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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: The Nature of Evil: Towards a More Rigorous Taxonomy

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    To be Evil, you have to be willing to step on the rights of others - not legal ones, but generally natural ones - your time and your body, and the results of those (typically your stuff). Buying the last loaf of bread? Not Evil. Taking someone else's bread? That's an Evil act.
    This feels like it's smuggling a specific ethical system (property rights exist, theft is wrong) into a universal definition, under the guise of "natural" rights.

    But while I think that's a defensible ethical system, and one I agree with to an extent, it's far from universal. In a strict consequentialist system, if you take bread away from someone who's not starving and give it to someone who is starving, that's a net good. Even if the not-starving person is still hungry and suffers, they suffer less than starving to death. Of course then you have to factor in secondary effects, like "if taking people's bread is a common thing, people will hide and/or guard their bread, resulting in wasted time and energy that could exceed the positive effects of bread redistribution". Ethical calculations usually aren't simple.

    And for that matter, I could imagine various situations where buying the last loaf of bread is (what I'd consider) evil. For reference, I do subscribe to a "sufficient indifference counts as harmful action" model, where for example - seeing someone drowning and choosing not to throw the life-preserver which is next to you and you could trivially toss them with no loss on your part - that's an evil act. So similarly, buying the last loaf, when you don't personally need it and know the results will be harmful, means you are doing something harmful.

  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Drawing from 5e, the following are Evil typical but not consistently required associated behaviors and Ideals.

    Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order.
    Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms.
    Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust.

    Ideals:
    Greed
    Might (as in Might makes Right)
    Power
    Mastery (effectively Might again)
    Retribution

    The last one may have unwritten context by being tagged as Evil, the Ideal is "Retribution. The rich need to be shown what life and death are like in the gutters. (Evil)"

  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    If I've understood the OP correctly, you want to play D&D, but your group's fondness for non-combat solutions and D&Ds relative lack of support for those options are making it less appealing.

    If you want to run a dungeon bash, the best option would be to introduce that in session 0
    Then if your players are not keen, you can take that on board. Maybe that means a different game or a different style.

    If a dungeon bash would be fine but you need enemies that can be bashed with a clear conscience, undead, demons and constructs might be the way to go.

    If you want to just reassure the group that it's ok to fight and kill sometimes, that's probably
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  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: The Nature of Evil: Towards a More Rigorous Taxonomy

    To be clear, I wasn't trying to make a case for what good, evil, and neutral alignment "canonically" are in Dungeons & Dragons. To the contrary, the problem is that the official material has always been all over the place. (So... it's stayed consistent, in a way.) And as a result, the default is that what it means in practice to be good-aligned is to have "good" in the alignment section of your write-up, and what it means in practice to be evil-aligned is to have "evil" on your character sheet or in your stat block or whatever. But while replaceable, non-binding "fluff" may work for other mechanical traits, it feels like doing that with alignment defeats its point.

    There are a few criteria that I think are necessary for good, evil, and neutral alignment to fill some of their commonly intended roles:

    1. Good-aligned characters reliably act in good ways. They do good things because they fundamentally are good, not because they're driven by motivations that could just as easily cause them to do bad things under different circumstances.

    2. Evil-aligned characters reliably act in bad ways. They do bad things because they fundamentally are bad, not because they're driven by motivations that could just as easily cause them to do good things under different circumstances.

    3. Having neither good nor evil alignment comes with no special added requirements. No character is excluding from existing. Certainly psychologically normal people aren't all excluded from existing.

    But let's be clear that there are a bunch of commonly intended roles for alignment, some of which are directly at odds with each other. I know that a lot of people want alignment to be "karma" that doesn't describe characters' internal natures at all! My main point here is that how you distinguish different alignments from each other should facilitate whatever roles you want them to serve. And that they do need to be distinguished from each other in the likely event that some of those roles involve there being known differences between them.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Selfish isn't enough to be Evil, in any regard. If two people are vying for a job, only one can get it - trying to get it is selfish, but it's not Evil. It's just Neutral. You're not taking anything from someone that they have an inherent claim on. Most people are neutral most of the time.

