anyone ever campaign a truly GOOD party?

[Bilbron]

Then why did you mention that your character was the most powerful of the group in the same post saying you don't tolerate shenanigans?

How is your character's power a relevant factor?

As I just explained, it's just like the fact that I'm 6'2" and 220 IRL so no one ever wants to throw down with me. As such, violence is NEVER an option, but this does not imply that I intimidate people with my physical stature. It's just a fact that has an impact on the situation, and assuming uncharitable motives or behavior is unwarranted, in my view.

Either everyone can RP as they wish, or your character will throw down to stop them if it comes down to it.

Is this any different IRL? Am I an a-hole for the general knowledge that I will stop you if you attempt to commit a crime?

Bilbron, haven't you stated in another thread that your group does not listen to you, and in at least one case told you to stop trying to Polymorph a PC without their consent?

Correct. And when they don't listen to me, it's not like I attack them. "Not listening to me" means "I get outvoted" not "I am constantly forced to employ the whip." The Polymorph-without-consent thing was me casting a beneficial spell in regards to a plan of mine that needed to be executed under pressure, and he felt that doing what I told him to do violated his consent, even though it was ultimately his choice to follow my order or not. It's not like I was trying to Polymorph him maliciously as a punishment for failing to obey the mighty tyrannical overlord that is me.

[Gtdead]

This is a really hard question to answer for me, because I think that "truly good" is a fallacy, especially under the context of leading a normal villager life.
I couldn't tell you what good is even in real life (which is probably the closest thing to a normal villager's life), and I would never trust anyone that claims to know the answer to this question.

However I don't want to start talking about my values or what I consider Law-Chaos-Good-Evil in DnD because it's pointless.
By your definition of "good" I have never played such a DnD game.
By my definition, I've played numerous.

[Unoriginal]

As I just explained, it's just like the fact that I'm 6'2" and 220 IRL so no one ever wants to throw down with me. As such, violence is NEVER an option, but this does not imply that I intimidate people with my physical stature. It's just a fact that has an impact on the situation, and assuming uncharitable motives or behavior is unwarranted, in my view.

As a philosopher, you're probably familiar with the concept that choosing to not use one's power is still a choice of how to use said power.

If your PC being more powerful has an impact on how the conflict is resolved by closing the possibility of fighting over it, then your PC's power is implicitly influencing the others into avoiding a course of action due to fearing the outcome being bad for them. Regardless of your motives.

Is this any different IRL? Am I an a-hole for the general knowledge that I will stop you if you attempt to commit a crime?

There is a big difference between real life, where real people are affected by your actions, and the actions of a character in a RPG controlled by a real person.

Furthermore both in game and IRL, there is a world of difference between committing a crime, doing something legal but jerkass-level, and just being lolrandom because one consider it fun.

Correct. And when they don't listen to me, it's not like I attack them. "Not listening to me" means "I get outvoted" not "I am constantly forced to employ the whip." The Polymorph-without-consent thing was me casting a beneficial spell in regards to a plan of mine that needed to be executed under pressure, and he felt that doing what I told him to do violated his consent, even though it was ultimately his choice to follow my order or not. It's not like I was trying to Polymorph him maliciously as a punishment for failing to obey the mighty tyrannical overlord that is me.

That was not my assumption, but then I have to wonder by what you mean by "won't tolerate shenanigans".

If you get outvoted on the topic, would you tolerate (what you consider) shenanigans or not?

[Wraith]

That's interesting, because the adventure has a few good people for the PCs to interact with, and quite a few not-good-but-will-help-you-stop-the-BBEG's-plan ones. It's entirely possible to play the module without meeting most of them, though.

I'm guessing your group took the Path of Demons rather than the Path of Devils, right?

