Unanimous Good

[KorvinStarmast]

Sounds like we need Consequentialist/Deontological as the z-axis of alignment...

I prefer the necktie-bacon axis. (Orange morality...)

[Talakeal]

The Alexandrian has a recent article that contains a bit I found relative to this thread; it boils down to the idea that when you combine disparate characters and force them to be perpetually in a party together, and forbid any sort of PvP, you end up with No Exit the RPG. Very apt.

[gbaji]

"Theft is justified in this case" - perhaps it is, explain to me why

The fact that it needs to be justified suggests strongly that is it *not* justified by default. It starts out as a "harmful/evl" act, and is only "Ok", under very specific (and rare) conditions.

Edit: Also, with theft specifically, the utility function is not only based on the value of the stolen property. How it was stolen can be equally or more important, because of other forms of harm besides lost money. Trivial example, consider these three cases:
A) Someone is having a new TV delivered, and you steal it en-route.
B) You break into someone's house and take their TV.
C) You break into someone's house and steal nothing, instead leaving a note saying "I know where you live" and a dead pigeon.

IMO, the harm is obviously greatest with C and least with A, despite that A involves a larger monetary loss.

Eh. B is the most harmful by far. I don't think you understand just how much damage is caused by people breaking into your home and stealing stuff. Also very unlikely for someone to take the higher risk of breaking in and just take one item. They're going to take the TV, dump the contents of your bookcase/cabinets into bags, toss the all the drawers in the house, rifle through your closets (that $500 suit will fence for say $50, so they'll take it), medicine cabinets, etc.

Cars are even worse. I've seen people smash windows (costing hundreds of dollars to replace) just to steal $15 worth of stuff sitting on the passenger seat. Protip: don't leave anything in sight in your car. I even toss the rewards cards i usually keep in the center console into the armrest container just so someone doesn't think they're credit cards or something. An empty looking car will be passed up over one with piles of stuff inside it, even if that stuff is total junk.

But discussing capitalism and its benefits/downsides or its morality is probably beyond the scope of this forum. That is why i avoided that point in my answer.

Yeah. Hence my 10' pole comment.

At this point we just disagree about fundamental philosophy, I don't think we actually disagree as much as it seems in practice, but I feel like maybe I should stop responding to your every point as we are really going off topic and I don't want the argument to get heated or go into forbidden areas.

Fair enough. I still suggest maybe reading up on some of those philosophers though. Might provide an insight into *why* we have the moral values we do, which may in turn help fit things into a game setting alignment system a bit easier.

Spoiler: My Scam Story

Show

A deer had hit my car and left a huge dent in the side panel. Some guys in the parking lot said they could fix it for a hundred bucks. I was skeptical, but I told them they were free to try, but I had no cash. My friend offered to loan me some and walked over to the atm across the parking lot. As soon as he got the money out, they drove over to him (without doing anything to fix the car) and told him that I said they had done a good job and to give them the money. He did and they drove away.

Hah. Had a similar situation:

Spoiler: My scam story

Show

Got into an accident on the way to a theater one day. Long story, but the radiator pushed into the fanblade and was leaking. While waiting for a tow truck, two guys showed up, asking about what was going on. The thing to realize about scammers is that they will just keep talking until they can find an "angle" to work. When I told them that the radiator was broken, they didn't miss a beat. Insisted that they had one that would be used, and would be willing to sell it, and it would get us back up and running in no time. Yeah. Right. You happen to have the exact radiator for this 1971 Plymouth sitting around. Sure...

Of course, all effort to dissuade them failed. All reasonable counters were met with insistence that they could to this, or that, and it was no problem, etc. What finally worked was me also just going absurd on them. I insisted that I already had a spare radiator at home, so there was no need for theirs. Seriously. Who would believe that? But that's what worked, so go figure.

actually, every ancient society had the concept of private property, and stealing has never been considered fine. stealing to outsider, ok, stealing to people with whom we are enemies or at least rivals. but stealing to your own people? it has never been acceptable. in fact, virtually every ancient society was a lot harsher on theft than our modern western capitalist society, with the chopping off of body parts - or being sold into slavery - being a common punishment. I can't be more specific without violating forum rules on historical stuff.
And the reason fo this is that you can't have a functioning society without private property. people work to produce something of value, and they put in the effort because then they get to own - to have exclusive use - of that something. nguluk the caveman goes hunting and takes a deer, then returns to the cave and trades half the deer to gronk for a dozen arrows. gronk spends the day chipping stones and setting them into sticks because he knows that he will be able to trade them to nguluk for food. if droc comes along and steals the arrows that gronk made and gives nothing in return, then gronk has no reason to chip stones; he either starves, or he can steal some of the food nguluk captured without giving anything back. and why would nguluk trade half his catches to gronk for arrows when he can just steal them?
the whole tribe collapses.
and so every single society developed the concept of ownership.

Yeah. That's more of the 3' pole range. This is something that happens as soon as a society has specialized labor (or even just division of labor). There must be a way to determine who is contributing to the whole, and to what degree. Simple barter works, as does monetary transactions later on. Theft, however, breaks the whole system down. The thief is not just stealing from the person directly, but also denying the "whole" of otherwise fruitfull labor output.

