Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality

[Silent Wrangler]

On saura jamais ce qu'on a vraiment dans nos ventres,
Caché derrière nos apparences.
L'âme d'un brave ou d'un complice ou d'un bourreau ?
Ou le pire, ou le plus beau ?
Serions-nous de ceux qui résistent, ou bien les moutons d'un troupeau,
S'il fallait plus que des mots ?
[...]
Et qu'on nous épargne à toi et moi,
Si possible, très longtemps
D'avoir à choisir un camp.

"We will never know what we really have in our guts. The soul of a brave, of an accomplice, of an executioner? The worst or the most beautiful? Would we be of those who resist or sheep in the herd, if it took more than words? [...] May we, you and I, be spared, if possible for a very long time, having to pick a side."
From Born in 17, in Leidenstadt by Jean-Jacques Goldman, Michael Jones and Carole Fredericks.

It's easy to say we would (not) have done this or that but the truth is, most of us don't know, and I hope we never find out.

I am of the opinion that if one was given a chance to say "ewww, no way" to slaughtering goblin noncombatants while pretending to be Minmax The Warrior, they will have better chances of saying "eww, no way" to killing human noncombatants while being John Smith The Soldier. Human mind likes to rely on past experience, even imaginary one.

[Metastachydium]

IMO, if put into a situation in which they were allowed to massacre children with no negative consequences, the biggest factor that would keep a lot of people from participating would be plain laziness, not morality.

I'm pretty sure there are such people, I'm pretty sure there isn't a lot of them and I'm absolutely certain that they should seek psychiatric help.

[Vahnavoi]

That's a specific pedagogical issue. Briefly, from knowledge and experience: training someone to be an ethical soldier requires significant time and drills made to resemble the real ethical situation as closely as possible.

Bluntly, fictional moral choices encountered as part of entertainment? They do not qualify. Expecting them to have much of an effect is just the inverse of "video games causes violence!". The proposed effect is the opposite, but the internal logic and the degree of proof for it is identical.

[danielxcutter]

I find "anyone would murder children if they thought they could get away with it" is a mindset I do not like.

[brian 333]

When D&D came out goblins were intended to be the enemy. They were characterized as implacable and irredeemable monsters. This was, and remains, normal in games where the player has (imaginary) living enemies to defeat.

This is not racisim!

Some modern portrayals of goblins show them to be human in all but appearance. They were most likely written that way precisely to make a point about racism.

Conflating the two is the problem here. The first is a game mechanic and the second is social commentary. When I mentioned Pickett's Charge and Monopoly the point was clear to me: in real life these things were horrible, but in a game they are just game mechanics. Nobody gets hurt in the game. There are no dead to bury, no wounded to tend, no bankrupt millionaires to house and feed.

It seems to me that we as a culture are losing the ability to differentiate the real from the imaginary, and that frightens me. How long will it be before I am accused of genocide for wiping out all of the red checkers?

[Morty]

When D&D came out goblins were intended to be the enemy. They were characterized as implacable and irredeemable monsters. This was, and remains, normal in games where the player has (imaginary) living enemies to defeat.

This is not racisim!

Some modern portrayals of goblins show them to be human in all but appearance. They were most likely written that way precisely to make a point about racism.

Conflating the two is the problem here. The first is a game mechanic and the second is social commentary. When I mentioned Pickett's Charge and Monopoly the point was clear to me: in real life these things were horrible, but in a game they are just game mechanics. Nobody gets hurt in the game. There are no dead to bury, no wounded to tend, no bankrupt millionaires to house and feed.

It seems to me that we as a culture are losing the ability to differentiate the real from the imaginary, and that frightens me. How long will it be before I am accused of genocide for wiping out all of the red checkers?

Nobody has accused anyone of being racist because they're killing imaginary goblins. Certainly not you, specifically. You've claimed to be accused of such several times, it's been debunked as false each time and you've ignored it. Now you've come up with some strawman about being accused of genocide for playing checkers. Why do you keep trying to make it a personal attack on yourself when nobody has made one? The argument has only ever been against trends of portrayal in fiction.

If doesn't frighten you that we as a society are "losing the ability to differentiate the real from the imaginary", because it's not happening and you know it. People are simply critically analysing things you've been taking for granted. If you're not comfortable with that, no one is forcing you to read the comic or threads like this one.