I honestly don't remember. The last bit I particular remember was being in the city, which had been sucked into Avernus, and engaging in running battles with hitsquads of Chain-Devils, occasionally stopping by the cathedral to rest and heal in the rare moments when we thought they wouldn't follow us in and slaughter everyone. Have to admit, until now I didn't know there were two different paths, I thought you were supposed to end up fighting Devils

[Unoriginal]

I honestly don't remember. The last bit I particular remember was being in the city, which had been sucked into Avernus, and engaging in running battles with hitsquads of Chain-Devils, occasionally stopping by the cathedral to rest and heal in the rare moments when we thought they wouldn't follow us in and slaughter everyone. Have to admit, until now I didn't know there were two different paths, I thought you were supposed to end up fighting Devils

I mean... following the module, by level 6 you're supposed to be able to get out of the city and start working on sending it back to the Material Plane.

[Bilbron]

That was not my assumption, but then I have to wonder by what you mean by "won't tolerate shenanigans".

If you get outvoted on the topic, would you tolerate (what you consider) shenanigans or not?

If it came to that, I would abandon the party with that PC, and either find a new game with what I perceive to be more mature players, or roll up a new character that is either chaotic or lawful neutral, or even evil if appropriate (I played an evil Dark Sun campaign once and it was quite fun).

[Waterdeep Merch]

Idealized versions of them are probably pretty well represented by... Arcadia, in the LN/LG part of the Outer Planes? Arthur himself, of course, is historically (and explicitly) resting in Thallasia (the fourth level of Elysium)

For the idealized versions, probably true.

But there's a huge difference between the idealized versions and the versions from the Arthurian legends. Not to mention how many different versions of them there is in the various legends.

Naanomi's got the right of it, I merely used the legends as my basis and then crafted a world that is very idealized comparatively. My Mordred analogue even turned out to be a kind of misunderstood hero; the players had reason to distrust him out of character due to what he was clearly based on, but in-character was never anything but nice to them. He eventually appeared to fulfill his traditional role by declaring war, but that turned out to be a façade used to conquer his mother's country (France analogue) and come to his father and half-sister's defense. He ends centuries of conflict by recognizing his half-sister (a player) as the rightful heir to the Camelot-analogue without contestation.

That was my favorite convention twist. The obvious villain was helping the party defeat an evil they didn't know about from the very start.

[Yakmala]

It's been a really long time, but back in 1st Edition, I was in a party of six and five of us were Paladins. This was back when Paladins had to maintain their Lawful Good status or risk losing their powers. Each Paladin had a different good aligned deity and together, we were taking on a truly evil BBEG.

The sixth member of the party was a Halfling Thief. While they were not evil, they were able to do the morally questionable things the Paladins could/would not. The thief always tried to do such things on the down-low to keep the rest of us from scolding him.

[Bilbron]

It's been a really long time, but back in 1st Edition, I was in a party of six and five of us were Paladins. This was back when Paladins had to maintain their Lawful Good status or risk losing their powers. Each Paladin had a different good aligned deity and together, we were taking on a truly evil BBEG.

The sixth member of the party was a Halfling Thief. While they were not evil, they were able to do the morally questionable things the Paladins could/would not. The thief always tried to do such things on the down-low to keep the rest of us from scolding him.

I still always Magic Mouth my belongings even though it hasn't been an issue for years due to the prevalence of the thief who insisted on stealing from the party I encountered so often in 1st edition, lol.

[Keravath]

Thinking about alignment, has anyone ever played a campaign where all of the party members were truly GOOD aligned and always acted accordingly?

I mean this is a game entirely centered around hunting and killing sentient creatures and then taking all of their valuables - how can anyone claim that those are the actions of GOOD people?

Maybe if your party only stayed in their home town/city and defended it when attacked and spent the rest of their time as law abiding citizens with a regular job active in their community creating a better life for all of those around them ...

BUT 99% of all adventures include theft, mind manipulation, pillaging, hundreds of murders of humanoids and other sentient creatures, breaking and entering, violence of all sorts, (remember that time we we went into the goblin's layer and killed them ALL just because they were goblins), etc - it's the primary way to gain XP and level up.

If we are completely honest with ourselves, Heroes (and their players) are just thugs who have convinced themselves they are justified.

Thoughts?

It depends in part on the nature of the campaign and in part on the concept of good and evil that is used.

