. Exaggerate. Excommunicate!

[Gorilla2038]

Oh! I completely forgot the best example of lawful stupid. Go 40k!

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Imperium_of_Man

[nyarlathotep]

I wanna say "Judge Dredd", because the absolute obeying of law is extreme. But that's more lawful neutral. I don't know that I know any Lawful Stupid extremes offhand.

Not to justify Megacity One's system which is definitely lawful neutral or even evil; for Dredd himself it really depends on when in continuity we're talking about. He really ranging anywhere for straight up LE to lawful neutral or even all the way to lawful good depending on the time period.

[chiasaur11]

Oh! I completely forgot the best example of lawful stupid. Go 40k!

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Imperium_of_Man

I'm pretty sure that's just straight up evil. It just fights worse evil.

Actually, that's a big part of what bugs me about most things of this sort. Sure, the best of intentions can and will go horribly wrong. But most set ups of this kind go beyond good guys messing up or not having the system work so that maximum good is achieved all the way to having guys who killpurgeburn anyone who isn't all for killpurgeburn of everyone, so that "good" is just evil with a smileyface badge on.

And it's usually in favor of "balance" in the end, which can just fall into a hole and die.

[Rhiannon87]

First, extreme punishments with no consideration for circumstances. Lawbreakers will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and that's a long long ways.

Second, the ends always justify the means. They're LG, but if they don't have time well it might be easier to just kill the whole village instead of finding the evil cultists.

Third, they're always right and will take care of you. Slavery should absolutely thrive (more than under any other system in fact). Career will not be up to the individual but to the government, and distractions are illegal (no music, no art, etc... nothing that distracts one from what is lawful and good).

Other possibilities include a strict caste system with no way to advance, extreme differences between the rich and poor (with of course there being many more poor than rich), and a tendency to use up the populace in the name of the kingdom.

Eh, I'd disagree on point 3. (Point 2 works with the right PR-- "The cultists had infiltrated and infected the entire village! It had to be cleansed! CLEANSED WITH HOLY FLAME.) I don't think there'd be slavery or a pure dictatorship like that... There'd still be freedom to choose your job, so long as it wasn't evil-ish, and even though they're lawful stupid, they're still supposed to be good. Slavery just doesn't work with that. And there has to still be music and art, if only for propaganda purposes.

Historical examples: the Inquisition! Witch hunts! Theocracy might be the way to go here for your LG empire. Get the whole spiraling chaos of people being accused of evil or intent to commit evil, then accusing others. Physical torture wouldn't be LG, but you could use psychological pressure (blackmail, coercion, threats, bribes, etc) to get confessions. Magic is an option too, especially enchantment and illusion. Paladins would have insane amounts of power, with their ability to detect evil at well.

Another track you could try is to have a government that is fixated on fighting "evil" in one particular incarnation, and ignoring everything else. I've got an organization in my campaign that's like this. They're a group of paladins and clerics who fight evil outsiders. And nothing else. Crime, undead, tyrants, none of those are important unless demons are involved. Most of the locals despise them because they never help people. So you could have something like that on a government-wide scale: they're so busy fighting evil that they can't be bothered to maintain the roads or help the poor or anything other than raise armies of paladins to fight evil.

[root9125]

Historical examples: the Inquisition! Witch hunts! Theocracy might be the way to go here for your LG empire.

I have to say it:

The Inquisition! Let's begin!
The Inquisition! Look out, sin!
We have a mission, to convert the jews! (jew-ja-jew-ja-jew)
We're gonna teach them wrong from right!
We're gonna help them see the light!
And make an offer that they just can't refuse! (That the jews just can't refuse!)

[Count Dravda]

Read 1984, if you haven't already. A civilization under constant seige as the authorities watch every move you ever make, ever. If you look the wrong direction or grimace, EVER, you are hauled away never to be seen again.

I imagine in an extreme LS society, there exist two or three options to each person in any situation ("Yes please, sir." "No, thank you, my good sir."). Doing anything outside of these options (walking away, being terse or angry because you were already in a bad mood) results in everyone nearby being mortified and calling the police to end your "madness."

A LS system enforces not only laws, but ethics. Swearing, drinking, smoking, physical contact, running, non-approved clothing, failure to greet an undercover officer...all these could result in harsh penalties. Keep in mind that the government probably puts all kinds of money into new technologies that facilitate their ability to govern people's lives. Mutants that can read minds, devices that project a desired feeling, and mind-controlling devices that force random people to become model citizens become ever more common.

Hope this gets your brain working. And keep in mind that there are probably quite a few genuinely LG people who believe that the system is the best it can be, and they uphold it because the only alternative they can imagine is anarchy and chaos.

-Count Dravda

[Kaiser Omnik]

Personally, i always thought Mao's Communism was a good example of Lawful stupid: Lets kill 100 million people by starvation, for there own good!

Other good historical examples: Spartan army at Thermopylae (refusing to march the army because of an omen), Angkor Wat (city falling because it was against the religon to have troop in the capital), Pol Pot(he was evil in a true sense, but his policies were were lawful stupid).

Not sure if thats helpful, but it might be.

Be careful with real life examples. The first thing is way more complex.

In a fantasy world, I would expect armies to stand down if an oracle told them it was a bad idea to continue.

And seriously, I don't see how a system can be Lawful stupid (or any other aligment). Usually, things that seem stupid are done like this for very logical reasons. The society in 1984 works very well. It may not allow much freedom, but as societies go, it looked to be working pretty well. What leader wouldn't like complete control over the population?

Now, lawful stupid leader who change laws and abuse their personal power...that's another story.

[Bakkan]

A small example of a society somewhat like what you're talking about is from the Robert A. Heinlein short story "Coventry". It's a near-future Earth story in which America has come to the point that the main character, who slugged a man for an extremely rude insult, is given a choice between "rehabilitation" (read: chemical and psychological brainwashing) and exile to a prison-colony-esque place called "Coventry" that the government puts anyone who doesn't play nice. In this society, the goal of the government was to make sure that no-one ever offended or harmed (in any way) anyone else.

Come to think of it, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 has a similar setup. In that story, all books are banned so that no-one ever reads something that they disagree with. Nobody must ever experience mental discomfort, so we remove anything that could confuse them or challenge their beliefs.

I don't personally find either of these societies Good by any means, but they seem pretty close to the Lawful Stupid you're looking for. Incidentally, I recommend that anyone who hasn't read these books find them at a local library immediately, as they are both excellent. Fahrenheit 451 is very popular, and "Coventry" can be found in the Heinlein short story collection The Past Through Tomorrow.

EDIT: Another example comes from the (mediocre-to-terrible) movie Minority Report (2002), in which mediums who can tell the future predict crimes and the police force races in to arrest the person for his "future" crime, even though he hasn't actually committed it yet. One common (mis-)conception of extremely Lawful societies is that people cannot change or choose -- if someone is "bad", they will always be "bad", and they should be locked up, or executed, or exiled, to keep them away form everyone else.

[Weimann]

And seriously, I don't see how a system can be Lawful stupid (or any other aligment). Usually, things that seem stupid are done like this for very logical reasons. Now, lawful stupid leader who change laws and abuse their personal power...that's another story.

I don't think it can either. However, we are working with D&D terminology here, so things will be confused ^^