    To be Evil, you have to be willing to step on the rights of others - not legal ones, but generally natural ones - your time and your body, and the results of those (typically your stuff). Buying the last loaf of bread? Not Evil. Taking someone else's bread? That's an Evil act.
    Eh, it seems more to me that you're describing the difference between Lawful and non-Lawful alignment than non-Evil and Evil. Law cares about "right" and "wrong", while Good cares about good and bad. So Lawful Good endorses the rules that it thinks will result in the best consequences; Chaotic Good opposes rules so there aren't loopholes to hide behind; Lawful Evil endorses doing bad, bad things in the "right" ways for the "right" reasons; and Chaotic Evil is like "How dare you try to take away my freedom to own slaves?!"

    Which brings us to the point that major "property rights" are all about impinging on natural rights, not protecting them. E.g.: You can't make land, and you can't carry it with you, so the only way you can come to own it, and all that owning it even means, is that others are coerced to not interact with it in various ways. Deprived of their natural freedoms to move about unmolested, make use of natural resources, and so on. And while there may be some justification for dividing land up amongst people — the tragedy of the commons, and all — this is generally not done in an equitable fashion for the mutual benefit of everyone. More likely, it's done for the benefit of a tiny minority at the expense of the common folk, with an elite owning more land than they can personally work and the underclass forced to sell their labor for access to the means of production.

    So, given how they prosper through the threat and the use of force against others at their expense, decapitating them all isn't necessarily worse than the nobles deserve, but — getting back to original topic — that doesn't mean that it's a good idea. The problem with a Glorious People's Revolution is that, without solid planning about what will happen afterwards, political power may well be assumed by a group that, as it turns out, is not much better than the old rulers, and possibly even worse. Whoops! Turns out that it's not enough to kill all of the bad guys, you also need to put measures in place to prevent someone else from doing the same stuff in the future. Hindsight is always 20/20, amirite?

    I take it that you meant that the results of your time and your body are typically your stuff, not that your stuff is typically the results of your time and your body, and I don't want to conflate saying that we're entitled to the products of our labor with... well, with sentiments that tend to be at odds with that in practice. Rather, that's my point: "Your stuff" can cover a lot of different things acquired through a lot of different means, so there's not necessarily a ton of ethical common ground to "taking someone else's stuff without their permission" or "defending your property", outside of a context where those terms have specific restricted definitions. That seemed worth pointing out.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Not saying that this is the be-all, end-all of how to view Good/Evil, of course. Just saying that "Evil is selfish" is a bit of an over-simplification of that line of thought.
    Of what line of thought? I was responding to statements in the vein of "Most evil creatures do not seek to harm others as in end in itself, but simply do not care about the suffering that results from their actions". I don't think that it's unreasonable to characterize that as describing evil creatures as selfish. And I addressed the possibility that doing harm could be considered a part of evil (rather than just an occasional result), so I'm not sure what more you want from me here. Like, if your point is that I wasn't responding to the position that you took in your post, that's because you hadn't said that yet, and I'm not a future psychic. :P
    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Abstract positioning, either fully "position doesn't matter" or "zones" or whatever, is fine. If the rules reflect that. Exact positioning, with a visual representation, is fine. But "exact positioning theoretically exists, and the rules interact with it, but it only exists in the GM's head and is communicated to the players a bit at a time" sucks for anything even a little complex. And I say this from a GM POV.

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Drawing from 5e, the following are Evil typical but not consistently required associated behaviors and Ideals.

    Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order.
    Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms.
    Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust.

    Ideals:
    Greed
    Might (as in Might makes Right)
    Power
    Mastery (effectively Might again)
    Retribution

    The last one may have unwritten context by being tagged as Evil, the Ideal is "Retribution. The rich need to be shown what life and death are like in the gutters. (Evil)"
    The interesting thing is, by this definition lions are evil. Neutral evil, to be exact.
    Lions will take food from weaker predators without qualm. They will take all of it and eat as much as they can (greed). They do this by being more powerful than the other predators (might, power; literally might makes right). The most powerful (male) lion leads the pride and is replaced if it loses a battle against a stronger lion (might, power, mastery).
    Retribution is the only thing that doesn't really show up in their behavior; unless you count a male lion killing the offspring of his predecessor when he takes over a pride.

    This is by no means exclusive to lions but pretty common in nature. By extent, that makes nature neutral evil. And what does that say about druids, then?