Traditional and RAW D&D assigns alignments to all creatures including PCs and NPCs. Creatures are good, neutral or evil. Evil creatures often take actions to their benefit to the detriment of other creatures. The fundamental question then becomes "Is it evil for good creatures to kill evil creatures to protect themselves and other innocents from the actions taken by the evil creatures."

If you answer that killing any creatures is intrinsically evil then you're right, it is impossible to be good, defend yourself, and kill creatures since the action is intrinsically evil.

On the other hand, many people think that defending yourself, your family, your town, or your nation from "evil" creatures is intrinsically good no matter what actions are taken to achieve those objectives. From this perspective, it is very easy to remain "good" while killing the "evil" creatures.

Reality and most D&D campaigns are probably somewhere in between most of the time so the answer to your question is that it depends on the character philosophy and the specific campaign.

[Naanomi]

Unequivocally Good by modern sensibilities (not any specific philosophy or ethics system, just 'vague pop-culture morality, and not an endorsement or in opposition to any existing system) campaign would need to fight undead, constructs, and/or fiends exclusively (and some people may quibble about sentient undead and fiends)... and use non-lethal (preferably non-harmful) subdual methods and diplomacy to solve everything else. Perhaps a party like...

Oath of Redemption Paladin
Peace Domain Cleric
Eloquence Bard
Mercy Monk

[Tanarii]

Unequivocally Good by modern sensibilities

I'll courtesy link you to the forum rules:
https://forums.giantitp.com/announcement.php?a=1

I still struggle to get why this is a problem. It's not hard at all to give a reason why we have to kill these specific orcs (they've been raping, pillaging and murdering across the countryside) and not killing all orcs in general just 'cause their orcs.

It is also possible for a table to decide that they're fine with "Team Evil" bad guys and that Team Good gets to attack them just for being being there, which makes them intrinsically a danger. That works fine as long as the general behavior of the characters still falls within their chosen good alignment, as interpreted by the table.

[Naanomi]

I'll courtesy link you to the forum rules:
https://forums.giantitp.com/announcement.php?a=1

Sorry, I'm unclear which rule you are concerned about exactly... ethics isn't inherently religious or political... I did edit for a clarifying parenthetical to ensure that people know I wasn't referencing it in such a context

[Tanarii]

Sorry, I'm unclear which rule you are concerned about exactly... ethics isn't inherently religious or political... I did edit for a clarifying parenthetical to ensure that people know I wasn't referencing it in such a context

I'm enjoying the thread so far and would hate to see it descend into a debate on if something is unequivocal under modern sensibilities, or if modern sensibilities are inherently equivocal. But I like your edit. It addresses what you meant well.

[Naanomi]

I'm enjoying the thread so far and would hate to see it descend into a debate on if something is unequivocal under modern sensibilities, or if modern sensibilities are inherently equivocal. But I like your edit.

Fair, the point I was trying to make was more like... 'if we try to expand it to very broad ethical standards that are not absolutely pacifistic, we are left with...'

[Thunderous Mojo]

Echoing what others have said, DnD has *never* been about hunting and killing people to loot their homes and take their belongings.

R.E.H. and Jack Vance were both inspirations for Gary Gygax.
Conan the Barbarian routinely kills things...generally to take their booze, their women, and in the case of Aquilonia...the kingdom itself.

Most of Jack Vance's fantasy works were written from an amoral perspective...
...not to be confused with immorality.

Early Greyhawk, DM'd by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz was absolutely about
"Looting the dungeon".

Bilbron...you project sounds interesting. I have my doubts about Moral Positivism, but, this forum is not the correct venue for that discussion.

[Sigreid]

As I just explained, it's just like the fact that I'm 6'2" and 220 IRL so no one ever wants to throw down with me. As such, violence is NEVER an option, but this does not imply that I intimidate people with my physical stature. It's just a fact that has an impact on the situation, and assuming uncharitable motives or behavior is unwarranted, in my view.



Is this any different IRL? Am I an a-hole for the general knowledge that I will stop you if you attempt to commit a crime?