The important bit to realize is that the fruits of labor aren't valued based on how much effort/time it took to produce, but how much other people are willing to trade for it (value to the whole). I think that's a concept that is lost somewhat. But it's key to understanding why theft is such an "evil" thing to do. Those goods that were stolen from an otherwise "wealthy" person might have been sold to someone else (contributing to the whole), but now is not. Even minor theft raises prices for other consumers, which causes harm to the whole. This is why I have issues with people insisting that the "harm" from theft is somehow less because of how much the target has. That's not really a consideration. The actual harm is that the thief took something for himself instead of making it himself (or making something to trade for that thing). It's the production of "things" that increases the whole. If we're just swapping things back and forth via theft, then nothing is made, the whole isn't increased, and well... we have to eat and consume things, so we all die I guess.

It's a lot more serious than I think a lot of modern folks think. Doubly so if we're running a game setting in anything pre-industrial IMO. And yes, we can speculate about so-called "idle money" (the Scrooge vault concept), but that's almost never going to actually be the case in any realistic situation (ok, dragon hordes excepted I guess). Money and valuables are always used for "something", even if the person on the outside doesn't see or know what that "something" is. So that outside person's assumption is almost always wrong, even if they are certain they are right. The argument that "they have more than they need" is almost always a faulty assumption on the part of the person saying it. Using that as a justification for theft not being "harm"? Even more of a false assumption IMO.

Again. Rare setting specific situations are the exception and can certainly be played out. But as I pointed out earlier, no one really considers how that master thief, who only steals from the evil/rich/powerful gained the skills to do that in the first place. No one starts out their career breaking into the vaults of evil criminals who deserve it or something. How many average struggling shopkeepers did that person rob, or random working class people's pockets were picked, or families homes did the releave of their valuables, along the way? Probably a lot, right?

[Quertus]

I don't think anyone actually wants to play that game though.

Having five random strangers tell me my character's motivation is about the least fun thing I can think of; its basically OOC PvP at that point and turns the game from cooperation into hostility.*


As for family connections, yeah, that's a good idea in theory. For years I had games crash and burn before they ever got off the ground because the players would make a bunch of random strangers who had no reason to adventure together and, surprise surprise, they didn't. Now I always make sure that unless I as the GM am going to have a strong reason to compel them to stick together, they have to have a pre established relationship, and I try and talk the other players into doing the same when I PC.

Of course, this is almost universally met with hostility both in person and on the forums as it is seen as being a control freak and overstepping my bounds, so... /shrug


*: Working together to come up with a few goals that we can all enjoy, or at least not be outright contradictory, on the other hand is a lot more collaborative.

Let me try again.

Me as hypothetical GM of your Bizarro World group: “create characters with clearly defined goals. You are not done creating a *party*, however, until you X players have created X characters who all not only accept the X (or more) goals of the X characters in the party, but will treat them as at least as important as their own goals. Let me know when you are done.”

You aren’t being forced to have character Y accept goal Z - you are forced to learn to create characters with compatible goals and priorities.

In other words, kinda what you said, but as an explicit prerequisite for the game… and delivered with my neutral clue-by-four and all the concern about the shape of the outcome of Pellaeon with a handful of grenades (or poison gas, or whatever he actually used).

The family connections… is… an example of a crutch to fall back on, for those cases where you *almost* have a cohesive party, but need a reason why a very small number of outliers of “but I just can’t see any reason why my Necromancer would ever agree to care about innocent lives” / “I just can’t see why my Paladin would ever maximize the number of deaths” needs to be explained. It’s a style of cheap coincidence you can’t use as the foundation for the group, but can be added to soften a few remaining rough edges of an otherwise polished product.

It’s also a decent “this is the level of commitment to each other’s goals that I expect to see” litmus test.

[MoiMagnus]

...

Outside of the fact that D&D economies are so broken that it's much easier to justify a lot of behaviour that wouldn't work IRL, I believe that the core of the question is on the morality of ownership. The core of the Robin's Hood story is that the "richs / tax collectors" (depending on the version you use) are considered immoral to have the wealth they have.

There are situations where ownership is evil.

There are things you shouldn't be allowed to own according to moral, going from conscious individuals to public necessities (like the air around you).

Then there are set of things when ownership is... complicated. Land, for example. While modern law is not the point here, land ownership is a mess and things like squatter rights shows that this ownership is not absolute. And when things are a mess legally speaking, calling it morally good or evil to own/steal land is even more of a mess.

Inheritance is also a complicated question, and all the things about being a legitimate heir is more about law than morality.

That doesn't mean that every ownership is either evil or neither good/evil. The core of "good" ownership is the one you talked about the most, and that is absent of the examples I've given about evil or dubious ownership: ownership of the fruits of your own labour, of what you've made with your time and your determination.

And that's the core of the evilness of thief, when it is evil: you're stealing time and efforts of someone.

[And the thing that makes all of this messy is that you can then use your hard earned wealth to buy ownership of something you shouldn't be allowed to own, like the only water source of the region.]

[Pauly]

I don't think anyone actually wants to play that game though.

