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I gotta side with Irda Ranger on this. D&D is a poor medium for this sort of game. Not that this sort of game is bad, it most certainly isn't. But, I do think it's bad for D&D. D&D focuses on killing, plain and simple. The entire game is set up that you are going to go out somewhere, with weapons, and kill stuff. This has been true of D&D since forever.
Yes, not every game focuses on combat, that's true, but, to be honest, that's certainly the direction the mechanics are pointing you towards. Heh, there's a reason we call it Kill XP.
I think there are games which can do this sort of exploration very well. I'm just thinking that D&D isn't one of them. It's a very poor tool for this sort of campaign.
See and I disagree, since the act of killing things and taking stuff has nothing to do with whether D&D is suited to exploring morality. I actually think it has more to do with the setting than the actual game mechanics... I mean honestly I feel like your ignoring Dark Sun, Planescape, Eberron, etc. all pretty popular D&D settings where moral relativity is actually a part of the setting.
__________________ Nobody built like me, I designed myself ...as an
How is it bad for D&D? Is a morally ambiguous game going to poison D&D? Is how I play going to seep into your game? Will it infect your dice? Does it somehow degrade the books?
D&D is the most widely played RPG. People who have never even picked up a die know what D&D is. So it naturally can accommodate a wide assortment of games.
I understand when you say that D&D is poorly equipped, from a mechanical point of view, to handle many games. But I will fight you to the ends of the earth that it is poorly equipped story-wise.
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D&D focuses on killing, plain and simple. The entire game is set up that you are going to go out somewhere, with weapons, and kill stuff. This has been true of D&D since forever.
What, you think there's no killing in morally ambiguous games? There's tons of killing. Usually it involves turning on your allies. Or killing some OTHER group after killing half of the FIRST group because it's the SECOND group whose really at fault.
"We're good, they're evil" is not the only excuse to throw down on a fight.
IF D&D is merely "The combat", then what goes on between the combats, and the reasons for those combats, is irrelevant. If it's irrelevant, then both moral absolutism and moral ambiguity are the same: window dressing.
See and I disagree, since the act of killing things and taking stuff has nothing to do with whether D&D is suited to exploring morality. I actually think it has more to do with the setting than the actual game mechanics... I mean honestly I feel like your ignoring Dark Sun, Planescape, Eberron, etc. all pretty popular D&D settings where moral relativity is actually a part of the setting.
Not to mention, as Hussar himself points out, so does Greyhawk.
Hell, many monsters in D&D aren't evil and you still fight them.
Owlbears aren't evil.
Ankhegs aren't evil.
Elementals aren't evil.
Gibbering mouther - hideous monster! Not evil.
Gorgon isn't evil.
Hydra aren't evil.
Lizardfolk? How many times have you fought Lizardfolk? They're NEUTRAL.
Mimic: Not evil.
Oozes? Not evil.
Otyugh? Not evil.
Spiders of all stripes? Not evil.
Golems: Not evil.
Wyverns? Not evil.
THE TARRASQUE: Not Evil.
All animals and vermin: not evil.
And yet, somehow, PCs find the motivation to fight and kill the above.
Regardless of if the enemy is good, evil, neutral, if their intentions mean well, or if they're wholly justified in their actions, if they were born evil or were raised evil... if they're trying to eat your face, you put your sword in them.
And delving into a dungeon in order to hack through its traps and defenders, for the loot? That's not inherently Good, nor Ambiguous. But many an adventure is just that. It wouldn't have changed the Tomb of Horrors if Acererak wasn't a lich, but just a wizard who built all those traps just to protect his loot after he died. The goal was to survive the gauntlet to get the payout, and have the bragging rights of surviving the Tomb.
Treating the PCs and their NPCs allies as a football team that you play for against the Evil Orc football team is all well and good, but you don't have to be "working through your issues" to want your games to take place in a more ambiguous moral or political landscape.
I am going to try and clear up this whole "working through your issues" bit people keep bringing up.
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Originally Posted by jasperak
Although I have gamed with a few that wanted to play "Moral Dilemmas and Existentialism" for a short time. Those games tended to become more about individual players working through their own issues and bordered on "therapeutic role-playing." Those people would be better served by reading Sartre than playing in games that I enjoy.