[Fyraltari]

When D&D came out goblins were intended to be the enemy. They were characterized as implacable and irredeemable monsters. This was, and remains, normal in games where the player has (imaginary) living enemies to defeat.

This is not racisim!

Brian, nobody is saying you are racist for having played those games. Nobody is saying that Gygax, Anderson and the others were racist for designing those games. What we are saying is that fiction does not exist in a vacuum. Fiction reflects a culture's perception of reality and a culture's perception of reality is shaped by the fiction it consumes. Snake biting its tail and all that.

As such, the portrayal of entire groups as "implacable and irredeemable monsters" isn't entirely harmless. It is, wittingly or not, reinforcing racist, xenophobic, prejudiced narratives and therefore plays a part in racist, xenophobic, prejudiced attitudes.

Is it a big part? No. Is anyone going to become racist simply by engaging with these stories? No. Does anyone need to be racist to engage with these stories? No.

But the thing about biases is that they are, by nature, hard to detect. Part of being a mature adult, a very important part, is the ability to reflect upon oneself and the reasons behind one's actions and taste. Asking "why do I enjoy this?" "Is there anything wrong or problematic within this work that I should be pay attention to?" Being critical of what we engage with so that we can take in the good while rejecting the bad is healthy.

To reiterate, no-one is saying that enjoying or creating a work of fiction with problematic elements makes you a bad person. Because no work of fiction is ever going to be ideologically pure. But it is important that we recognize the faults within ourselves and within our cultural framework, else we will never overcome them.

Some modern portrayals of goblins show them to be human in all but appearance. They were most likely written that way precisely to make a point about racism.

Yes, and the point is generally, at least partially that portraying entire people as naturally evil is feeding racist rhetoric and taking inspiration from it.

Taken generally, fantasy writers and consumers have looked/are looking at the past and saw an issue, namely "evil races" and are deciding not to repeat this issue, to correct that flaw. That is good. That is progress.

Conflating the two is the problem here. The first is a game mechanic and the second is social commentary. When I mentioned Pickett's Charge and Monopoly the point was clear to me: in real life these things were horrible, but in a game they are just game mechanics. Nobody gets hurt in the game. There are no dead to bury, no wounded to tend, no bankrupt millionaires to house and feed.

Everybody knows that game characters are not real. With the possible exception of people with severe mental issues. That's not the point.

The point is that Dungeon and Dragons, and in fact, all roleplaying games are precisely that: roleplaying games. The players are acting roles within a narrative. Unlike Monopoly, there is a context to the actions of the players, a story to ground them. And as such, that story is as valid to criticize as any art form. Remember, art does not exist in a vacuum. Every novel, every movie, every painting, every fairy tale and every game played tells two stories: the one it is trying to tell and the one of a specific moment in time of the culture that produced it.

It seems to me that we as a culture are losing the ability to differentiate the real from the imaginary, and that frightens me. How long will it be before I am accused of genocide for wiping out all of the red checkers?

Do not confuse scrutinizing the relationship between the real and the imaginary with losing track of which is which. Nobody actually cares about what the goblins feel. People care about what the author is trying to say.
Thinking that people criticizing the first editions of D&D will lead to people decrying checkers is a slippery slope fallacy: these games are fundamentally different. Checkers is an adversial game where two players face one another in a contest of strategic thinking devoud of context; the checkers representing nothing, are mere extensions of the other player's will. But D&D is a co-operarive game where the players and the Game Master come together to tell the story of heroic (or at least, interesting) characters where the Non-Player Characters represent, well, characters in that story, that the player characters can interact with in a myriad of way.

[Worldsong]

So on one hand we've got people claiming that most people would be fine with the idea of massacring children if they could get away with it and would only be stayed by their own laziness.

On the other, Brian continues to try and turn himself into a martyr for reasons unknown.

This thread has gone to strange places indeed.

[Morty]

So on one hand we've got people claiming that most people would be fine with the idea of massacring children if they could get away with it and would only be stayed by their own laziness.

On the other, Brian continues to try and turn himself into a martyr for reasons unknown.

This thread has gone to strange places indeed.

Really, I'd consider both of those entirely within the expected trajectory for a thread about this subject.

[Worldsong]

Really, I'd consider both of those entirely within the expected trajectory for a thread about this subject.

...You know what, fair enough. This forum has already gone in such strange directions in previous threads that the strange has become the new normal.

[Ionathus]

<snip>

Incredibly well said. Do you write essays? I would read them.

