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Couldnt' the Orcs, rather than being just EVIL, be Chaotic? And agents of chaos, without overt evil involved?
What about something that is Lawful?
How do those impact the behavior, and the perceptions?
I think it adds another interesting dynamic.
Is the shark lawful because it must kill to survive (law of nature drives it's biological function) or chaotic because it attacks swimmers in the shallows for a week straight and then goes back to eating fish for the rest of it's life (free will and/or chance opportunity that leads to seemingly uncharacteristic chaotic-like behavior)?
Laws, good or evil, would also be a matter of perspective. Laws by humans that say 'kill all orcs on sight" might seem good, unless you're an orc.
Chaotic behavior may only be chaotic at the level you look at it from. Up close the behavior may seem to be random and nonsensical but if you zoom out, it suddenly may have order and structure. Attacking one village is a random skirmish but zoom out and see villages across the land are being attacked on every full moon and suddenly it is an organized war.
__________________ Scott Rouse
Last edited by Scott_Rouse; 7th February 2009 at 08:53 AM..
Couldnt' the Orcs, rather than being just EVIL, be Chaotic? And agents of chaos, without overt evil involved?
What about something that is Lawful?
How do those impact the behavior, and the perceptions?
Another thought I had.
Is a serial killer Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil? The act is clearly evil. In one sense the act has order, following a rule but it goes against the status quot and lives outside of societies rules. Now what about a vampire hunter?
__________________ Scott Rouse
Last edited by Scott_Rouse; 7th February 2009 at 09:18 AM..
And if it was human bandits attacking the village would it be okay to track them back and slaughter every man woman and child in the bandit camp?
Only if they were Inherently Evil.
In fact, I see PCs consistently avoid killing non-combatant humanoids. They even try to avoid wiping out the warriors, if the tribe agrees to stop attacking the humans. Of course this means more orcs/goblins/etc will grow up to attack humans in the future.
Is a serial killer Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil? The act is clearly evil. In one sense the act has order, following a rule but it goes against the status quot and lives outside of societies rules. Now what about a vampire hunter?
Chaotic Evil. Even the organised serial killers.
A vampire hunter's alignment will depend on motivation; the hunter in the book I Am Legend was Neutral. Van Helsing was LG.
The type of game Scott suggests can be an excellent game. I like trying to understand how the game hold together, so that if you change one theme of the game, you adjust the others so that the whole thing is philosophically coherent.
Having said this, D&D seems to me to be rooted in the amorality of pulp fantasy, like Conan, where "might is right" or of the Grey Mouser where "if I am cunning enough then I deserve to win". The alignment system has NEVER made sense in this light, at least not the good-evil axis. It also doesn't make much sense when put against the game's central premise; killing monsters and taking their treasure.
Here is how I have always reconciled this, at least in some of my games, because in fact, I LOVE moral ambiguity, dilemma and choice.
Law and Chaos, Good and Evil; For any of these things to really exist, there must be choice and free will, as well as intelligence.
Just because a being is intelligent does not mean it can choose or that it is not still an animal. If a being is intelligent but so driven by its base animal nature that it can barely resist its instincts then it cannot make moral choices in the way that most of us can.
An orc in my game is not evil; it is a shark and driven by a lust for savage slaughter that it can control no more than the predator from the deep. It is dangerous, murderous and it must be destroyed or else ruin will follow, but it is not evil; just a tortured thing consumed by blood-lust. This IMHO is how Tolkien wanted us to view Orcs. They cannot be reasoned with to any great degree, because their instincts and base nature are too strong and fear will keep them away only for so long, so they must be slain.
This is why I don't like my savage humanoids to be anything other than savage, because once they are no longer base and lustful, they can choose just as we can and can no longer collectively be lumped as dangerous and slain without thought. If I want this to be the case then I design the creature specifically for morally vague games for the purposes of dilemma.
This is a matter of degree; even humans are ruled by lusts and so their choice is also not free choice, yet we can decide to change our nature because instinct is not so strong. The fact that evil is an easier choice than good is in fact what makes doing good a sign of inner power. The same is also true, to some extent, of law and chaos since thermodynamics tells us that all natural systems tend to complete disorder, so law is the harder choice.
D&D is moving in the right direction; the monsterous humanoids should be like savage animals or else we risk having to ask if they are good or evil. And once we do that, we are in a different game. It is a game I love to play, but I don't think it is the core D&D value.
__________________ I don't know half of you, half as well as I should like and I like less than half of you, half as well as you deserve!