I want to know why people think I am painting with a wide brush, people that want moral questions in their game by this comment. Do I really have to say "at my table", "in my experience", "your mileage may vary" when I said specifically my feelings based on the handful of people I've gamed with.
Or did I get closer with this?
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Originally Posted by Jasperak
I can see how what I have said may be taken that way, but it is not necessarily my intention. I have a big problem with DMs that want to explore their feelings about their poor orcs that only raid because they have been kicked out of their homeland.
What actually pissed me off in the past was an idiot DM that wanted to explore the Israel-Palestinian Conflict using Elves and Dwarves. He had no bloody clue about evil nor about geo-political issues. This was about four years ago; both of us were in our late-twenties. This guy had a problem with paladins killing babies. He feels sorry for serial killers because they "don't have a choice."
I do not play D&D or any other RPG so some one can work through their issues. If they want to have a conversation about politics, religion, or the meaning of life, fine lets go to the bar. But keep that crap out of the GAME. I do not play so I can feel bad about slaughtering orcs and taking their pie.
I tell a story about how one specific DM tried working through his questions on life in the game and then say "I do not play D&D... so someone can work though their issues." and I am labeled a BADWRONGFUN person. That guy needed a therapist! Again do I have to say AMT, IMHO, YMMV, etc..?
Do I have to spell out that for the first sentence that if a DM sets up a situation that is supposed to evoke pity and I don't buy it because of the melodramic BS (alluded to by my "their feelings for their poor orcs" comment) I am implying every DM. Does it really change anything if I remove the 's' from DMs and change the 'their' to 'his'? I would be pissed off at any DM that acted like this at my table.
I know I have said in later posts that one of the reasons I dislike the moral ambiguity questions is because I have never at my table, in my experience, and your mileage may vary, had a DM that could create a dramatic situation that properly evoked those feelings or questions. That does not imply that no one can play that way.
Some more
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I have seen enough people try to work through their issues playing D&D that I don't think it needs to be actively encouraged by Scott and the design team, and that's what I think would be more likely to happen if his vision of evil was the default assumption.
WOW, imagine two Drizzit fanbois that not only have to deal with their character's heritage and naturally evil tendencies, but now are hamstrung because they have to question everything they kill. They cannot even rely on some good old orcs to kill because the DM is defining them in morally relativistic terms.
At my table I have seen one of these people go brain dead and unable to act. This poor kid shut down because he couldn't make a morally ambiguous decision. Seriously. He couldn't figure out what he wanted to do. The other guy was just shallow and as far as I know left the game.
Look I fairly admit I have seen the corner cases here. Most people probably haven't seen the absurdity I have seen that playing D&D can entail. But understand this, I mean what I say and have nothing to take back. I truly wish I was able to express my feelings about this question in a more concise manner, but it is what it is.
Seriously, if I mean to attack or insult anyone I will come out and do it. That was what I feared I would do when this thread started. I thought it was going to veer into real world morality. I am glad that it stayed in game, and hope that we can keep this discussion going for as long as we need to. We are all gamers and I think we can learn from one another.
__________________ "Your imagination, limited only by your chosen powers"
Why is it important to your games that orcs are not people? I mean, I will absolutely accept an answer like "because Tolkien did it and we like Tolkien", but why not fight devils? Non-humanoid monsters which are just as intelligent as people, something like the xenomorph from Alien?
I'm just trying to grasp why it's so important to some people that there be things that look like people but don't count as people for them to kill in their games. Again, "tradition" is an acceptable answer, of course.
Truthfully I don't know. It may be because they are humanoid and can represent what our society would become if true EVIL took over. They may represent us if we lost what it means to be human and reverted back to our animalistic behavior.
Some people have mentioned that they use orcs as analogous to certain real world cultures. When that happens they should be treated like the rest of the demi-humans.