[Fyraltari]

Incredibly well said. Do you write essays? I would read them.

Aww.
No, I'm too lazy to seriously write something.

Also, permission to sig?

[Ionathus]

Aww.
No, I'm too lazy to seriously write something.

Also, permission to sig?

Granted! 10 character limit

[Shadowknight12]

When D&D came out goblins were intended to be the enemy. They were characterized as implacable and irredeemable monsters. This was, and remains, normal in games where the player has (imaginary) living enemies to defeat.

Some modern portrayals of goblins show them to be human in all but appearance.

Your word choices are quite telling. You see your own playstyle as the norm, and what's more, you want it to continue being the norm. You reduce those who do not share it to "some" in order to feel like they are only a newfangled minority.

This isn't really about the in-game morality, it's about feeling threatened ("Am I going to be accused of genocide?") and the fear of no longer being the norm.

[Spartan360]

Yeahhhh, I'm going to have to disagree with the theory that laziness would stop people from killing children if they were allowed to. An average person would likely have far too much empathy and decency to find a child-slaughter to be a pretty messed up act. Most of the western world for example, when seeing a small animal walking on it's own, don't think about killing it unless starved or financially troubled. Also I'm not completely sure about it but I believe most species have a somewhat innate sense towards defending newborns/children.

Also, I don't use real-life social stuff when thinking about in-fiction stories, far too much difference in history and also there are very conflicting mindsets in real life so unless you want to start a discussion/argument about on a different site, I mostly keep my mouth/fingers away from that mess.

[Kish]

Conflating the two is the problem here. The first is a game mechanic and the second is social commentary. When I mentioned Pickett's Charge and Monopoly the point was clear to me: in real life these things were horrible, but in a game they are just game mechanics. Nobody gets hurt in the game. There are no dead to bury, no wounded to tend, no bankrupt millionaires to house and feed.

It seems to me that we as a culture are losing the ability to differentiate the real from the imaginary, and that frightens me. How long will it be before I am accused of genocide for wiping out all of the red checkers?

Considering you're the only one here who seemingly doesn't understand that a roleplaying game involves imagination, I would say...you already have been so accused, but only by yourself.

I get that flatly asserting that D&D is a wargame and it's wrong to impute morality to it didn't get the reaction you wanted, but rubbing out the line between it and entirely other types of games won't get you that reaction either. Whatever you can say about the alignment rules, their entire existence puts D&D on a different plane than checkers or the other games you keep insisting it's exactly the same as.

[danielxcutter]

Considering you're the only one here who seemingly doesn't understand that a roleplaying game involves imagination, I would say...you already have been so accused, but only by yourself.

I get that flatly asserting that D&D is a wargame and it's wrong to impute morality to it didn't get the reaction you wanted, but rubbing out the line between it and entirely other types of games won't get you that reaction either. Whatever you can say about the alignment rules, their entire existence puts D&D on a different plane than checkers or the other games you keep insisting it's exactly the same as.

Well I'm pretty sure that D&D settings are canonically on a different Material Plane than Earth.

[Jasdoif]

Thinking that people criticizing the first editions of D&D will lead to people decrying checkers is a slippery slope fallacy: these games are fundamentally different. Checkers is an adversial game where two players face one another in a contest of strategic thinking devoud of context; the checkers representing nothing, are mere extensions of the other player's will. But D&D is a co-operarive game where the players and the Game Master come together to tell the story of heroic (or at least, interesting) characters where the Non-Player Characters represent, well, characters in that story, that the player characters can interact with in a myriad of way.

Indeed. Everything is base once it's torn down to its basics, and everything is amoral once morality has been stripped from it; in much the same way that after a chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream cone is deprived of its chocolate covering and cone, it's overwhelmingly vanilla.

If everything that differentiates D&D from a wargame is ignored, D&D looks a heck of a lot like a wargame (not exactly a groundbreaking discovery). And conversely, if everything that stems from D&D's wargame heritage is ignored, D&D looks like nowhere near as much of a wargame (not quite as tautological).

Thus the Prime Directive of Analysis^TM: If you break something down into its components to understand it better, you have to put it back together before you can really understand it. This entire forum could be broken down into a legion of boolean logic operations taking place across a myriad of electronic devices; that doesn't mean memorizing a few tables of boolean logic operations is sufficient to understand this forum. (At all.) Similarly, and as you say, there's no moral aspect to the "roll dice, do math, compare numbers" component of D&D; it's the addition of storytelling on top of that, with all the usage and implications and expectations and everything else associated with storytelling, that allows the game to possess a moral dimension.