Correct. And when they don't listen to me, it's not like I attack them. "Not listening to me" means "I get outvoted" not "I am constantly forced to employ the whip." The Polymorph-without-consent thing was me casting a beneficial spell in regards to a plan of mine that needed to be executed under pressure, and he felt that doing what I told him to do violated his consent, even though it was ultimately his choice to follow my order or not. It's not like I was trying to Polymorph him maliciously as a punishment for failing to obey the mighty tyrannical overlord that is me.

Your statement pretty clearly indicated that you use an implied threat to control the other party members. Don't see another way to read that.

[Thunderous Mojo]

So you threaten, bully and are potentially willing to assault or kill your team mates. I'm surprised anyone will group with you.

This seems to come down to what you expect from a game:
Role-play or Roll-play.

I have absolutely been involved in games where even if the party was the same alignment...their motivations and allegiances meant that some intra-party conflict might occur, (Conflict in this sense is not limited to violence).

Indeed this type of Roleplaying was the crux of getting together.

I have, also, absolutely been involved with games that focused on overcoming challenges, based off optimized group play...were actions such as one character stealing from another PC, (or even holding back loot..."the Thieves Finders fee"), was expressly forbidden.

I have no problem playing in a Paranoia style D&D game, and leaving whatever conflict happened between PCs in the game, and afterwards
getting drinks together and there are no hard feelings, and fun was had by all.

D&D games are a spectrum.

[Sigreid]

This seems to come down to what you expect from a game:
Role-play or Roll-play.

I have absolutely been involved in games where even if the party was the same alignment...their motivations and allegiances meant that some intra-party conflict might occur, (Conflict in this sense is not limited to violence).

Indeed this type of Roleplaying was the crux of getting together.

I have also, absolutely been involved with games that focused on overcoming challenges, based off optimized group play...were actions such as one character stealing from another PC, (or even holding back loot..."the Thieves Finders fee"), was expressly forbidden.

I have no problem playing in a Paranoia style D&D game, and leaving whatever conflict happened between PCs in the game, and afterwards
getting drinks together and there are no hard feelings, and fun was had by all.

D&D games are a spectrum.

Oh, I don't have a problem with a party having differing ideals and motivations. But if my job is essentially risking life and limb in dangerous combat/situations I'm only going with people I know I can trust when it hits the fan. People who I genuinely think might be willing to attack or abandon me over those differences need not apply. I'm not going into those situations with them.

[Naanomi]

Oh, I don't have a problem with a party having differing ideals and motivations. But if my job is essentially risking life and limb in dangerous combat/situations I'm only going with people I know I can trust when it hits the fan. People who I genuinely think might be willing to attack or abandon me over those differences need not apply. I'm not going into those situations with them.

Not every RPG scenario gives you the choice... look at 'Out of the Abyss'; your choice is to make your escape with the other slaves you find yourself with, regardless of your moral compatibility or perceived trustworthiness... or die solo

[Amnestic]

A campaign in which you disable literally every enemy rather than killing them sounds rather charming actually, though I can imagine it would cause a great deal more work for the DM if you're going up against intelligent creatures (especially humanoids) though.

Also your party might need to invest in lots of rope and supplies to keep your captives fed before you can get them back to town to turn them over to the authorities.

[Naanomi]

A campaign in which you disable literally every enemy rather than killing them sounds rather charming actually, though I can imagine it would cause a great deal more work for the DM if you're going up against intelligent creatures (especially humanoids) though.

Also your party might need to invest in lots of rope and supplies to keep your captives fed before you can get them back to town to turn them over to the authorities.

Well... and/or lots of Stealth... and or lots of social skills to talk your way past problems. My proposed 'good guy team' above is pretty talk-heavy

[Sigreid]

Not every RPG scenario gives you the choice... look at 'Out of the Abyss'; your choice is to make your escape with the other slaves you find yourself with, regardless of your moral compatibility or perceived trustworthiness... or die solo

And in that kind of scenario unless you can get to at least a base line of trust, you're better off alone.

[RifleAvenger]

A lot of people have countered that there's always a good reason for breaking in and killing the baddies. That is, often, true.