__________________ "Your imagination, limited only by your chosen powers"
I would hasten to point out that Greyhawk is most definitely based in other genres than Heroic Fantasy. Greyhawk has LOADS of shades of grey and is much more heavily leaning towards pulp and sword and sorcery fantasy than heroic. Look at the actual city of Greyhawk and you'll see that. Zagyg makes himself a god by imprisoning demon lords and draining their power. And he's one of the (sort of) good guys in the setting.
Truth be told, I often lump Heroic fantasy and S&S together. We only played in Greyhawk for a few years, and when we did it was more Heroic than S&S. It had more Tolkien influences I think since I didn't get the hardback until long after we played 2e. Man that was the 80's.
EDIT: We have generally tended to play either highly moral games or amoral games. We have had very little success with the middle ground.
__________________ "Your imagination, limited only by your chosen powers"
Last edited by Jasperak; 9th February 2009 at 06:34 AM..
But if you really want to know: It's because D&D is a lousy medium for moral argument. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is lousy. If you want to explore moral issues there are just much better ways to do it. Read a book; take a class; debate your favorite Priest or Rabbi. Trying to develop your moral compass by playing D&D is most likely to result in both skewed ethics and bad gaming. Further, what are the odds that all the players at the table need to learn the same lesson? Slim to none, I'm thinking.
There are two huge fallacies in this line of argument.
1. That a moral argument means there is a "lesson" involved. In actuality, the whole point of an RPG is to see what happens, so a game can be illuminating without imparting any specific line of moral reasoning.
2. That because the purpose of game is "entertainment," there cannot be other dimensions to why someone chooses to play the way they do. I read Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom "for fun," but that doesn't make it any less serious a work. I watch action movies "for fun," but I am definitely going to choose ones with moral content I can accept. For instance, a pro-Stalinist action film, no matter how well wrought, is just not going to be light entertainment to me. If I enjoy it, it's because it allows me to look into the mind of its maker, not because light-hearted Stalinism makes for a good action movie. Just because D&D is about certain kinds of adventures means I am required to deactivate my brain and have fun in only one of a number of prescribed fashions. Throwing in some moral content makes a fun game more fun, because a game with less moral content basically has less intelligence and just isn't going to give me what I want. That is not an argument for or against moral relativism in a game, but definitely against apathy. If someone else would rather play in a different fashion, power to them, but how can you knock someone for finding it entertaining if the GM weaves in bits and pieces of this and that picked up in literature class or ethics or Sunday school? I'm not a big fan of, say, football, but I appreciate it when I watch a movie about football and I can verify that football is accurately and intelligently presented for the purposes of the movie. Invincible is not a movie about football, it's a movie about a guy. But it would be less good a movie if football was presented in a rubbish manner. And that's how I feel about ethics. If someone runs a game and it becomes clear they couldn't be bothered to stay awake for the first 15 minutes of Ethics 101, it's just a little but of a letdown.
The question with the klingons is always: how to keep them from taking our stuff without resorting to their tactics. Those are the dramatic situations I like to see characters work through.
That is a HUGE moral question though.
If they did resort to their tactics, they would be no better than the Klingons. They would no longer be able to claim to be "good" at that point.
If both sides are just as bad as each other, it means that the Federation is only "good" because they are the protagonists. However, since it is in part their choices and actions that make them good.
Ultimately, if I am in the mood for "kill 'em and take their stuff" ... I play unalligned (formerly chaotic neutral). I have a character in one 4e game that is effectively LN. Ultimately, that is the "protect the city at all costs allignment." I like the unalligned characters and often have them do the right thing for the wrong reasons ... and the wrong thing for the right reasons.
If you are going to have the characters have allignments, they should probably mean something. A good character, especially lawful good, would probably have some kind of code of ethics. It's not just the ends that matter, but their means as well.
I like how 4e has gone. It's taken a lot of the mechanics of allignment out. The motivations of the players aren't just "I have to keep up my allignment" or "detect evil to see if it's ok to kill this guy."
The whole idea that it's okay to do ANYTHING to an evil creature, and that act won't be evil, seems to be a bit upsetting. In fact, evil creatures do evil things to each other all the time. So, evil is what you do, not just who you do it to.