Having five random strangers tell me my character's motivation is about the least fun thing I can think of; its basically OOC PvP at that point and turns the game from cooperation into hostility.*


As for family connections, yeah, that's a good idea in theory. For years I had games crash and burn before they ever got off the ground because the players would make a bunch of random strangers who had no reason to adventure together and, surprise surprise, they didn't. Now I always make sure that unless I as the GM am going to have a strong reason to compel them to stick together, they have to have a pre established relationship, and I try and talk the other players into doing the same when I PC.

Of course, this is almost universally met with hostility both in person and on the forums as it is seen as being a control freak and overstepping my bounds, so... /shrug


*: Working together to come up with a few goals that we can all enjoy, or at least not be outright contradictory, on the other hand is a lot more collaborative.

The groups I regularly play with either as GM or player have a norm where characters are created at session zero. Coming in with a completed character sheet and back story is strongly discouraged or outright banned.

The rationale is that we are not strictly playing individuals. We are playing a group that needs to collaborate and we to do that there needs to be some degree of common history/shared values/group synergy/compatible goals.

In my view some people take the ‘it’s my character and only I have a say in it’ too far. Yes it is your character, but the character needs a reason to ge part of this group for this campaign. I have found the best way to achieve that is by collaboration with the other players and the GM.

That’s not to say pre conceived broad character concepts are a bad thing. My view is that it’s best to be flexible so that collaboration can occur. It seems to me that the lack if character design collaboration is more common in D&D and Pathfinder where long term planning on how your character will develop as they level up is the done thing. Most of the systems I play are more skills based such as Traveller or Call of Cthulhu which have more flexible character advancement, so people generally are less invested in preordained advancement paths.

[GloatingSwine]

If you have trouble getting your players to work on a shared goal, maybe try a structure like Dark Heresy where you explicitly all work for someone and they are the ones giving you a shared objective that needs completing.

[Satinavian]

Sounds like we need Consequentialist/Deontological as the z-axis of alignment...

To make it even more unwieldy ? And get fun forum threads about "Can a consequentalist chaotic evil person be in a mostly deontological chaotic good group" or "I have a consequentialist good character but some of my plans failed spectacularly recently and now my DM pushes me to consequentialist evil, but that is not how i understand the alignment"

And of course lets not forget all the new beings of the new outer planes being personifications of various consequentialist/deontologist outlook engaging in endless bloody violent battle as the only true method of philosophical discussion.





Alignments are silly and can't be repaired that easily.

[GloatingSwine]

To make it even more unwieldy ? And get fun forum threads about "Can a consequentalist chaotic evil person be in a mostly deontological chaotic good group" or "I have a consequentialist good character but some of my plans failed spectacularly recently and now my DM pushes me to consequentialist evil, but that is not how i understand the alignment"

And of course lets not forget all the new beings of the new outer planes being personifications of various consequentialist/deontologist outlook engaging in endless bloody violent battle as the only true method of philosophical discussion.





Alignments are silly and can't be repaired that easily.

Yes.

The only value of alignment is arguing about it on the internet anyway, so the solution is always to have more of them.

[Quertus]

The groups I regularly play with either as GM or player have a norm where characters are created at session zero. Coming in with a completed character sheet and back story is strongly discouraged or outright banned.

The rationale is that we are not strictly playing individuals. We are playing a group that needs to collaborate and we to do that there needs to be some degree of common history/shared values/group synergy/compatible goals.

In my view some people take the ‘it’s my character and only I have a say in it’ too far. Yes it is your character, but the character needs a reason to ge part of this group for this campaign. I have found the best way to achieve that is by collaboration with the other players and the GM.

That’s not to say pre conceived broad character concepts are a bad thing. My view is that it’s best to be flexible so that collaboration can occur. It seems to me that the lack if character design collaboration is more common in D&D and Pathfinder where long term planning on how your character will develop as they level up is the done thing. Most of the systems I play are more skills based such as Traveller or Call of Cthulhu which have more flexible character advancement, so people generally are less invested in preordained advancement paths.

Eh… starting with existing characters has pros and cons, and requires different skills to “groupify” successfully. For example, it’s best to have a roster of *numerous* existing characters, more than the just several “general ideas” that would be best to bring to session 0. And the counterpart to cheesy “beloved sibling” is that you have to accept working equally cheesy “bonding moments” (“Martha”) into the pre-adventure setup.

The advantages include that it’s easier to see the pitfalls, pre-existing characters are much stronger load-bearing structures to hang the story off of, and are generally much better roleplayed.

Also, sharing in-character stories tend to largely replace OOC Monte Python references. Whether that’s a pro or con depends on your tastes, I suppose.

[Talakeal]

So I talked to my DM about the stealing tangent. His response was "if theft is a matter of good and evil, what is even the point of having a lawful / chaos axis? To stop jaywalkers?" Which, while I don't agree with him, does show that this does not actually appear to be an issue in our game.

Again. Obvious exceptions when the person who has something did actually obtain it via some evil actions of their own. I just find it problematic to create an alignment system where that's assumed to be the norm rather than a conditional placed on the norm. Doubly so if we're assuming some sort of PC profession/class of "thief/rogue", right? It's pretty unlikely that said character developed their second story B&E and lockpicking skills only by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Actually, scratch that. It's absurd to think that.

So, I know I wanted to drop this, but I was just thinking about this point specifically.