Is the shark lawful because it must kill to survive (law of nature drives it's biological function) or chaotic because it attacks swimmers in the shallows for a week straight and then goes back to eating fish for the rest of it's life (free will and/or chance opportunity that leads to seemingly uncharacteristic chaotic-like behavior)?
Laws, good or evil, would also be a matter of perspective. Laws by humans that say 'kill all orcs on sight" might seem good, unless you're an orc.
What you describe is moral relativism. There is no true right or wrong, merely perspective based on cultural definition. The same act is Good for group A, but evil for group B, because group A defines it as good and group B defines it as evil. Such as suicide; in Japanese culture, suicide is acceptable because it is seen as taking the utmost of responsibilities for your action, and absolving yourself/your family of shame. In Western culture, it is seen as shameful/sinful/selfish, etc.
This of course is ignoring the fact that in D&D, alignment is a living breathing thing that exists in the room. Both because of the existence of supernatural forces that exemplify those alignments, and because alignment (up until 4e) was a mechanic ingrained in the system. The [Evil] keyword beside the spell Animate Dead removed all subjective argument; casting the spell moves your alignment if you do it too often, period. You can't really argue perspective with the paladin when you show up on his Detect Evil.
Now, what I meant by "Chaotic" is not 'random action', but 'anti-order'. Or anti-civilization, if you will; a race of rebels without a cause. A group of raiders who burn crops and tear houses down, but do not kill anyone, who blockade roads and disrupt logging efforts would be agents of chaos. As are fae that spend their existences frollicing and cavorting around, their dancing rings drawing in the unwary, unable to escape; they are chaotic due to their hedonistic natures of 'do what feels good'; those fae have no structure to their existence. It can mean "Untamed" and "Wild", "Unreliable" and "Not one for commitment". Tarzan and the Vikings.
It all depends on what kind of game you want to run.
If you want beer and pretzels hack 'n slash, go with absolute alignment. Orcs are evil through and through, they even piss evil. Smite with extreme and creative prejudice.
If you like your shades of grey, evil is only for some supernatural agencies like demons and devils, everyone else gets a choice. There is redemption and damnation.
I think the default of the game should be shades of grey. It is very simple to scale back the morality to black and white: politicians and pundits do it all the time. Orcs are big and strong with a tradition of expansion through warfare. Humans are less strong with a tradition of expansion through warfare and better table utensils.
I think this whole debate spun out of people wanting to run evil campaigns with evil gods fully feat-ed and PrC'd. That is a whole different animal to tackle. Any product that has tried to tackle it has come out as cartoony, campy or a series of gross-out jokes. It doesn't seem to offer any different game play than Beer and Pretzels play other than they get to claim they are EVIL instead of good. I am sure a good product could be made with someone devoted to it. I just haven't seen it yet.
I think perhaps the best lesson is to simply use the DnD system to do what you want it to do. Sometimes you need absolute evil to have a nice simple hack 'n slash game. Sometimes you can have a more philosophical game where you play with the question "who and what is evil".
A setting that I'm designing right now has no innate good or evil, since I believe that either requires intent. What is good and what is evil is decided by races that care for such things, for example humans who are a race of Choices.
On the other hand some other races have totally different ways of looking at things. Like Eldarin, weren't they supposed to be amoral and fickle (at least they were in the previews)? Why would they care about questions of Good and Evil?
My game is about the Heroes Journey, as they leave their homes and go out into the world they shall find out who they are and what they want in life.
If killing others and taking their stuff is a part of a creature's nature, how, in-game, we define the behavior of evil creatures, then they are obviously evil based upon their mode of behavior, not their moral choice.
If killing others and taking their stuff is a part of a creature's choice, how, in-game, we define the nature of good and heroic creatures, then they are obviously good based upon their motivations, and not their behavior. Because morally they have made exactly the same behavioral choice as the evil creature, generally speaking, but perhaps for different moral and motivational reasons.
Therefore behavior cannot be the determining factor in-game of what really constitutes good and evil or I suspect good and evil would have different modus operandi, and not simply different motivations.
If a serial killer, out of control of his actions based upon his peculiar psychological nature (or so he claims), or an orc, based upon their own peculiar innate nature and predication, kills and steals the goods of a victim then he is obviously displaying the habits and tendencies of evil.
If I, as a defender of the opposite impulses of the evil individual, decide to kill and steal the stuff of the serial killer, or of the orc, because that is my moral choice, my intentional and deliberate course of action, then obviously I am displaying the considered habits and tendencies of heroism and goodness. Is this not self-evidently true?