If a player wants to play a paladin, and it's in a system where the paladin can fall, they are already putting themselves into a situation where they need to work with the DM to know what the paladin can or cannot do without getting powered down. It's not moral arguments ... it's about the paladin trying to find out what he can "get away with". Of course, the whole idea of the paladin is supposed to be a paragon of virtue, not someone looking to find loopholes in order to work the system to their favor. That's not lawful good ... that's lawful evil.
A character doesn't have to be good to get XP and GP from killing things and taking it's stuff. A monster doesn't have to be evil to give XP and GP when you kill it and take it's stuff. Good or evil, especially in a system that doesn't have magic based on seeking it out, isn't going to matter as much. If you went into an orc village and killed everyone, or only wiped out their warriors, and sent the rest packing ... the people in town will see you as heroes either way. Whether your motives were good (protect the town), evil (you just like to kill stuff) or indifferent (you seek adventure) you protected the town from orcs, so they will treat you accordingly. It's pretty much just what the party as a whole thinks about it.
It's likely a lot easier for characters to have motivations, goals, allegiances, than a vague allignment that they then have to disagree with their DM over what the consquences of the allignment are. You can have a party of "good" adventurers ... and if they are all motivated by "good" things, that's fine. If, on occaision, they end up doing something wrong, that's something their character may need to worry about, and as a good character, it may be something that nags at them. If they consistently do bad things, they may end up changing their allignment. It's up to players and DMs to discuss how they want the game to go, and how much allignment really matters.
Does it really matter, in the grand scheme of things, whether orcs choose to be evil but can be redeemed (albeit unlikely at late points in life), or they are born evil and can't be any other way, or are misunderstood and "equally good/evil" as the human/elf/dwarf/etc town they are attacking ... shouldn't really matter if the goals of the game are to save the town while killing orcs and taking their stuff. If they HAVE to be cosmically, absolutely evil ... then obviously, there is something more about the game than just beer and pretzels. It either doesn't matter, or it does. And if it does matter, than there should be a reason for it mattering. It may be "easier" to kill orcs if they are pure evil ... but then why not just have more unquestionably evil creatures, like demons and devils and undead or magical constructs? And, in that kind of game ... would there even be orc babies, let alone would be important to know that the orc baby was evil and SHOULD be killed in that type of game?
I have no great problem with the party finding itself in situations where there's a moral decision to be made; if only because the decision that gets made, along with the discussion leading up to it, tells me a lot about the players' ideas about how their characters think.
And it's not always a question simply of whether to kill the captives or not. My Sunday game includes a character whose past profession was slaver; leading to a third option sparked by her oft-quoted utterance "Stop taking captives and start taking inventory!".
This in turn led to a long debate (over e-mail between sessions, fortunately) as to whether slavery *was* considered evil in ancient Greek society (which is what the game's realm is based on)...never mind that one player - the one who plays the slaver, in fact - has a spouse with a Masters in Classics.
I'd say it all comes down to how *you* as a player decide to play your character in these moments of decision. Kill 'em all and let the gods sort 'em out? Cure 'em, tie 'em up, and turn 'em over to the authorities? Sell 'em to the slavers? Pat 'em on the heads and let 'em go? All are options. Pick one, after the requisite argument with the rest of your party, and get on with the game.
I want to know why people think I am painting with a wide brush
It could be because you've been lumping anything less than 100% absolutism into one bucket. While perhaps in your head you've only been badmouthing some know-nothing wanna-be philosophers that you've run into in the past, that's not who you're having a discussion with here. And those bad experiences in your past don't have much bearing on what the people who actually are in this thread are discussing.
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Originally Posted by Jasperak
I think the problem arises when the DM has a different view of the campaign than the player and of course vice-versa.
Well, that I can agree with. You should definitely find a group that matches your own playstyle if you want to actually have fun.
For instance, a pro-Stalinist action film, no matter how well wrought, is just not going to be light entertainment to me. If I enjoy it, it's because it allows me to look into the mind of its maker, not because light-hearted Stalinism makes for a good action movie. .
How is it bad for D&D? Is a morally ambiguous game going to poison D&D? Is how I play going to seep into your game? Will it infect your dice? Does it somehow degrade the books?