Doesn't that line of thinking imply that rogues should be an evil only class, and thus banned in most campaigns? And that the skills themselves should be restricted to evil (or maybe formerly evil) characters?

That actually reminds me of another one of my horror stories. Something very similar actually broke up my group about ten years ago. The party kept getting stymied by locks, and we didn't have a rogue, so we decided someone needed to pick up the skills. We asked the monk as she had some skill points to burn and the highest dexterity in the party and she refused, claiming that her character was neutral and that lock-picking was an innately evil skill. Her husband, who was another player, and whose father is a professional locksmith, took great offense at this, and it spiraled into a huge fight. In the end, they both decided to leave the game for the sake of their marriage.

[kyoryu]

The groups I regularly play with either as GM or player have a norm where characters are created at session zero. Coming in with a completed character sheet and back story is strongly discouraged or outright banned.

The rationale is that we are not strictly playing individuals. We are playing a group that needs to collaborate and we to do that there needs to be some degree of common history/shared values/group synergy/compatible goals.

In my view some people take the ‘it’s my character and only I have a say in it’ too far. Yes it is your character, but the character needs a reason to ge part of this group for this campaign. I have found the best way to achieve that is by collaboration with the other players and the GM.

That’s not to say pre conceived broad character concepts are a bad thing. My view is that it’s best to be flexible so that collaboration can occur. It seems to me that the lack if character design collaboration is more common in D&D and Pathfinder where long term planning on how your character will develop as they level up is the done thing. Most of the systems I play are more skills based such as Traveller or Call of Cthulhu which have more flexible character advancement, so people generally are less invested in preordained advancement paths.

I think part of it is the OC/NeoTrad culture of play.

In Classic play, you come in with a character (usually randomly rolled up), and explore the world. You don't know what's going to happen. But there's a shared goal of "explore stuff" that's helping create cohesion.

In Trad play, you're playing through the story as presented.

But in OC/NeoTrad play, in a lot of cases, the point of the game is to play through your character's story. The game, the GM's plot, all of these things are really just the base that serves to facilitate those.

And when you have five players sitting down, each with their own idea of their character arc that they want to see happen, the chance for conflict goes up exponentially. Because now it's not just "can these characters go through the story/explore the dungeon/wilderness together?" it's more like "do these character arcs work together?" Not that these conflicts couldn't exist earlier (and truly Classic play has other solutions for that), but I do believe this presumption many players have makes it worse.

[Batcathat]

That actually reminds me of another one of my horror stories. Something very similar actually broke up my group about ten years ago. The party kept getting stymied by locks, and we didn't have a rogue, so we decided someone needed to pick up the skills. We asked the monk as she had some skill points to burn and the highest dexterity in the party and she refused, claiming that her character was neutral and that lock-picking was an innately evil skill. Her husband, who was another player, and whose father is a professional locksmith, took great offense at this, and it spiraled into a huge fight. In the end, they both decided to leave the game for the sake of their marriage.

Huh. Suddenly opinions like "poison is evil" seem almost reasonable by comparison. Did anyone ask how she felt about her character's skill at brutally beating people to a pulp with her bare hands?

[Satinavian]

Doesn't that line of thinking imply that rogues should be an evil only class, and thus banned in most campaigns? And that the skills themselves should be restricted to evil (or maybe formerly evil) characters?

I don't think most campaigns ban evil characters.

Also not every rogue is a thief.

[KorvinStarmast]

As for D&D alignment, it is incoherent IMO. The game simultaneously is built around three traditions:
1: A bronze age sword and sorcery setting with amoral heroes and where cosmic powers are chaos and law rather than good and evil.
2: A medieval high fantasy tradition where montheism and monarchy are the norm and all morality and authority ultimately comes from the same divine source.
3: A western ideal about a frontier that is the bulwark protecting civilization against barbaric savages.

Sorry, point three needs a comment. The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians also had problems with item 3. And it's not just western. There's a country that built a very large wall to keep the barbarians out. You can see the wall from outer space.
Similarly, a wall was built in Westeros to keep some other undesirables out: the ice fiends and the Wildlings aka Barbarians.

So like:
"Theft is justified in this case" - perhaps it is, explain to me why

Nice.

"Skinning people alive is justified in this case" - you're probably wrong and possibly psycho. I'll evaluate your argument if there's time, but if you're walking around with a knife ready to start skinning, then I'm going to assume you need to be stopped ASAP.

Wait, did they run out of lotion?

A) Someone is having a new TV delivered, and you steal it en-route.
B) You break into someone's house and take their TV.
C) You break into someone's house and steal nothing, instead leaving a note saying "I know where you live" and a dead pigeon.

In case C they provided a free meal ingredient, namely, fresh meat.

And the second most annoying PC choice over Kender? Paladin.

Naay, I'd go with Tieflings. Let's compare apples to apples. Kender is a race, Tieflings are a race. Paladin is a class.

The third problem with paladins are the GMs who try to force paladins to break their vows.

Gotcha GMing. Seen it, don't like it, try my best not to fall into that trap.

The core of the Robin's Hood story is that the "richs / tax collectors" (depending on the version you use) are considered immoral to have the wealth they have.