Logically then killing things and taking their stuff (and why kill anything if you're not gonna plunder and enjoy yourself?) , and killing things and taking their stuff (and why kill anything if you're not gonna take from it? - that's what separates barbarism from civilization), are two completely different things. Because one is evil because it cannot be helped, or it is the nature of the beast to act in that way, and the other is good because it is a decision and has chosen to be that way. So to kill and steal for reasons beyond one's control, or because it is in one's nature, that is evil. And obviously so. But to kill and steal as an intentional choice, because one can choose to do so, and as an act of free will, that is good. And obviously so.
Now, before anyone thinks I am being too big a smartass (and I am displaying a sort of intentional smartassery, not to mention truthfulness and simplicity, for effect), let me just say this. I personally would kill the terrorist, the serial killer, or the orc, if they threatened me or anyone else I knew. If I were walking down the street and saw innocent individuals I didn't know being truly threatened by terrorists, serial killers, or orcs I didn't know, I'd kill the terrorists, the serial killers, or the orcs if necessary. And I wouldn't loose any sleep over it. (I personally wouldn't kill baby orcs, would probably try to raise one so as to civilize and tame him, but I would kill a sufficiently dangerous and vicious teenage orc if he showed no signs of reform and any inclination to murder. I know when to cash in my chips before I lose my shirt. Or somebody else their pulse.)
But to say that the game is just about killing things and taking their stuff, and that this presents no real dilemma that must be addressed in the differences of behavior between how evil operates and how good operates is the same as saying that the same set of problems present no such dilemma in real life.
Killing others and taking their stuff always presents a problem, of one kind or another, if you are really honest about it. If no other problem than the one of just how far are you willing to go in your mode of behavior in emulating the operational methods of evil before your internal motivations become superceded by empirically demonstrable bad habit, thereby rendering your vaunted and abstractly philosophical moral choice basically indistinguishable from the moral choicelessness of your evil foe. Anyone in doing evil can justify their actions to themselves. And believe me they do. I've heard countless excuses for just such actions. Where it really counts is if most others can see the difference between your justifications and your actions, or even more importantly can see that your actions are indeed justifiable.
When does demonstrated behavior become the real definition of what you are rather than just the inner definition you insist is your "actual one?"
It is an interesting debate that I suspect none of us will ever really resolve, generally speaking (though I believe it can be resolved correctly on a case by case basis), but I can say this much from personal experience. You can go too far in emulating the operational methods of your foes in an attempt to achieve good, and actually end up achieving what is not so good at all, if even unintentionally so. Then again you can go too far in trying to be absolutely and intentionally good and thereby end up, through the naiveté of your theory and actions (or inactions), in allowing evil to flourish and the real good, and real innocents, to suffer, or to be annihilated as a result.
And that's the real trick in life. Doing good and destroying evil without destroying good by doing evil.
And I reckon that's true for games too.
Which is not an answer, but it is an observation.
I understand that most of the monsters in D&D are monsters in the true sense, inherently evil for the sake of being evil (an orc gets off on killing the village).
But if you take the idea of "evil is as evil does" away, blur the lines a bit, I think it can be an interesting way to turn the tables in your campaign. What if orcs do what they do because they are the "indians"? The indigenous race that has been getting the screw job by the "others" (to use a Lost-ism) for the past few millennium? Killing a village is not done out of evil a but as a matter of survival. Suddenly your band of human "hereos" stops looking so heroic and starts looking like group genocidal maniacs.
Eberron leaps out at me again. In part, because Eberron is happy to have "noir"/dark heroes who do awful things in pursuit of their goal, which can be of dubious justice. You're killing all the orcs so they won't kill the settlers, but should the settlers even be there in the first place? What if the settlers are being driven into orc lands by famine in their own? What causes that famine? If it's nature, how do the PC's broker a peace? If it's something more sinister, can the PC's reverse the process by killing the source?
I know in my campaigns, for my "mortal" enemies, I like to give them clear motives that are sympathetic and understandable, and leave it to my PC's to pick a side. I recently had a town falsely accuse some refugee orcs of kidnapping a girl, and had the PC's find those orcs robbing peoples' houses. The orcs claimed they were just trying to survive (they're refugees from their own land, they need food and blankets for the winter, but obviously no one in town is really willing to work with them, so they have to steal), the townsfolk claimed they were justified in working up a mob to kill the orcs (that girl disappeared, they were hanging around stealing stuff...), the PC's had to decide which side to take.