Please don't quote out of context and pretend I'm arguing something I'm not. It's not conducive. It's obviously not bad for D&D in that it will poison someone else's game, it's that D&D isn't particularly well suited to this style of game.
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D&D is the most widely played RPG. People who have never even picked up a die know what D&D is. So it naturally can accommodate a wide assortment of games.
I understand when you say that D&D is poorly equipped, from a mechanical point of view, to handle many games. But I will fight you to the ends of the earth that it is poorly equipped story-wise.
What, you think there's no killing in morally ambiguous games? There's tons of killing. Usually it involves turning on your allies. Or killing some OTHER group after killing half of the FIRST group because it's the SECOND group whose really at fault.
But, there's no moral ambiguity there at all. There's no "gee, I want to do the right thing, but, what IS the right thing". That's just playing an evil campaign. Being all evil and killing your allies is Paranoia, not moral ambiguity.
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"We're good, they're evil" is not the only excuse to throw down on a fight.
IF D&D is merely "The combat", then what goes on between the combats, and the reasons for those combats, is irrelevant. If it's irrelevant, then both moral absolutism and moral ambiguity are the same: window dressing.
Again, please don't put words in my mouth. I said that D&D focuses on combat, not that this is the sole reason to play D&D. That D&D focuses on combat is news to no one, particularly you who have claimed the exact same thing time and again.
Again, I didn't say that you CAN'T do it in D&D. You obviously can. My point is, is that D&D isn't particularly well suited for it.
When the solution to almost every problem in D&D is kill it, there isn't a whole lot of room for moralizing of any kind. If killing isn't wrong, if ending the life of another sentient being isn't considered wrong in any way, then there is no moral ambiguity. And, let's face it, most D&D games do play this way. A stack of Dungeon magazine modules proves that.
It's pretty rare that the solution to an adventure in D&D isn't "kill everything in sight".
Yes, there are exceptions. And yes, you can do it. I'm just saying that there are BETTER games for doing it. Not that D&D can't do it.
Is that clear enough?
__________________ Currently running: Sufficiently Advanced over Maptool. Soon to change. If you'd like to join in a short 3-8 session campaign for various systems, drop by our forums.
I double-dog-dare you to make your game sound super cool without comparing it to other editions. - paraphrased from Umbran.
Yeah, but you have no right to tell me I'm playing the game wrong.
Sure I do. I just did. Sort of like how if you were using a hammer to put screws through drywall I could say "Dude, there's a better way to do that." The only "right" here is your right to not believe me or ignore me.
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Originally Posted by Rechan
Okay, I want you to explain to me what you think a morally ambiguous game of D&D looks like. Go ahead.
There are plenty of examples in the thread. All the DM has to do is remove the concept of "Cosmic Evil" and start saying stuff like "You discover that the orcs are actually trying to recover treasure stolen from them the year before, and that prior to such theft they'd been idyllic pastoralists - until those nasty humans came along." Or whatever. Like I said, there are plenty of examples in this thread and I was responding to those examples.
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Originally Posted by Rechan
From the way you talk, I expect your response to look like this:
DM: "All right, goblins charge from the underbrush towards the caravan. I'd like everyone to roll a philosophy check."
Player 1: "I got a 23. I understand the importance of self preservation in the desire for primitive humanoids to raid caravans. But, according to Aristotle, man does not need to infringe on another man for survival. There are, after all, non-lethal ways to sustain oneself, especially in a world such as this with magic that can grow and produce food. I should have a +2 to my next Talk Reason check in order to avoid a violent altercation."
DM: "Unfortunately, the head goblin rolled a 19. He counters your current Philosophy check with his Dodge Empathy skill. His band gains self worth from raiding caravans. The goblins pull out their weapons."
Player 2: "But wait. I want to quote Kirkiguard - can that give me a bonus?"
Player 3: "And I have this passage of 'The Republic', that should help."
DM: "One at a time, please."
I've never actually seen someone quote a philosopher at the game table, but I have I have seen dice put down for long stretches of time while the merits of wiping out a goblin village was debated. Boy was that fun. So while your example is extreme, yeah, that's what I'm trying to avoid.