That would be due to the point of view or the author, or the narrator, of the tail. Not something absolute.

And that's the core of the evilness of thief, when it is evil: you're stealing time and efforts of someone.

Which is stealing a part of their life, given the time and effort thay put into creating or trading for that stolen thing. And in some cases, stealing the pig or goat leaves the family to starve.

[Talakeal]

I don't think most campaigns ban evil characters.

Also not every rogue is a thief.

My experience is evil characters are banned more often than not. AFAICT is it banned in the RPGA, Adventurer's League, and Pathfinder Society. I know my last DM banned them outright, and does The Angry DM.


No, not all rogues are thieves, but most rogues have the same skills as thieves, and the argument was that someone is not going to develop said skills if they aren't planning to use them for nefarious purposes.

Sorry, point three needs a comment. The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians also had problems with item 3. And it's not just western. There's a country that built a very large wall to keep the barbarians out. You can see the wall from outer space.

To clarify, I don't mean western as in "western society" I mean western as in the "Cowboys and Indians" genre.

[kyoryu]

My experience is evil characters are banned more often than not. AFAICT is it banned in the RPGA, Adventurer's League, and Pathfinder Society. I know my last DM banned them outright, and does The Angry DM.

Evil PCs are a fairly high trust thing in my opinion. There can be lots of good ones, but there's also lots of bad ones. In a typical, collaborative situation with a more or less open table, I'm probably going to ban them just on principle. With a group of players I trust? I might allow them, but I'd ask what the intent was.

[KorvinStarmast]

To clarify, I don't mean western as in "western society" I mean western as in the "Cowboys and Indians" genre.

All you did here was dig a deeper hole. The pastoralist verus settled tension predates that trope by about 5,000 years, taking us back to Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, etc, and even before that.

Beyond that AL allowed Lawful Evil if they were in the Zhentirim faction. Otherwise, yes, AL did not permit that alignment due to the problems that it causes at the table.

[Satinavian]

My experience is evil characters are banned more often than not. AFAICT is it banned in the RPGA, Adventurer's League, and Pathfinder Society. I know my last DM banned them outright, and does The Angry DM.

I think that much of that has more to to with the open table setting playing standard scenarios. Evil characters and actually nearly all characters with complex motivations or personalities are less suited for that as there is neither time nor desire to explore it.

But open tables playing standardized series of short scenarios are not exactly my idea of a typical tabletop group. Partly because all three barely exist in my country if at all. (specificalla RPGA does not exist, AL only as "unofficial" discord server for online groups and PS seems to have shut down after very limited success ) And i have never experienced any of them.

I think i have never actually met a group that banned evil characters specifically.

No, not all rogues are thieves, but most rogues have the same skills as thieves, and the argument was that someone is not going to develop said skills if they aren't planning to use them for nefarious purposes.

As skill monkeys there tend to be very different ways to build rogue, many don't have the same skill set as a thief. And even if they do, there are other potential reasons for it. The classical one is the Spy or secret agent. I think in the last decades i have seen more of those than actual thiefs.

[Telonius]

Personally I don't outright ban Evil characters. But characters have to be able to work within the party. If you've got a Belkar, he has to be pointed at the antagonists, not the party; and the rest of the group has to be okay with the level of Evil that they're going to be portraying.

In session zero, I usually check with the players to see - if the campaign were a movie, what rating would you want it to be; and are there any topics that you would be uncomfortable addressing in the game. (This is to set expectations and boundaries; and to respect players that might have particular triggers). Setting that can also be a limit on exactly how Evil a character could be. Evil is a big alignment. It encompasses everything from a person who loves kicking somebody when they're down, to the omnicidal maniac. All it requires is a general attitude and history of going out of your way to hurt others, disrespecting life, or ignoring the dignity of sentient beings. It's perfectly possible for an Evil character to exist in a mostly-Good party without shattering it. (The exception is with a Paladin; personally I think the "no Evil characters in the party" clause is stupid, and I houserule it away).

[Talakeal]

As skill monkeys there tend to be very different ways to build rogue, many don't have the same skill set as a thief. And even if they do, there are other potential reasons for it. The classical one is the Spy or secret agent. I think in the last decades i have seen more of those than actual thiefs.

For sure. I don't think anyone would object to sending in a scout or a spy to steal a dangerous artifact from the evil overlord, but that is exactly the sort of situation you are condemning with statements declaring that the skills themselves are evil or that a good person would have no reason to learn them.

All you did here was dig a deeper hole. The pastoralist verus settled tension predates that trope by about 5,000 years, taking us back to Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, etc, and even before that.[/I]

Of course these tensions have existed for as long as agriculture; this is more about the sort of stories which Gygax et al. were drawing upon to craft the framework for D&D. Conan and John Wayne IMO had a way bigger impact than actual history or period sources.

[Satinavian]

but that is exactly the sort of situation you are condemning with statements declaring that the skills themselves are evil or that a good person would have no reason to learn them.

I never made those statements.

[Talakeal]

I never made those statements.

No you didn't. I was using a hypothetical generic you. I apologize if you thought I was talking to you directly.

