Results 61 to 90 of 490
-
2020-12-15, 08:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Australia
-
2020-12-15, 10:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Sure, sure, people wanting to know morals of others and how they act on that information has nothing to with alignment... wait, no, yes it does, when you're asking if they get along. I was describing one of the common, practical ways for it to happen, and now you're fishing for an example that falls outside those bounds... first, I don't understand why, second, your example is increasingly bad. A Good person employing a known Evil person, by the time other peoole are questioning them about it, is begging for trouble. Their "getting along" with their assassin bodyguard has a social cost that undermines that very endeavor. A reasonable Good person, when confronted by other Good people, will at least consider finding a bodyguard who is not an assassin.
-
2020-12-15, 11:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
-
2020-12-16, 12:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
There's a difference between 'there can be a person who needs to know the morals of others around them' and 'all people without exception always prioritize declarations of moral stances over all other aspects of their relationships with other people'. A city guard asks someone to swear an oath to be against murder? Sure, that's an interaction that can happen.
But if, say, I'm forming a gaming group with a bunch of people who are going to be my friends, I don't start with: "Okay, before we can play, I need you to outline your moral and ethical frameworks and I'm going to grill you about them for a bit to make sure you're self-consistent and that your beliefs are compatible with my world view." That's a caricature. I sit down at the table with them and play some games. I might find out that they actually have some really creepy interests or whatever - but given mature adults, even if I think they're unduly obsessed with fantasies about cannibalism or something, we can do things like reach an agreement to leave those fantasies for a different table or even that I'll tolerate them and give them some opportunities to imply that they've been eating people offscreen but I'm not going to run scenes about it or whatever.
In the wanderer/assassin example, the idea that the way society views the wanderer's behavior is central is a very Lawful viewpoint, but actually caving to that pressure would be indirectly responsible for people getting killed. I'd argue the Wanderer would be more of a hypocrite to fire the assassin (and thereby release them from the non-lethal part of the contract) than to keep them employed. The Wanderer has found a way to resolve the moral issue of the Assassin having no compunctions about killing people in a way that neither compromises their own morals, nor does it compromise the things the Assassin values. The idea that evil must be punished rather than just prevented is a particular social more that, in this case, the Wanderer does not share; in terms of alignment implications, it might mean that they're non-Lawful, but it has no bearing upon whether they're Good.Last edited by NichG; 2020-12-16 at 12:11 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 12:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2008
- Location
- Sweden
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Last edited by Mastikator; 2020-12-16 at 12:58 AM.
Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal
-
2020-12-16, 01:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Nobody made the "all people" claim. In fact, the whole point of hypocrisy is that people frequently don't. You are, once again, wasting a lot of words to not even disagree with me.
That's a rationalization a Good character could give that might hold, or it might not. But what you're missing here is that the assassin agreeing to not kill people and going around helping a known do-gooder is only dubiously Evil by alignment rules. If this arrangement persists, a case can be made the assassin has drifted over to Neutral and has functionally quit being an assassin. Your supposed solution to Good and Evil getting along presumes a specific and suspicuously agreeable Evil person. That's the other half of my hypocrisy argument: "evil" people who aren't all that evil.Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2020-12-16 at 01:02 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 01:24 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
I really think the error you're making is to take first Good or Evil and then assume that a person is motivated by the desire to be Good or the desire to be Evil, and that somehow when they don't act in a way that is 100% aligned with those philosophical poles they're 'being hypocrites'.
But people are just people and are motivated as they are - alignment then describes the balance of their actions, weighed however it works in the particular cosmology you're working with. If you insist on projecting them onto those two philosophical poles, neither of which they necessarily declare for or espouse, then I don't see any hypocrisy in them. It's not someone's responsibility to fit neatly into a particular moral framework you prefer. Or to put it another way, it sounds to me that in the way you're counting actions, everyone who doesn't declare for an alignment will end up being Neutral despite whatever actions or tendencies they have over the course of their life, because you're requiring active commitment to all aspects of Evilness to be Evil and all aspects of Goodness to be Good and so on.