Most humanoids fall into this for me. Orcs IMC aren't inherently evil any more than elves IMC are inherently good. This was true in 2e, in 3e, and still in 4e. There might be some cultural tendencies -- orcs tend to reward selfish self-interest and petty violence and rage, while elves tend to reward virtue and helping those less fortunate and putting an end to destruction and collapse.
The Law/Chaos axis in D&D was also pretty good at exploring this, especially when cast as "civilization vs. wilderness," where you had wizards and artificers and fighters and paladins and the like upholding the tenets of public virtue and civic pride, and you had druids and rangers and sorcerers and the like upholding the virtues of personal autonomy, freedom, and relativism.
And, yeah, the genocidal maniacs angle is something of an issue for D&D in general, and has been forever, largely because DMs will define different things as Cosmically Evil (in one campaign, orcs are, taking after Tolkein; in another, they aren't, taking more after WoW, for instance) IMC, because I make it clear that "evil isn't always Cosmic Evil, and sometimes you'll fight and kill things that aren't EVEN evil" (unaligned and good enemies both make common appearances), it doesn't become a big problem, even though my orcs and goblins and the like have more Eberron or The Horde or "DM has a degree in Cultural Anthropology" in them. Extermination of any kind of creature -- even the cosmically evil ones like devils -- is out of the hands of any one group of adventurers.
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As for the shark, yes in 2009 we can watch Discovery and know that a great white eats a surfer beacuse the surfer on a board looks like a seal from below. But as little as 100 years ago I assure you the average human probably consider the shark evil, a killer that served no good purpose on earth. When I was a kid, I had a neighbor who killed any snake he saw, even harmless garter snakes. This guy was smart, went to the same school I did, but unlike me believed snakes were "of the devil" and needed to be eraticated. Ignorance is one explaination for a perspective on "evil". Your highly evolved predator is another man's monster.
In the Real World, the line is certainly muddied as a whole (though it might be crystal clear for any individual). A creation of fiction (like D&D orcs) has the luxury of actually defining what (if anything) is "of the devil" for itself. Necromancy can just be a sort of cheap way to make "robots" in a fantasy setting. Swearing a pact with the setting equivalent of Satan to gain Warlock powers doesn't always have to mean you're evil, either. Even if your ancestors did it long ago and you're a tiefling. And the game is going to reflect modern cultural mores, which, these days, include a healthy dose of "No person is created Evil, they are made that way." So it makes sense for Orcs (which seem to be "people" as presented in D&D, rather than artificial horrors) to be made evil by society in things like Eberron and WoW, rather than created evil as they were in LotR (which took a much more mythic view of the creatures which served Cosmic Evil).
I guess embracing cultural relativism is just something I do automatically in my games, to a large degree. I think a lot of players are similar. They'll have their Lord Voldemort and their Emperor Palpatine and their Sauron, but they'll also have legions of "humans in funny suits" that are other humanoid races, which, other than looking different, have no more mental differences than some guy from Sweden and some guy from the Congo. I personally like embracing that wide middle ground and working with scenarios where there is no clear Evil, and having the PC's choose between basically their preference, or whoever has the most persuasive case.
For me, the ingrained alignment of previous editions didn't prohibit that at all. Even if something had the alignment Chaotic Evil, that didn't mean it was CE to its core -- alignment was a descriptor, a way the universe attributed sides in an ongoing struggle, and it, for most creatures, was fluid. I described it as four different kinds of "alignment particles" that worked like an energy in my settings. Some people were saturated with it, others had a thin patina of if, and there were creatures (Demons, devils) who were MADE of it.
That's why Tieflings, IMC, had an interesting dillema. They were, in part, made of evil, as if evil was a substance, a physical thing, and tieflings were composed of it turned to flesh and bone. A tiefling's struggle was to be one with its natural evil, or to try and saturate itself with some other alignment enough to change its very composition.
I tend to play in a Jasperak-esque way - I get enough complication in Real Life; I like my games to be simple and straight-forward. Very occasionally something different might be fun, but the vast majority of the time things are starkly Black and White.
The PCs are the Good Guys, and their adversaries are the Bad Guys.
"Screw Job" turn-abouts are frowned upon (ie. Ha ha! It turns out your employer was Evil after all!) as mean-spirited and unfair play on the part of the DM, unless we are in a position to get immediate and fatal revenge.
In general, if someone kills a baby orc and thinks that this isn't an "Evil" act, then it isn't.