However, the problem is more nuanced than that. All too often, the reasons given exist because the enemy in question is part of a race of (evil) hats with a culture designed to make them acceptable targets. Some settings even have this be an inborn quality of the race! Need bloodthirsty savages? Orcs. Need decadent noble slavers? Drow. This particular treatment is far more problematic.

The easiest way to solve this is to abolish races of hats. Have most villains arise out of one of several equally prominent cultures for a given race, or out of multi-racial societies. Stop having entries in the monster manual that describe an entire biologically designated group of sapient beings like this:

...black-hearted, selfish... lazy and undisciplined... Motivated by greed and malice... delight in the torment of other creatures and embrace all manner of wickedness

This sort of "setting up a racial group to make easy antagonists" is precisely what Order of the Stick is criticizing with the goblin subplot.
--------------------------
As to OPs question, I'll try to provide an example.

The party was hired to clear out some hobgoblins that had been sighted in a mine nearby. However, the only crimes that could be ascribed to them were stealing cattle. Since our party was made-up of one member of a hated human ethnicity and two others who most people regard as "monsters" themselves, we were skeptical of this. We made peaceful contact with the hobgoblins, but were also effectively imprisoned by them as tools in their current mission (finding an artifact in an abandoned city below the mine).

We found prior mercenaries the hobgoblins had captured, and beaten, and disfigured in the case of the spellcaster. This gave my PC second thoughts, but another PC considered that the prior adventurers had attacked indiscriminately and this was a logical, if unfortunate, outcome. Despite the captured adventurers being displeased with out course of action, we did promise to free them and made their release one of our "payments" for completing the "job" given to us by the hobgoblins.

Ultimately, we did the hobgoblins dirty work for them, but several PCs befriended the hobgoblin rank and file over time. We generally tried to keep them safe in shared combats, shared healing with them, and were kinder to them than their officers. When we finally fought our way into the depths of a morlock city (the only time in the game we did kind of crash into a civilization and kill them without much compunction) and the hobgoblin commander tried to betray us, his men turned on him.

Ultimately the PCs, the prior adventurers, and most of the hobgoblins got to walk away alive from the event. The party gave a big portion of their reward to the captured adventurers for healing. The hobgoblin commander's plan to grab the artifact fell through, with the party claiming it instead and then passing it on to a trusted third-party.

The arcs afterwards involved fighting against Hexite fascists and their allies (including a wannabe lich diabolist), nearly all human and core demi-humans. I don't see an issue with taking down non-racial-hat-wearing fantasy Nazis. Additionally, at least one PC has taken up the task of trying to enact some level of social change in wider society during his downtime (spurred by realizing his spellbook costs more than most commoners will make in their lives).

[Naanomi]

Removing the ‘hats’ of evil races is fine... lots of settings do it completely, or at least play with the concept. The base DND Cosmology is a lot less forgiving about such things for Fiends, most intelligent undead, and some races highly tied to fiends (like 5e Gnolls)

Note that Planescape though was built around Evil not always being ‘Bad’ or ‘Enemies’... lots of Friendlyish Fiends running around who, on the long term, want by their very nature to eat babies and drink souls (and nothing short of a age defining event would change that), but for now are fine just selling you a fancy hat or something.

The main thing is these are all *setting assumptions* that don’t have to be universal, and don’t need to be absolute... but can be

[RifleAvenger]

The main thing is these are all *setting assumptions* that don’t have to be universal, and don’t need to be absolute... but can be

Forgotten Realms' (formerly Greyhawk's in prior editions) assumptions, which are among the worst, are presented as the defaults. Shown off in the core books. Constituting most of the published adventures. With the non-PC exceptions present in said setting (e.g. drow rebels beyond Drizzt; a kingdom of orcs at long-term, if strained, peace with its neighbors) rarely being showcased outside of novels or fringe materials.

I think things would be a lot different if a setting like Eberron were the face of the franchise and formed the default assumptions presented in the core books. That isn't the case now, and it certainly wasn't in the past that accumulated a lot of the "institutional memory" of D&D.