[King of Nowhere]

If you have trouble getting your players to work on a shared goal, maybe try a structure like Dark Heresy where you explicitly all work for someone and they are the ones giving you a shared objective that needs completing.

knowing talekeal's group, I'd think in a few sessions somebody would either try to leave their boss, or outright attack them

So, I know I wanted to drop this, but I was just thinking about this point specifically.

Doesn't that line of thinking imply that rogues should be an evil only class, and thus banned in most campaigns? And that the skills themselves should be restricted to evil (or maybe formerly evil) characters?

That actually reminds me of another one of my horror stories. Something very similar actually broke up my group about ten years ago. The party kept getting stymied by locks, and we didn't have a rogue, so we decided someone needed to pick up the skills. We asked the monk as she had some skill points to burn and the highest dexterity in the party and she refused, claiming that her character was neutral and that lock-picking was an innately evil skill. Her husband, who was another player, and whose father is a professional locksmith, took great offense at this, and it spiraled into a huge fight. In the end, they both decided to leave the game for the sake of their marriage.

this is just silly.
first, nowhere does it say that rogues must steal. a rogue is a dexterity-based fighter and a skill monkey; nothing more, nothing less.
Second, while stealing is evil outside of some strict circumstances, killing is universally agreed to be evil in almost all circumstances. and guess what, all adventurers have abilities centered on killing; by this reasoning, they are all evil and should not be played.
a d&d campaign just have a tendency to put people in situations where the use of those skills - whether thieving or killing - is justified.

There are situations where ownership is evil.

There are things you shouldn't be allowed to own according to moral, going from conscious individuals to public necessities (like the air around you).

on a tangent here, in my world the church of hextor made a point of privatizing the air. they said that trees produce the oxygen you breath, and the church-state owns the forests that produce the oxygen, so they own the oxygen - just like the owner of an orchard also owns the fruits of the trees - and they are justified in taxing you for breathing it.
they also taxed sunlight, rain, stepping on the public soil, and a few other things. they also used to have a tax on internal organs, but people used to get a kidney removed to pay less, and then they were less healty and worked less, so that tax was abolished (despite heavy protests of some government factions claiming it would "set a dangerous precedent").

then the party forced them to change.

within a few years (new campaign set into the same world a century later) hextor was rebranded from the god of tyranny to the god of ultraliberism. all those old taxes were forbidden, indeed taxes were forbidden entirely. instead, all those commodities were owned by private corporations that made you pay "fees" (which are absolutely not taxes, we no longer tax people, we are now the country of freedom) to use them.
The population went along with it, propaganda is great. I paid good money to buy shares of the road society so that now the road belongs also to me and I have a right to walk on it. If somebody else who didn't buy shares walks on MY road, he's trespassing on MY private property! how dares he! I pay the police to harrass people too poor to pay the police, that's what police is for. we certainly would not want them to start asking questions to honest people
obviously, the players hated the church of hextor immediately. great villains.

There's a country that built a very large wall to keep the barbarians out. You can see the wall from outer space.

actually, you can't. it's a myth. doesn't matter that it's long, it's too thin to see. just like a DNA molecule is over a meter long, but you can't see it because it's thin... well, like a molecule.
doesn't change anything else about your post, of course

[gbaji]

Outside of the fact that D&D economies are so broken that it's much easier to justify a lot of behaviour that wouldn't work IRL, I believe that the core of the question is on the morality of ownership. The core of the Robin's Hood story is that the "richs / tax collectors" (depending on the version you use) are considered immoral to have the wealth they have.

I disagree.The core of the Robin Hood story is that theft is immoral. The key bit to realize is that the Sheriff is the thief. He has stolen the property belonging to "the people" and is using it for his own ends instead of for the good of the whole. The mere act of collecting taxes is not immoral. But those who do take on that role/power have an obligation to use it for the good of the whole. That's why they exist (and trust me, I'm far from someone who thinks taxes are a good thing, but they are necessary).

Robin Hood isn't a hero because he steals stuff from the rich. He's a hero because he is standing up to the evil sheriff who is himself stealing, not only the wealth of "the people", but the power that comes with his position by using it in a selfish manner.

There are situations where ownership is evil.

There are things you shouldn't be allowed to own according to moral, going from conscious individuals to public necessities (like the air around you).

Sure. But the "ownership" of cash, or rare paintings, or other forms of "wealth" is none of those things. Since these are what people usually steal when we speak about stealing, then what you are talking about isn't really relevant to a discussion about whether "theft is <good/evil/none-of-the-above>".

We're still left looping back to the point that if you are stealing something from someone else just because you want it for yourself, then none of the above objections/exceptions really apply. It's still "evil". That is the default state of that action. Ownership by itself is neither good nor evil, but taking something that you didn't follow whatever existing rules are there to obtain is an evil act. In the same way that killing someone is evil, unless you are doing it in accordance with lawful punishment or war, right? If you do these things because you want to do them, and they benefit you to do them, then that is an evil act, and you are (likely) of evil alignment.

That doesn't mean that every ownership is either evil or neither good/evil. The core of "good" ownership is the one you talked about the most, and that is absent of the examples I've given about evil or dubious ownership: ownership of the fruits of your own labour, of what you've made with your time and your determination.

And that's the core of the evilness of thief, when it is evil: you're stealing time and efforts of someone.