[dps]

So on one hand we've got people claiming that [Bmost people would be fine with the idea of massacring children if they could get away with it and would only be stayed by their own laziness.[/b]

On the other, Brian continues to try and turn himself into a martyr for reasons unknown.

This thread has gone to strange places indeed.

To be fair, I said a lot of people, not most people.

[Dion]

To be fair, I said a lot of people, not most people.

If you industrialized it, and spread the blame around a little so that everyone could say “I just paid taxes for those bombs but I didn’t build them” or “I just built the bombs but I didn’t drop them” or “I just dropped them but I didn’t target them” or “I just targeted them but I didn’t set strategy” or “I just set strategy but I didn’t set policy”, etc...

Yeah, I think most people would drop bombs on children.

[Jason]

If you industrialized it, and spread the blame around a little so that everyone could say “I just paid taxes for those bombs but I didn’t build them” or “I just built the bombs but I didn’t drop them” or “I just dropped them but I didn’t target them” or “I just targeted them but I didn’t set strategy” or “I just set strategy but I didn’t set policy”, etc...

Yeah, I think most people would drop bombs on children.

But paying taxes is not optional. If you don't pay taxes you go to jail. Are you responsible for all the ways the government spent your money after they forced you to give it to them at the threat of imprisonment?

Building bombs is not the same thing as choosing when and where to drop them either.

It's only when we get to the people actually dropping the bombs that we can start to really call it "bombing" anything.

[Shadowknight12]

But paying taxes is not optional. If you don't pay taxes you go to jail. Are you responsible for all the ways the government spent your money after they forced you to give it to them at the threat of imprisonment?

Building bombs is not the same thing as choosing when and where to drop them either.

It's only when we get to the people actually dropping the bombs that we can start to really call it "bombing" anything.

It's possible this isn't a black and white issue where taxpayers are 100% just as guilty as the person ordering the bombings (or the person dropping them), but also aren't 100% separated from the event. It's possible that being coerced to participate in a system that bombs innocents by the threat of harm/incarceration puts you in a gray area where you are neither complicit to nor separated from the event.

[Dion]

It's only when we get to the people actually dropping the bombs that we can start to really call it "bombing" anything.

That’s the beauty of industrialization. Everyone does everything, and nobody does anything.

“No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

[dps]

If you industrialized it, and spread the blame around a little so that everyone could say “I just paid taxes for those bombs but I didn’t build them” or “I just built the bombs but I didn’t drop them” or “I just dropped them but I didn’t target them” or “I just targeted them but I didn’t set strategy” or “I just set strategy but I didn’t set policy”, etc...

Yeah, I think most people would drop bombs on children.

Yeah, but OTOH, I think there's a pretty big distinction between dropping a bomb on a city from 30,000 feet up and sticking a sword into someone right in front of you, on a whole lot of different levels.

[pearl jam]

Yes, the distinction is that one is able to avoid seeing the consequence of their action right in front of them.

[dps]

Yes, the distinction is that one is able to avoid seeing the consequence of their action right in front of them.

Yes, that's one distinction, but not the only one.

[Worldsong]

Yes, the distinction is that one is able to avoid seeing the consequence of their action right in front of them.

The bomb also is a lot more effective.

[pearl jam]

Not necessarily.

[arimareiji]

That’s the beauty of industrialization. Everyone does everything, and nobody does anything.

“No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

That, and/or the Official Blessing of Authority.

Yes, that's one distinction, but not the only one.

Indeed. "Bomb" (perhaps because it's at a distance) also generates the utterly-imaginary distinction that the consequences are instantaneous and merciful.

Except in very extreme circumstances, a bomb doesn't somehow instantly reduce people to their component elements. Bomb victims don't "poof" and vanish like monsters in a video game.

Injuries and death are generally caused by shrapnel, or roofs and walls falling. Sometimes fires, especially those started by incendiary bombs. But regardless, very likely to be the stuff of nightmares.

_{Edit: Because at this hour, more than vague allusions to what I think of as nightmare fuel are a Very Bad Idea.}

[Worldsong]

Not necessarily.

Look, if you can't manage to be more effective with a bomb dropped on a city than a single sword that seems like a you problem, not a bomb problem.