    I anticipate that someone will argue that nature is not sapient and therefore cannot be evil; to that I counter: are the universal forces of Good and Evil that make morality objective in D&D sapient? If not, we have proof that sapience is not a requirement for alignment.
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  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Morgaln View Post
    I anticipate that someone will argue that nature is not sapient and therefore cannot be evil; to that I counter: are the universal forces of Good and Evil that make morality objective in D&D sapient? If not, we have proof that sapience is not a requirement for alignment.
    It's not an argument, it's literally in the description of alignment.

    Quote Originally Posted by 3.5
    Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral rather than good or evil. Even deadly vipers and tigers that eat people are neutral because they lack the capacity for morally right or wrong behavior.
    Quote Originally Posted by 5e
    Most creatures that lack the capacity for rational thought do not have alignments—they are unaligned. Such a creature is incapable of making a moral or ethical choice and acts according to its bestial nature. Sharks are savage predators, for example, but they are not evil; they have no alignment.
    So no, we don't have "proof that sapience is not a requirement for alignment"; in fact we have the exact opposite.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Duff View Post
    If a dungeon bash would be fine but you need enemies that can be bashed with a clear conscience, undead, demons and constructs might be the way to go.
    If you want to just reassure the group that it's ok to fight and kill sometimes, that's probably
    And oozes, monstrosities, aberrations.
    At low level a Gibbering Mouther or three can make for some spooky encounters. There are also some cool, albeit nasty, fey in Volo's Guide (like the red cap) to put the fear into the PCs.
    Quote Originally Posted by Morgaln View Post
    The interesting thing is, by this definition lions are evil. Neutral evil, to be exact.
    I always thought that lions were alignment 'hungry' (Yours was an interesting post, but I'll not follow up further).
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-08-03 at 07:30 AM.
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  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    @Morgaln: 3rd edition explicitly states that creatures of below-human cognition (below INT 3) are neutral by virtue of not being capable of ethics. It then goes and defines all mundane animals as having below-human cognition. Apparently 5th edition continues the trend, substituting unaligned for neutral.

    This is chiefly a WotC-era thing - in AD&D, animals had more variance in cognitive ability, with some having near-human or human-equivalent cognition, and some also had alignment other than neutral.

    Alignment can function either way. It is possible to do away with sweeping statements about animal cognition & alignment and evaluate each species by mythological or real life standards. The end result may well be a world where cats are indeed Evil, bees are Lawful Good, so on and so forth, and druids are True Neutral by virtue of trying to conserve ecological status quo between all these different animals.

    Personally, I consider the WotC sweeping statements about animals to be poor fit for fantasy. Myth and fantasy often have animals, even mundane animals, be intelligent, with their own languages etc., and holding them morally responsible is not at all odd. Even historically, some animals have been prosecuted under law just like people, and on contemporary note, further studies on many kinds of animals have shown them more aware and capable of thought & emotion than they are often given credit for. The idea that animals are just machines acting on instinct, with no moral quality to their actions, is a particular trope from particular era of history that can be trivially done away with for purposes of a game.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2022-08-03 at 08:07 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #39
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    I always thought that lions were alignment 'hungry' (Yours was an interesting post, but I'll not follow up further).
    Animals and similar intellect creatures can't have alignment. Alignment is moral and social attitudes, which has an associated typical but not consistently required behavior. The key being it's moral and social attitudes that determines alignment first, and behavior tends to result from that. It is not that behavior causes alignment.

    So these creatures can't have alignment, because they can't have moral and social attitudes.

    -----

    Edit: That's not to say that (in universe) someone can't look at overall behavior and guess alignment, or divine someone else's alignment (in editions that allow that) and guess at how they'll likely act and what they might hold as an ideal.

    Or similarly, that's not to say that a player should pick a good or neutral alignment for their PC then consistently have them behave in a manner associated with an evil alignment. That's not picking an alignment for the character in good faith.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii
    So these creatures can't have alignment, because they can't have moral and social attitudes.
    Animals definitely have social attitudes. Following 1st edition's definition of the conflict between Law and Chaos as that between large organized groups versus the individual, there is no problem classifying, say, hive insects as Lawful, highly solitary animals as Chaotic and those that shift between loose packs and solitude as Neutral. The determination is clear and simple to make.