[Tanarii]

Removing the ‘hats’ of evil races is fine... lots of settings do it completely, or at least play with the concept.

And it's also fine not to.

Certainly when Zhakara (FR Arabian Nights 2e) made traditionally evil races part of society, it was an interesting setting change of pace. Conversely Orcs of Thar turning the tables and allowing humanoids to be PCs while still explicitly having the humanoid races be reincarnated souls of evil people being punished by living a harsh life was interesting as well.

And of course it's a table choice what they find acceptable as well.

[Unoriginal]

Forgotten Realms' (formerly Greyhawk's in prior editions) assumptions, which are among the worst, are presented as the defaults.

Untrue. FR's assumptions are presented in the Sword Coast book, and they differ from the default 5e ones.

[RifleAvenger]

Untrue. FR's assumptions are presented in the Sword Coast book, and they differ from the default 5e ones.

Don't own SCAG. If what's presented there is significantly better than the core presentation, then regard my prior post to be about core's setting agnostic presentation.

Because the core of the issue I was getting at isn't necessarily tied to any one setting, but about what D&D presents as "normal" to new players.

EDIT: Though I've not been impressed by the 5e modules set in FR either. While they have a number of atypically aligned individuals, most come off as manifestations of the "quirkiness" endemic to FR NPC's. The main societies of duergar, drow, derro, etc. seem to be played straight as mono-racial and monolithic cultures of Evil.

EDIT EDIT: On the other hand, a lot of the 5e adventures seem to presume PCs motivated by some level of altruism. Descent into Avernus is one of the most glaring examples. "Hey kids! Now that you've saved Baldur's Gate, wanna jump into literal hell at 5th level, to save a city you don't necessarily care about, with no special reason given why you should expect to be able to solve the problem?" The back half of Out of the Abyss is similar, if not quite as bad.

I mean, it's either an expectation for Good PCs, or an expectation that everyone wants to stay on the choo-choo train.

[2D8HP]

Thinking about alignment, has anyone ever played a campaign where all of the party members were truly GOOD aligned and always acted accordingly?

Sure, 5e seems rife with it, still better than the "villain" campaigns, but only just, I think better hooks than "hero" are needed.

I mean this is a game entirely centered around hunting and killing sentient creatures and then taking all of their valuables[...]

What I remember of the late '70's/early '80's games I was in, it was more 'bout lootin', the killin' was often avoided 'cause risky

[...]BUT 99% of all adventures include theft, of earlymind manipulation, pillaging, hundreds of murders of humanoids and other sentient creatures, breaking and entering, violence of all sorts, (remember that time we we went into the goblin's layer and killed them ALL just because they were goblins), etc - it's the primary way to gain XP and level up.

Yeah, it's really lame, XP for gold was better, also, I remember less goblins, and more giant spiders, animated skeletons, and traps as the dangers way back then.

If we are completely honest with ourselves, Heroes (and their players) are just thugs who have convinced themselves they are justified.

Thoughts?

Oh that.

Often "good" is the only motivation 5e DM's suggests. Writing "good" on the character record sheet is often the only plausible reason I think of for my PC to follow the adventure "hook" ("Why are we risking our necks to save the villagers from the Hobgoblin again? Gorobei Katayama* expected to at least be paid!")

Where's the treasure?

LAME!

(*Seven Samurai reference)

I blame this on cultural amnesia, too often Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings, are the touchstones instead of the right, true, proper, and beautiful classic Howard's Conan, or Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser sword & sorcery tales, which were the main inspiration of all proper D&D.

To rectify, slow leveling up way the Hell down, have equipment (especially magic items) be the main way for PC's to become more powerful, give little XP (maybe none) for combat, to gain a level PC's have to spend enough gold at the tavern and carouse.

And stop this "save the world" claptrap!

If you insist on a "good" campaign, watch The Seven Samurai, and do that almost exactly, or see Excalibur and do Percival's story arc.

Not the DM?

Well beggars can't be choosers, take what you may get, you're in the same boat as most.