That's not totally inconsistent with how AD&D handled things, going as far as to have 'alignment languages' and to explicitly say that people in D&D-land are almost never neutral and are actively espousing their alignments. But by 3ed and 3.5ed, it had gone much more of a route of it being possible to be 'incidentally evil' even without having any personal positive commitment to a philosophy of Evil. Or even 'accidentally evil' due to things like casting Deathwatch being technically evil acts. In 4ed 'unaligned' was a thing, but that went away again in 5ed for sentient beings I guess. So since you can't 'not have an alignment' in practice, to me the vast majority of characters should be of this 'incidentally aligned' type - they don't go through life thinking 'I am going to be particularly Chaotic Neutral today', they just go through life and act. And as a result of their general tendencies and circumstances some may balance towards E or G or L or C or whatever, but that doesn't obligate them to take on other aspects of those alignments that don't happen to mesh with their actual motivations and behaviors. It just means that they're more complex people than archetypes of a 2-letter code. That's not hypocrisy, that's just the consequence of an external observer's oversimplification of the person.Last edited by NichG; 2020-12-16 at 01:24 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 01:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2007
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Yes, but that's just someone being creepy, not evil. What if they were an actual cannibal? Like, they literally stalk, kill, and eat people? But they promise not to eat you or any of the other players in the group. Still comfortable with having them there?
I mean, a lot of "evil" PCs are actually just neutral. They're creepy, or edgy, or somewhat of a jerk, and if an unwanted moral dilemma comes up they can say "Hah! I don't give a ****!", but they don't do anything evil on-screen and their past evil deeds or future evil goals are kept vague enough to ignore. Sure, you can get along with them fine, because they're not really evil in a way that matters.
But take somebody like the "My flatmate and business partner is a serial killer, and I'm ok with that" guy from earlier in the thread. Would you consider him a good person? And if anything, being in an adventuring party together is an even stronger connection than that. You're not just tolerating the evil character's presence, you're keeping them alive and helping them grow significantly more powerful.Last edited by icefractal; 2020-12-16 at 01:58 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 01:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
I prefer the "Evil alignment is common, and does not require extremely severe evil acts" approach that Eberron takes.
Not every Evil character has to be a serial killer, after all - some can just be bullies.Marut-2 Avatar by Serpentine
New Marut Avatar by Linkele
-
2020-12-16, 02:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2019
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Even if that's true, that doesn't mean their interests can never overlap in practice. After all, something that affects me personally is likely to affect the people around me as well and vice versa, so a lot of issues big and small would likely unite the Good and Evil, in a setting where such objective morality existed.
-
2020-12-16, 03:59 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
There's no error, someone not acting according to their declared motivations is what hypocrisy means. Your error is presuming I'm the one doing the declaring, when I was making a point of what people do themselves.
Originally Posted by NichG
"Commitment to all aspects" of an alignment isn't what I've been talking about at any point. What I have talked about is that willingly turning a blind eye is an action in the alignment system. Negligence is complicity, it impacts both axes of the system. There's one alignment that's all about individual freedom and self-definition over any group responsibility, but that's Chaotic Neutral, not any Good alignment.
Originally Posted by NichG
Your point about complexity is complete nonsense. This whole "drifting within an alignment category" was pioneered by AD&D 1st edition, it outright gives you examples of how to handle that and says that a character can be "basically good in their neutralcy", etc. But it also said the above thing about turning the blind eye, so you cannot consistently "not care" about out-of-alignment actions of your associates. It furthermore said that general agreement exists within alignment categories only, so if you have two characters getting along over extended periods despite them being of nominally different, especially nominally opposed, alignments, then by the rules that calls into question whether these characters are of actually different alignment. A Wanderer who honestly doesn't care about Evil actions by their workers is probably not Good, an Assassin who essentially accepts a contractual obligation to stop being an assassin probably isn't Evil, they aren't an example of Good and Evil getting along, they're an example of basically decent Neutral person getting along with another Neutral person with a sordid past.Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2020-12-16 at 05:37 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 05:45 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2008
- Location
- Sweden
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Same. And I'd add that there's a difference between tolerating a bully and getting along with a bully. Tolerating because you don't have the power to improve the situation is something a good character could do. Getting along with a known bully means condoning it, which is just not good.