    The question of whether animals have moral attitudes goes back to my previous post.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    For the OP's question at least, the way antagonists hash out on the D&D alignment chart is not really a good way to create antagonists that that group of players, with their specific moral views, are going to feel okay with killing. That's kind of the point, honestly, that if you approach that situation from the view of 'all I need is to be able to slap an E on it and you should be okay killing it', that's going to clash with 'well, whatever you or the D&D cosmos might say, that act seems reprehensible and doesn't fit into my image of the character I'm playing'.

    So a better analysis would be to ask, what in particular are that group's lines for things that okay to kill at will, things that are okay to kill at need, etc. Then make sure most things are solidly over that line. The line might not be about moral or ethical culpability, but could be about different valuations of different kinds of existence - for this group, maybe sapience matters a lot more than morality as to whether something deserves life. Maybe the level of cognitive sophistication matters more than, say, whether the thing is an 'abomination' according to in-D&D belief systems. Maybe power relationships matter more, or imminence of threat, or being seen being callous or dismissive of the value of life. Maybe its even just something like, they don't want to think of themselves as people who fall to stereotypes and treat all X the same, even if D&D's rules assert 'all X are in fact the same', and so just having a history with the antagonists would be enough to say 'okay, we're not killing orcs, we're killing the Azthag war band and we saw the sorts of things they do before'

    But basically, that sets the boundary of what that group is going to feel good about subjecting to home invasion and subsequent murder, and what they won't. That's more important than G vs E.

  12. - Top - End - #42
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Anyways, to answer the question:

    I basically never get a table full of committed pacifist nor tables full of happy genociders. Occasionally one player might want to hug all the monsters, and another might want to commit warcrimes on goblin children. I have no reason to stop them as long as actions taken remain within parameters of a game. What I do myself, depends on what I'm aiming for. If I want to make a point about some particular moral system, I'm fully capable of moral flat-earthing - that is, playing out character beliefs that explicitly clash with those of a setting, even if the setting's morals adhere to what I really believe. My favorite is probably variations on the theme "humans are all evil and deserve to die". Close second is "all routes lead to doom eventually so either everything is meaningless or consequentialist ethics are horse manure". If I want for others to try playing according to some set of virtues or ideals, I will lead by example, doing my best to play a character who follows those virtues and ideals.

    Typically, one of these approaches will be enough to either encourage or discourage violence, whichever it is that I desire. I can do this with reasonably unburdened conscience because I think art doesn't have to reflect my own values back at me to be worth perusing.

  13. - Top - End - #43
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    For the OP's question at least, the way antagonists hash out on the D&D alignment chart is not really a good way to create antagonists that that group of players, with their specific moral views, are going to feel okay with killing. That's kind of the point, honestly, that if you approach that situation from the view of 'all I need is to be able to slap an E on it and you should be okay killing it', that's going to clash with 'well, whatever you or the D&D cosmos might say, that act seems reprehensible and doesn't fit into my image of the character I'm playing'.

    So a better analysis would be to ask, what in particular are that group's lines for things that okay to kill at will, things that are okay to kill at need, etc. Then make sure most things are solidly over that line. The line might not be about moral or ethical culpability, but could be about different valuations of different kinds of existence - for this group, maybe sapience matters a lot more than morality as to whether something deserves life. Maybe the level of cognitive sophistication matters more than, say, whether the thing is an 'abomination' according to in-D&D belief systems. Maybe power relationships matter more, or imminence of threat, or being seen being callous or dismissive of the value of life. Maybe its even just something like, they don't want to think of themselves as people who fall to stereotypes and treat all X the same, even if D&D's rules assert 'all X are in fact the same', and so just having a history with the antagonists would be enough to say 'okay, we're not killing orcs, we're killing the Azthag war band and we saw the sorts of things they do before'

    But basically, that sets the boundary of what that group is going to feel good about subjecting to home invasion and subsequent murder, and what they won't. That's more important than G vs E.
    Basically this. If you're worried that "these are the baddies, out sword" isn't enough to avoid your game devolving into a moral philosophy class, figure out what would make villains unambiguously worthy of violence and make yours be that. Or you can lean into the philosophy bit if your group finds that more fun, just be clear that that is probably going to pull a lot of time away from rolling dice.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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  14. - Top - End - #44
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    It's not an argument, it's literally in the description of alignment.