Having said this, D&D seems to me to be rooted in the amorality of pulp fantasy, like Conan, where "might is right" or of the Grey Mouser where "if I am cunning enough then I deserve to win". The alignment system has NEVER made sense in this light, at least not the good-evil axis. It also doesn't make much sense when put against the game's central premise; killing monsters and taking their treasure.
This is why D&D had originally three alignments: Law (order and civilization, status quo), Neutrality (nature and balance) and Chaos (anarchy and destruction, change). Typically, Law was equated with "goodness" and Chaos with "evil", but exceptions could be made. A lawful fighter fought for Queen and Country, even if he did evil acts (slaughter baby orcs) or goodly acts (heal the sick). A despotic ruler who maintained draconian laws was still lawful, same as a noble paladin of ideals. Chaos was viewed as the antithesis of this, wild destructive impulses which sought a free, independent view of the world. A wronged noble forced into banditry to stop the ruthless despot and the savage orc hordes fell into chaos on the scale, both were seeking the end of the status quo for different reasons.
This system created some strange-bedfellows, so a moral "good-evil" axis was added, making five alignments. (LG, CG, LE, CE, N) Now, the paladin and noble-bandit could be G, even if one fought for law and the other chaos. That expanded into the classic nine alignment system for AD&D. Fairly soon though, the G/E axis overruled the L/C axis. When was the last time a paladin lost his powers for doing a CHAOTIC act? Its the eventual reason why L/C was neutered in 4e to being a specific type of GOOD and EVIL (kinda full circle, eh?)
This is important because originally morality was not mechanical element of D&D. Alignment didn't register your goodness or evilness, it measured how you responded to the cosmic balance of status quo/change. I assume the push toward a Good/Evil axis came of orc-slaughtering and a desire to add Tolkien-like Evil and Goodness elements to the game.
This is why D&D had originally three alignments: Law (order and civilization, status quo), Neutrality (nature and balance) and Chaos (anarchy and destruction, change). Typically, Law was equated with "goodness" and Chaos with "evil", but exceptions could be made. A lawful fighter fought for Queen and Country, even if he did evil acts (slaughter baby orcs) or goodly acts (heal the sick). A despotic ruler who maintained draconian laws was still lawful, same as a noble paladin of ideals. Chaos was viewed as the antithesis of this, wild destructive impulses which sought a free, independent view of the world. A wronged noble forced into banditry to stop the ruthless despot and the savage orc hordes fell into chaos on the scale, both were seeking the end of the status quo for different reasons.
This system created some strange-bedfellows, so a moral "good-evil" axis was added, making five alignments. (LG, CG, LE, CE, N) Now, the paladin and noble-bandit could be G, even if one fought for law and the other chaos. That expanded into the classic nine alignment system for AD&D. Fairly soon though, the G/E axis overruled the L/C axis. When was the last time a paladin lost his powers for doing a CHAOTIC act? Its the eventual reason why L/C was neutered in 4e to being a specific type of GOOD and EVIL (kinda full circle, eh?)
This is important because originally morality was not mechanical element of D&D. Alignment didn't register your goodness or evilness, it measured how you responded to the cosmic balance of status quo/change. I assume the push toward a Good/Evil axis came of orc-slaughtering and a desire to add Tolkien-like Evil and Goodness elements to the game.
For me this is the most informative post in the thread. I did not know about the fact of this historical evolution and now it makes much more sense how alignment was meant to work in D&D. Thanks
Yes they are. It is convenient because none of the players I have played with want to waste time dealing with the nature of EVIL in their GAME. Philosophical discussions get in the way of XP and GP
So the PCs in your game never fight human opponents?
I fully support "orcs are born to be evil" cosmologies. There's nothing wrong with them. But your argument here seems a trifle irrational. I don't think campaigns in which "we're hunting bandits, but that doesn't mean it's open season on all humans" is a legitimate statement really qualify as some sort of deep, philosophical exploration of the "nature of EVIL".
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Originally Posted by Rechan
When hyena eat a mortal's soul, they become gnolls, who then begin to worship Yeenoghu and demons in general.
![The Problem of Evil [Forked From Ampersand: Wizards & Worlds]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/iconimages/general-rpg-discussion/problem-evil-forked-ampersand-wizards-worlds_ltr.gif)
In part, because Eberron is happy to have "noir"/dark heroes who do awful things in pursuit of their goal, which can be of dubious justice. You're killing all the orcs so they won't kill the settlers, but should the settlers even be there in the first place? What if the settlers are being driven into orc lands by famine in their own? What causes that famine? If it's nature, how do the PC's broker a peace? If it's something more sinister, can the PC's reverse the process by killing the source?
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