I don't think good and evil characters can get along, I think they can tolerate each other if they have a shared problem AND a shared solution. (otherwise they would be natural enemies) And even then it would still depend on the problem, the problem they face would have to be bigger than the problem the evil character create (their evil actions are a problem to the good character).
The only exception being one that was brought up: the evil character is affable and their evil deeds are unknown to the good character. But that means that as far as the good character knows the evil character isn't evil.Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal
-
2020-12-16, 05:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Viscerally no, but if I think about it there are people who probably cause more aggregate harm than a cannibal who kills someone every so often who I would be comfortable with, just because the kind of harm they cause isn't viscerally threatening or immediately squicky. I'm not exactly sure how to count how many deaths a given investor or CEO or lawyer could be held accountable for through e.g. aggregate economic effects, but just because of the scale of operations even minor moments of disregard could starve more people than the cannibal ever would. Would I play a tabletop game with the CEO of an oil company or tobacco company or something? I think I could do. Could I play a tabletop game with a soldier who took part in some questionable things while at war or in a conflicted area? I think I could do. In neither case would I be condoning those specific parts of their life, and if they were really pushing those aspects of their life into the relationship then that would be a problem (the CEO constantly bragging about increase in sales in the 12-14 demographic would definitely not be welcome, nor would someone who was obviously trying to use my tacit approval to absolve themselves by e.g. telling stories about how other people are worse or asking me to reaffirm that what they did was okay) but just having those things as parts of who they are wouldn't make getting along into an outright impossibility for me.
But take somebody like the "My flatmate and business partner is a serial killer, and I'm ok with that" guy from earlier in the thread. Would you consider him a good person? And if anything, being in an adventuring party together is an even stronger connection than that. You're not just tolerating the evil character's presence, you're keeping them alive and helping them grow significantly more powerful.
This last thing is why I'm getting a read from you that you'd probably consider nearly 100% of people Neutral, outside of really extreme caricatures.
Lets say you have someone whose only defining trait, for sake of argument, is that they get along with literally everyone who will let them. Happy to call an angel or a demon lord friend, murderer, saint, or king. I think the rule of 'if two people get long over extended periods they're the same alignment' would mean that there can be no non-neutral entities in a world in which this character exists and manages to survive and sustain those interactions. The fact that they get along persistently with both the angel and demon would mean that the angel and demon must both be the same alignment as the character, so they all must be the same as each-other.
And implicitly deleting alignment by projecting everything to Neutral does I suppose resolve the question of whether Good and Evil can get along: they can't get along if there are no Good or Evil characters to get along with.
-
2020-12-16, 06:51 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Such thought exercise has no practical meaning for any game, nor my opinions of alignment, because such a character is neither psychologically nor pragmatically plausible, and flatly inadmissible under any sane reading of system rules.
-
2020-12-16, 07:15 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Can a vegetarian hang out with a non-Vegetarian or even be his friend?
Does that mean he risks losing his status as 'vegetaian' for doing so ?
Does it mean, it would be an apt description to characterize that vegetarian as "being ok with eating meat" ?
That is the proper analogy.
-
2020-12-16, 07:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Not proper analogy at all; diet choice doesn't impact on alignment.
-
2020-12-16, 08:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2008
- Location
- Sweden
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
A proper analogy would be to replace "hang out" with "have over for dinner". Can a vegetarian cook non-vegetarian food for their non-vegetarian friend and still call themselves vegetarian in good faith? I would say "no".
Even if we accept the definition of vegetarian as "being ok with eating meat", a vegetarian has almost no power to stop others from eating meat. They can choose to tolerate it without condoning it, but to cook meat for someone else IS to condone it and then you are okay with eating meat.Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal
-
2020-12-16, 08:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
OP, you might want a preliminary read of The Righteous Mind. Essentially a psychologist whose body of research is in the psychology of human morality examines why it is that people who are fundamentally “good” can be bitterly, viciously divided over most political and religious concepts. And that often being on their side in one or two categories they consider most important is more than enough to justify any other exigencies or failings.
Basically, yes, you can have good and evil people getting along and even liking each other, if they are in pursuit of goals that aren’t just mutually serving (tolerance), but that one or both sides believe is morally fundamental.
And otherwise good people will learn to hate each other passionately if they believe some moral basis is being disregarded by the other party.