    So no, we don't have "proof that sapience is not a requirement for alignment"; in fact we have the exact opposite.
    You seem to assume that the description of alignment is internally consistent. But if the alignment section says that sapience is required for evil alignment and that evil alignment is something that in no way requires sapience, that's obviously not the case.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    3rd edition explicitly states that creatures of below-human cognition (below INT 3) are neutral by virtue of not being capable of ethics. It then goes and defines all mundane animals as having below-human cognition. Apparently 5th edition continues the trend, substituting unaligned for neutral.

    This is chiefly a WotC-era thing - in AD&D, animals had more variance in cognitive ability, with some having near-human or human-equivalent cognition, and some also had alignment other than neutral.
    I had thought that 5E had moved back away from this, but apparently not nearly so much as I had imagined. It looks like primates are the only real non-humans with Intelligence scores over 3, and even they are "unaligned". They probably should have been recategorized and reworked as humanoids instead of as "beasts", considering.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Personally, I consider the WotC sweeping statements about animals to be poor fit for fantasy. Myth and fantasy often have animals, even mundane animals, be intelligent, with their own languages etc., and holding them morally responsible is not at all odd. Even historically, some animals have been prosecuted under law just like people, and on contemporary note, further studies on many kinds of animals have shown them more aware and capable of thought & emotion than they are often given credit for. The idea that animals are just machines acting on instinct, with no moral quality to their actions, is a particular trope from particular era of history that can be trivially done away with for purposes of a game.
    I know that people like to pretend otherwise, but Dungeons & Dragons isn't really a terribly generic fantasy game. It has plenty of idiosyncrasies. Every edition has had its own that aren't sacred cows central to D&D's identity, even. Still, there are arguments for cutting back baking setting assumptions into the system.

    But you don't seem to be considering the possibility that the trope is itself for the purposes of the game. There's nothing inherently invalid about deliberately oversimplifying something. It's a question of whether it's worth modeling in detail.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Animals and similar intellect creatures can't have alignment, because they can't have moral and social attitudes.
    Assumes facts not in evidence. Unless you're talking about setting conceits. It's often noted that the people in many games are fairly "dumbed down", e.g. fighting losing battles to the death for no apparent reason; within that context, realistic predator behavior is probably too much to hope for. ;) If that's the desired level of simplification, then sure, it's perfectly reasonable for "beasts" to have no moral nor social attitudes and way fewer personalities than one per species.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Alignment is moral and social attitudes, which has an associated typical but not consistently required behavior. The key being it's moral and social attitudes that determines alignment first, and behavior tends to result from that. It is not that behavior causes alignment.
    I mean, yeah, on the one hand alignment has always been described that way, but there has also been advice to DMs to track player character behavior and base alignment on that, even going so far as to say that a DM should ignore players' statements of intention. So it's not like the whole "alignment as karma" thing was fabricated entirely by DMs and/or players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    that's not to say that a player should pick a good or neutral alignment for their PC then consistently have them behave in a manner associated with an evil alignment. That's not picking an alignment for the character in good faith.
    Oh, hey, speak of the devil!

    Part of creating an environment where good faith is expected is to assume good faith by default. At the very least, you should be willing to listen to players' explanations for their characters' behavior. And then, if you think that those explanations don't make sense, explain why you think that. There's a good chance that you and a player don't share the same understanding of e.g. what evil alignment is. Figuring out where your assumptions differ is the first step to getting on the same page.
    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Abstract positioning, either fully "position doesn't matter" or "zones" or whatever, is fine. If the rules reflect that. Exact positioning, with a visual representation, is fine. But "exact positioning theoretically exists, and the rules interact with it, but it only exists in the GM's head and is communicated to the players a bit at a time" sucks for anything even a little complex. And I say this from a GM POV.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Kalaska'Agathas View Post
    I've a question for you, Playground. Or a problem, really, which I've both experienced as a player and which I anticipate soon facing as a DM—namely, how do I get my players on board with the notion that, within the setting of this game, the use of violence is often the right answer, both in terms of practical utility and moral/ethical virtue, and therefore it is not inherently Evil to regularly traffic in violence?
    Ultimately that is a problem of altering beliefs external to the game rather than internal to it.
    For me, the best answer to that is not to try. This is supposed to be a game, not an indoctrination tool.