[And the thing that makes all of this messy is that you can then use your hard earned wealth to buy ownership of something you shouldn't be allowed to own, like the only water source of the region.

I mentioned Locke earlier. I seriously recommend reading his writings on property (just have to fluff your way past the flowery/religious language in there though). It's not what you think, and actually excludes ownership of the things you most find to be "evil or dubious ownership". Propery is not things, it's all that makes up you. Your body. Your thoughts. And your actions. Things you own are extensions of that (fruits of your labor). But he speaks also about having property which is not used in any productive way as useless and theft. Taking food and letting it rot is theft (I think he calls it "robbery"). Now, taking food (using labor to gather, or farm) and then exchanging it for something more durable (like gold, silver, or currency) is *not* theft or robbery. Because others got to use the food you gathered/grew and as a result of the fruits of your labors were fed instead of starved.

Theft is the taking of the fruits of other people's labors, or I suppose, the taking of things that others may use to create fruits of their labors (taking food and then letting it rot).

Recovery of things previously stolen is not really theft. Again, assuming that recovery and return to an original/natural state is the objective. If you're just taking it for yourself, then you're just as bad as the first thief.

I'd spend some time talking about wealth and how that's also not what most people think it is, but this post is lengthy enough already (hint: Wealth actually measures what you have given to others, and not what you have taken from others. I know. Mind blown!). Again though, assumming no theft is in action in the first place.

So I talked to my DM about the stealing tangent. His response was "if theft is a matter of good and evil, what is even the point of having a lawful / chaos axis? To stop jaywalkers?" Which, while I don't agree with him, does show that this does not actually appear to be an issue in our game.

What's the difference between Xykon and Redcloak? Both kill people without having any moral opposition to it based solely on it being murder. Answer what makes them different, and you will understand what the chaos/law axis is about. You still seem to think that law=="obeying the law", and therefore chaos="not obeying the law". That's just not it.

But hey. If you and your GM both are in agreement with how to manage it, then by all means go for it. But it does seem as though there's some conflict on the good/evil axis, and I'm suggesting that maybe the fact that you are both pushing a lot of that axis into the law/chaos one may be part of the problem. You can't really play an "evil" character because both of you have restricted "evil" down to a level that requires only the most absurd and overtly and senseless harmful acts to qualify.

Your GM is requesting "evil but not crazy", but the definition of evil he's using pretty much requires sociopathic behavior (ie: crazy). That might just be the root of the problem.

Doesn't that line of thinking imply that rogues should be an evil only class, and thus banned in most campaigns? And that the skills themselves should be restricted to evil (or maybe formerly evil) characters?

First edition thieves were "mostly evil" alignment. For the exact reason that it was assumed that this was their actual profession, and not just a skillset. Later editions changed the class to "rogue" specifically to allow for the assumption that people could learn these sorts of skills without being a person who robs other people of things. Adventurers might have all sorts of reasons to need to sneak, hide, climb, pick locks, check for and disarm traps, etc, without also being someone who breaks into people's homes and steals their stuff.

That actually reminds me of another one of my horror stories. Something very similar actually broke up my group about ten years ago. The party kept getting stymied by locks, and we didn't have a rogue, so we decided someone needed to pick up the skills. We asked the monk as she had some skill points to burn and the highest dexterity in the party and she refused, claiming that her character was neutral and that lock-picking was an innately evil skill. Her husband, who was another player, and whose father is a professional locksmith, took great offense at this, and it spiraled into a huge fight. In the end, they both decided to leave the game for the sake of their marriage.

Yup. Or a tow truck guy who can break into cars. Or a security expert. Or white hat hacker. There's a large list of legitimate professions which have a lot of overlap into the same sorts of skills that a rogue might have. The skills themselves don't have any alignment associated with them, but what you do with them. Now, I could argue certain skills are hard to have without using them in "evil" ways (like say pick pockets). But those are a pretty small set. Disarming traps and locks? I don't see any reason why merely having those skills would make one evil.

[Quertus]

I don't think anyone would object to sending in a scout or a spy to steal a dangerous artifact from the evil overlord,

Of course there exist people who would object. Just as there doubtless exist people who would object to spies stealing dangerous weapons (even ones of mass destruction) from world leaders in (a science fiction version of) this world (even one where precognition / time travel meant it was an absolute certainty such things were about to be used badly unless the party intervened). There are plenty of reasons why one might object, including people just being principled, and having principles against theft. I’ll admit that, for the unprincipled, it’s pretty easy to devise a scenario such that it’s obvious that the benefits outweigh the costs, and, even if they consider theft “evil”, most will simply dub it a “necessary evil” in that particular scenario.

I feel there’s probably some branches of philosophy and/or psychology that have more generalized terms for such concepts. Shrug. I just know that, while such things may be true of a majority of individuals, such conformity of beliefs isn’t a reality, and evaluating the potential range of responses to such a proposed course of action is not quite as simple as you perceive it to be.

[DeMouse]

As has already been mentioned the answer is to run a proper session 0 to make sure the party is on more or less the same page. Establish an overall tone for the campaign so the players and GM aren't in conflict when it comes to what kind of overall story you are going for. It isn't about eliminating all conflicts between characters, but make sure that noting is going to come up that would cause an irreconcilable split in the party.