And heavens forbid you trip over some one else’s idea of “fair”, which is almost guaranteed to redeem any action or condemn any other regardless of what we would like to believe is our moral grounding.
-
2020-12-16, 08:49 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Somewhere in Utah...
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Sounds very much like we agree. Toleration is possible with a shared short-term goal. Long-term co-existence in an adventuring party is not unless one party or the other starts shifting their alignment towards neutral.
Edit: And in part that is because adventuring parties allow characters to pursue their goals and become more powerful while defending each other. Allowing evil to pursue it's goals and become more powerful while defending it is by definition not a good action.Last edited by Jason; 2020-12-16 at 08:54 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 08:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2008
- Location
- Sweden
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
A long term situation might exist, for example "a god killing snarl is threatening to annihilate the world and kill us all, we must stop an epic powerful lich and his evil cleric right hand from acquiring his power, so I the good and righteous fighter will put up with this despicable evil ranger since he's very useful for this goal".
I've heard some games campaigns revolve around thwarting long term Armageddon level threat. So you could have a good and an evil character in the party then. Over time I think you're right that one of them is going to have to give in a bit, if nothing else but because tolerance is work that can get tiring.Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal
-
2020-12-16, 08:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
-
2020-12-16, 09:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Somewhere in Utah...
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
-
2020-12-16, 09:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Debatable. Such an act probably is enough to prevent you ever being regarded as good-aligned, but a single extremely evil act followed by a lifetime of good acts will shift you at least to neutral, dont you think?
Without at the very least feel atrocious remorse about the deed? No.
If a person feel nothing except smug satisfaction thinking about how he got away with that horrible deed, he'll stay Evil even after 50 years of behaving civilized.
In my opinion, the thing that defines more the Evil alignment is ( lack of ) remorse.
That's why I never considered my character Shazuko ( drow, rogue, True Neutral ) evil, even if he killed civilians: because not only he stopped as soon as he could get away from drow society, he was tortured by those memories for decades.
Belkar has shifted towards neutral.
Unless he starts feeling remorse, he'll stay Evil forever.Last edited by Conradine; 2020-12-16 at 09:35 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 09:26 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2019
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
So the person who kills fifty people and feel really bad about it is less Evil than the person who kills fifty people and don't feel remorse? I don't see why. Remorse might stop someone from doing what caused it again, but on its own I don't think it makes someone morally better.
Last edited by Batcathat; 2020-12-16 at 09:26 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 09:26 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2012
- Location
- Vacation in Nyalotha
-
2020-12-16, 09:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Somewhere in Utah...
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Vegan vs. omnivore is not really a good vs. evil analogy. More like good vs. neutral, and that's assuming it's a vegan who geniuinely wishes to reduce animal suffering and not someone who is vegan because it's trendy or they expect health benefits (neutral) or because they want to virtue signal to everyone else how morally superior they are (at least selfish, possiby evil).
A Vegan good vs. evil analogy would be like a Vegan who genuinely wants to relieve animal suffering working together with, defending, and supporting someone who owns and works in something like an abbattoir or a mink farm, and does so because they enjoy their work.
-
2020-12-16, 09:39 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
So the person who kills fifty people and feel really bad about it is less Evil than the person who kills fifty people and don't feel remorse? I
Yes, he's less evil.
If he feels so bad, chances are he was forced to act under duress or extreme circumstances. Also if he truly feels so bad, he will probably never do that again.
That does not means he should be pardoned or trusted.
Remorse might stop someone from doing what caused it again, but on its own I don't think it makes someone morally better.
I can't tell who is Neutral or Good but I can tell with no doubt that those who do Evil without remorse are Evil themselves.
Even if they did it in the past.Last edited by Conradine; 2020-12-16 at 09:44 AM.
-
2020-12-16, 09:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
-
2020-12-16, 09:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2019
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
Yes, having acted under extreme circumstances and not doing it again would both make it better but feeling bad isn't a guarantee of either. It's entirely possible that the person who did something horrible because they thought they had no choice feels much better about it than the person who knows they did it for a bad reason.
-
2020-12-16, 09:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Gender
Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?
As I said, there are shades of grey...
the only thing I'm sure about is that the complete ( or almost complete ) lack of remorse is a clear symphtom of Evil.