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    That was my biggest issue with the Dragonlance setting when it was published. It rather explicitly declared that the point of the game was to make players make the "correct" moral choice, and hardwired that assumption into the game rules with the "Good redeems its own" and "Evil turns on itself" standards, instructing the DM to give divine plot armor to the good guys and have anyone playing a bad guy automatically get betrayed. Yeah, no.


    This, I suspect, is largely an artefact of D&D being an adaptation of a tabletop war game and the fiction (and the broader cultural milieu) it was influenced by and originally intended to emulate;
    Mostly it is because it is a war game, which requires rules for resolving combat. For the interactions, no rules are required as that was left exclusively to imagination and personal ability.
    The inspirational literature merely provides the sort of adventures that go with a combat-based system. Despite that, much of that literature contains a sizable amount of personal interaction where the choice not to kill and make friends is a significant choice. In the Lord of the Rings, having and showing mercy to Gollum is a major plot point, and even someone like John Carter of Mars routinely makes friends and allies in the midst of enemies with major consequences. Those encounters may simply seem less relevant because of the excitement of the fighting action, but they are very often critical to the story.

    Now, perhaps we just need to get comfortable with the realities of playing around in a pseudo-feudal medieval-esque fantasyland, and one in which there is some degree of moral objectivity to boot, but I neither desire nor feel like it would be particularly effective to just tell my players "Look, this is the immutable nature of morality and the world, no matter what you do you cannot change that, just roll with it."
    Perhaps. Perhaps not. Some game systems do lend themselves to particular attitudes toward violence (In general, the more lethal combat is, the less attractive combat is as an option. There are exceptions.), as do some types of game. But those can easily be overruled by player choices and preferences. It just depends on how things are presented.

    Spoiler: Anecdotal Aside
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    When it comes to game thematic morality, I always think back to my Champions group.
    During one campaign a player cold-bloodedly killed a villain after we had defeated him. The rest of the team all had codes against killing of one degree or another, and we all, completely in-character, reacted negatively, and made it clear it was not to happen again, "or else".
    While that was a one-off situation, later on the "Dark Champions" supplement came out, with rules and a setting to reflect the then-current trend to vigilante and anti-hero characters in comics like the Punisher. The whole group jumped at the chance to get beyond the "boring" goody-two-shoes archetype - for about 3 months. Then most of realized that we were playing the game precisely for that sort of morality as opposed to the murder-hoboing of D&D. None of us wanted to stop killing critters and taking their loot in D&D, but most of us also did not want to stop being the thoroughly good good guys in Champions.


    So how do I present them with a world that feels neither incredibly and oppressively bleak nor hopelessly naïve, while still having whole species/races/creatures who are reliably (and objectively) monstrous and from whom it is generally virtuous to defend others by violence, political hierarchies which are inherently unequal but do not demand immediate overthrow to the exclusion of all other concerns, in which there is a meaningful difference between the paladin slaying legions of orcs or the rogue assassinating the evil vizier and those same orcs slaying legions of humans or the evil vizier assassinating Good King Such-And-Such? Because while I can think of ways to do so on a case-by-case basis, I'm struggling to see how to establish that tone generally.
    Well, the first thing I would suggest is move beyond the need to have whole species/etc. that need to be destroyed and simply not include raiding their homes and destroying their families and what not. While having women and children in lairs was a thing back in the day, and even still appears in certain monster entries, there is really no need to include them. Just do not do it. Anything encountered can simply be presented as an active raiding force, out to inflict harm and all that, with no extraneous considerations of killing orc children and smashing kobold eggs and such.
    As for political hierarchies and similar elements, the simplest thing there is making it clear that countries/counties/villages have functioning power structures, and at low levels a full-frontal assault on them is a great way to end the campaign with a TPK. Of course, at some point if you push that restriction, you should make it possible for the PCs to achieve some change, just ask them to take some time and engage the campaign and background before doing it. As to how to make them see a difference, that requires making an engaging setting and making the villains villainous enough to incite some real player loathing.
    Make the evil really evil, and keep the bad guys to actual bad guys and not bystanders or collateral damage.