For example you might establish that this is a heroic campaign where overall you are saving people. This would make playing some kind of serial killer pretty clearly out of the question. But a player might still be able to fit a ruthless mercenary who would otherwise be evil in with the party by establishing that he cares about his reputation and is loyal to his crew. So he won't act on his brutality, just advocate for more ruthless tactics to the party which can lead to some fun role playing as the other characters react to his suggestions.

Also generally alignment systems suck and you should try to either do away with them entirely or at least be flexible with what they mean.

[Talakeal]

this is just silly.
first, nowhere does it say that rogues must steal. a rogue is a dexterity-based fighter and a skill monkey; nothing more, nothing less.
Second, while stealing is evil outside of some strict circumstances, killing is universally agreed to be evil in almost all circumstances. and guess what, all adventurers have abilities centered on killing; by this reasoning, they are all evil and should not be played.
a d&d campaign just have a tendency to put people in situations where the use of those skills - whether thieving or killing - is justified.

Note that I am specifically responding to:

"It's pretty unlikely that said character developed their second story B&E and lockpicking skills only by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Actually, scratch that. It's absurd to think that."

I don't agree with the idea that certain skills are innately bad because you wouldn't pick them up without evil intentions. I have seen that argument before though; for example 3E labelled many spells "evil" even though they have benevolent uses, and people argued that said uses were rare enough that any wizard who bothered to learn the spell should still have an evil alignment.

I kind of have a hard time accepting that a rogue is a "dexterity-based fighter". I think a better fit for that would be the duelist or, well, a dexterity-based fighter.

All rogues have way too many abilities centered around stealth and larceny and not enough based around combat for me to buy that.

And yeah, I have already pointed out how hypocritical D&D is that it tries to be all objective and deontological for everything but violence, but then tries to bend over backwards to justify violence.

As has already been mentioned the answer is to run a proper session 0 to make sure the party is on more or less the same page. Establish an overall tone for the campaign so the players and GM aren't in conflict when it comes to what kind of overall story you are going for. It isn't about eliminating all conflicts between characters, but make sure that noting is going to come up that would cause an irreconcilable split in the party.

For example you might establish that this is a heroic campaign where overall you are saving people. This would make playing some kind of serial killer pretty clearly out of the question. But a player might still be able to fit a ruthless mercenary who would otherwise be evil in with the party by establishing that he cares about his reputation and is loyal to his crew. So he won't act on his brutality, just advocate for more ruthless tactics to the party which can lead to some fun role playing as the other characters react to his suggestions.

That's what we do.

The thread is about how I almost always play villainous characters to better fit in with the group for the sake of avoiding conflict.

The problem is that, as a result, I (or really any of us) haven't actually been able to enjoy playing a proper heroic character in years.

Also generally alignment systems suck and you should try to either do away with them entirely or at least be flexible with what they mean.

I have not played a game with a formal alignment system in years.

[King of Nowhere]

Note that I am specifically responding to:

"It's pretty unlikely that said character developed their second story B&E and lockpicking skills only by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Actually, scratch that. It's absurd to think that."

then why are you quoting me and not whoever said that? I expoused a very different opinion

I kind of have a hard time accepting that a rogue is a "dexterity-based fighter".
All rogues have way too many abilities centered around stealth and larceny and not enough based around combat for me to buy that.

Yeah, it's funny how different tables play differently.
I remember only once seeing a rogue that was based around stealth and larceny and not on combat. We don't have all that many occasions to use stealth and larceny at my table, because those things are easy to protect against. Plus, you can't infiltrate with the rest of the party - the others have no stealth skills - so you have to go alone; and at this point, a single failed roll will leave you surrounded by hostiles, and rogues have poor survivability.
my table always preferred to either fight our way through, or to talk and resort to politics. "I try to get in from that window up there" is very rarely done, as the risk/reward ratio is unfavorable. So rogues at my table become first and foremost fighters, and they use their skill points to be scouts and diplomats.

That's what we do.

The thread is about how I almost always play villainous characters to better fit in with the group for the sake of avoiding conflict.

The problem is that, as a result, I (or really any of us) haven't actually been able to enjoy playing a proper heroic character in years.

I realize that you probably did and it didn't work out because your players are special, but:
have you tried proposing it?
Like, "hey guys, I would like to play a genuinely heroic character for once, and I know some of you feel the same, but I can't do it in a party of murderhobos. So we would have to all agree in advance to be good guys. I would like to try a campaign like that; who is up for it?"

[Talakeal]

then why are you quoting me and not whoever said that? I expoused a very different opinion

Because I was responding to you quoting me responding to gbaj.

I realize that you probably did and it didn't work out because your players are special, but:
have you tried proposing it?
Like, "hey guys, I would like to play a genuinely heroic character for once, and I know some of you feel the same, but I can't do it in a party of murderhobos. So we would have to all agree in advance to be good guys. I would like to try a campaign like that; who is up for it?"

I probably will next time.

This time was a bit different because one player had his heart set on playing a pirate going into session zero, and I knew Bob had always wanted to play a necromancer and so I suggested he play one as that is a school that needed playtesting.

And of course when they heard pirate and necromancer, any idea of playing a heroic character was long gone.