    Spoiler: More Anecdotes
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    I ran two campaigns where this became an issue. (Names and details glossed to avoid spoilers.)
    The first was using some modules set in a logging camp run by a vicious boss, with a good number of Old West tropes of the nasty boss oppressing the locals. The thing is, the locals are mostly CN and not particularly decent themselves. I had given the players a mission above those in the modules to try and subvert the locals into joining another kingdom. The players first had to deal with not being strong enough to take out the boss as I note above, but also had to deal with the locals being too callous to help. And then there were more sub-plot elements making that even worse. Until at one point the PCs were discussing what to do and one suggested just burning the whole place to the ground and starting over a mile down the river. And the paladin, who was playing an excellent paladin, agreed! I had made the bad guys THAT bad.
    The second was running an adventure path featuring a villain who had effectively enslaved the PCs who managed to escape. That villain then disappears into the background for several levels in the adventures. Despite that, the PCs, despite being evil themselves, aided and abetted by a few choice references to the villain, conceived an extreme hate for him, to the point that I had to hard-railroad them not to derail the entire adventure path and pursue said villain prematurely. On re-running that same adventure path with a number of tweaks so that the villain was less relevant, I hit a point where I had to focus the players on him. A few spontaneous tweaks to an otherwise minor encounter and once again I had the PC hate for said villain soaring into the stratosphere.
    With some plotting and good role-play on the part of the DM, it is not that hard to get players to accept that some villains really do need to be dealt with harshly.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    Assumes facts not in evidence.
    Actually, it just assumes the 5e version of alignment.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Right. I now have to add “animals” to my list of “things noted otherwise” for “like the real world, unless noted otherwise”.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Right. I now have to add “animals” to my list of “things noted otherwise” for “like the real world, unless noted otherwise”.
    Alignment doesn't exist IRL.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Alignment doesn't exist IRL.
    I meant more in terms of their reasoning for animals being disqualified from being moral agents. Or animals being dumber than humans.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    You seem to assume that the description of alignment is internally consistent. But if the alignment section says that sapience is required for evil alignment and that evil alignment is something that in no way requires sapience, that's obviously not the case.
    Well tell you what, why not quote the relevant text that says evil alignment doesn't require sapience?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    I meant more in terms of their reasoning for animals being disqualified from being moral agents. Or animals being dumber than humans.
    Ah. I don't see any conflict then.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Well tell you what, why not quote the relevant text that says evil alignment doesn't require sapience?
    The description of neutral evil alignment doesn't explicitly say that it doesn't require sapience, there's just nothing about what it describes that does.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Actually, it just assumes the 5e version of alignment.
    Whether or not animals have have moral and social attitudes is something about animals, not something about alignment. (If you'd said "It just assumes the 5E version of animals", I'd have agreed with you.)

    If the PHB's descriptions of the alignments aren't the 5E version of alignment, then what the heck is? And if they are the 5E version of alignment, and at least some of them don't require rational thought, then saying that nothing without rational thought has an alignment is a whoospy doopsy, now isn't it?!
    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Abstract positioning, either fully "position doesn't matter" or "zones" or whatever, is fine. If the rules reflect that. Exact positioning, with a visual representation, is fine. But "exact positioning theoretically exists, and the rules interact with it, but it only exists in the GM's head and is communicated to the players a bit at a time" sucks for anything even a little complex. And I say this from a GM POV.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Well tell you what, why not quote the relevant text that says evil alignment doesn't require sapience?
    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    The description of neutral evil alignment doesn't explicitly say that it doesn't require sapience, there's just nothing about what it describes that does.

    ...

    And if they are the 5E version of alignment, and at least some of them don't require rational thought, then saying that nothing without rational thought has an alignment is a whoospy doopsy, now isn't it?!
    5e's portrayal of zombies as both NE and as incapable of rational thought might fit. Lemures (LE) being Int 1 might also support that. Very much a "creatures imbued with evil can be both mindless and evil-aligned" thing.
    Last edited by hamishspence; 2022-08-07 at 12:38 AM.
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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    The description of neutral evil alignment doesn't explicitly say that it doesn't require sapience, there's just nothing about what it describes that does.
    "The rules don't say I can't" is never a valid answer. The system is permissive; if it doesn't say you CAN, then you cannot.

    Re: Undead: Explicit exceptions to a rule do not constitute inconsistency or ambiguity.

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    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    5e's portrayal of zombies as both NE and as incapable of rational thought might fit.
    Honestly it was much better when zombies and the like were true neutral in 2nd.
    But then some people wanted a simpler game where the good paladins smash the evil zombies.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    You seem to assume that the description of alignment is internally consistent. But if the alignment section says that sapience is required for evil alignment and that evil alignment is something that in no way requires sapience, that's obviously not the case.
    This isn't a matter of inconsistency - the clauses about animal cognition are independent additions to basic definitions of Law, Chaos, Good and Evil. The rules interpretation is perfectly straight-forward: if a creature does something that would indicate alignment in a human, but is an animal, then the creature remains True Neutral / Unaligned because animals are not considered aware enough to be aligned.

    As noted, it's trivially possible to just ditch any sweeping clauses about animal cognition and accept some animals are in fact intelligent, and thus capable of being aligned one way or another.

    It's the same situation as with Euclidean geometry and the parallel axiom; the axiom is independent from other postulates of geometry and it's possible to just accept non-Euclidean geometries, such as ball geometry and hyperbolic geometry, are a thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate View Post
    I know that people like to pretend otherwise, but Dungeons & Dragons isn't really a terribly generic fantasy game. It has plenty of idiosyncrasies. Every edition has had its own that aren't sacred cows central to D&D's identity, even. Still, there are arguments for cutting back baking setting assumptions into the system.

    But you don't seem to be considering the possibility that the trope is itself for the purposes of the game. There's nothing inherently invalid about deliberately oversimplifying something. It's a question of whether it's worth modeling in detail.
    I know what kind of people the idea of all animals as non-moral operators appeals to, and why. But the trope doesn't really do anything for the game and the game was already filled with tropes that clash with such sweeping statements. D&D posits some characters have unusual empathy and ability to communicate with animals (ranger & druid class features, Speak with Animals spell etc.). It inherits plenty of animal stereotypes from earlier fantasy and has no problem using them for fantastic creatures such as Drow (spider people in elf skin), Formians (ant people) or were-creatures. Doing away with the sweeping clause about animals does not in any significant way increase the amount of detail or effort required - on the contrary, it means you can say (for example) that Formians are Lawful Neutral because they act like ants, without having to add "but ants themselves are True Neutral because they're too stupid to know what they're doing".

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    - on the contrary, it means you can say (for example) that Formians are Lawful Neutral because they act like ants, without having to add "but ants themselves are True Neutral because they're too stupid to know what they're doing".
    Conversely, you have to add to animal entry alignments "but unlike the real world, animals can have social and moral attitudes despite not being sapient*."

    *exceptions for some animals that are borderline may not apply, but those are typically given stats in D&D higher than 2 Int.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    D&D and its peers are games about heroic violence.
    Perhaps some people want more than that. Perhaps some newcomers don't fully understand this because they watch professional voice actors spending 75% of their time role-playing.
    A table can go long stretches without combat, the group can shirk it all together. That doesn't change the fact that the bulk of resources (rules, stat blocks, inspirational content, etc.) revolve around adventure and combat.
    How the violence is handled can vary greatly. And perhaps that's an important topic for new tables these days. Games about violence aren't for everyone. And not all flavors of violence are suitable to every person that has interest in a game about violence.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Conversely, you have to add to animal entry alignments "but unlike the real world, animals can have social and moral attitudes despite not being sapient*."

    *exceptions for some animals that are borderline may not apply, but those are typically given stats in D&D higher than 2 Int.
    False. People do not have any trouble attributing social and even moral attitudes to animals. Both "unlike the real world" and "despite not being sapient" are thus ill-established. This is especially true for social attitudes along the Law-Chaos-axis; who exactly doesn't understand the real world basis for saying eusocial animals (like ants) are Lawful while solitary animals (like polar bears) are Chaotic?

    The only actual game changes would be to put something else than "True Neutral" or "Unaligned" in the alignment entry of a creature description, insofar as such an entry is used, as well as sometimes giving an animals intelligence scores above 2.

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    Default Re: Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    False. People do not have any trouble attributing social and even moral attitudes to animals.
    People attributing human thinking to their pets (or other animals) doesn't make it False. It just means they're incorrectly attributing something that doesn't actually exist.

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