And if someone did try to quote Plato to me at the table, I'd be happy to say "Stow it, Socrates*, we're playing D&D here."
*Using the Bill S. Preston pronunciation.
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Originally Posted by Rechan
You say D&D is Epic fantasy, therefore it's not "not a coffee house in Prague." It's also a strategy game, but it isn't a Sun Tzu lecture or a Military Academy. </snip>
Who the hell is making an argument?
This is clearly what you're missing. "Argument" is a term of art. Building a philosophical argument has a lot in common with doing a math proof. Do you see a lot of math proofs in gaming? I don't. They've already been proved (or consciously ignored (cf., diagonal movement)). So there's no point asking questions we already know the answers to.
And that's fundamentally different from a fighting orcs or roleplaying out a discussion with Baron Bigimportant. Neither the players nor the DM know how that's going to play out, and the journey of discovery (and competition between the DM and players) is different than a Socratic discussion of some new objective moral truth.
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Originally Posted by Rechan
Here, let me put it to you this way: D&D is a great medium for telling a story, and some stories can be morally ambiguous.
I think this is a major misunderstanding about RPGs. You can tell stories about D&D, but you can't tell stories within D&D. Playing a "human DM" RPG (as opposed to playing pre-defined game like Baldur's Gate II or Neverwinter Nights) is quite different than "telling a story." No one has editorial control. If the DM was just "Telling a story" there'd be no need for dice or character sheets. You can tell stories later about how the game went down, but you can't tell a story during the game. You can only explore possibilities and roleplay your character (as opposed to anyone else's).
That's why comparing D&D to Battlestar Gallactica or Watchmen ultimately breaks down. There's no Ron/Alan Moore equivalent who has control over where the story is going or how it's going to end, or when characters will die or redeem themselves.
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Originally Posted by Rechan
I know what right and wrong is. I know what good and evil is. No matter what my character does in a game, it is not going to change my belief system. I don't use D&D to change anything about me, I do it because it's fun, and you know what? I find morally ambiguous games fun. It's that simple. And doing them with D&D is not hard and still enjoyable.
So if you already know what right and wrong are, what's the point of moral ambiguity in your game? Just to make people uncomfortable? Or do you get some sort of excitement from playing at being the bad boy (sort of how I assume whoever wrote up the Warlock class does)?
As I already mentioned earlier (both directly and by referencing Jasperak), putting dice down for an hour and debating the moral merits of various courses of action within a game is not fun for me. (Normally I wouldn't include those last two words, as "fun" is always subjective, but I guess we're having extra difficulty remembering that in this thread) Further, being evil or "delightfully gray" isn't fun either. If that's that extent of our disagreement I guess we're done here.
I do have a question though: What do you do when you decide that there's no moral course of action available? Have your PCs go home? Abandon the quest? Abandon morality and kill the orcs anyway, babies too? Because none of those sound terribly fun to me, even if occasionally those courses of action are necessary in real life.
Lastly though, if you have never actually encountered a situation in your games where the moral course of action wasn't (eventually) clear, I would suggest that you don't really have moral ambiguity in your games. You'd have faux ambiguity in that case; it's a sleight of hand by the DM that evaporates on close inspection.
__________________ I don't "tell stories" when I play D&D. I adventure. Afterward, when the gold is counted and the bodies piled high, we may tell stories about how it all went down. Or not.
1. That a moral argument means there is a "lesson" involved. In actuality, the whole point of an RPG is to see what happens, so a game can be illuminating without imparting any specific line of moral reasoning.
Indeed, I fully agree that "seeing what happens" is the fun that's unique to RPGs. But you can't "see what happens" in a moral argument; you have to either decide (make a moral decision) or abdicate (by either being amoral or allowing someone else to make the moral decision). You can't roll a d20 to discover the moral course of action.
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Originally Posted by pawsplay
If someone runs a game and it becomes clear they couldn't be bothered to stay awake for the first 15 minutes of Ethics 101, it's just a little but of a letdown.
But if you play long enough you'll find your PCs in a situation with no moral course of action. What do you do then? It's bound to happen, unless (a) the DM never lets it happen (in which case there was never any ambiguity in the first place; it was all a charade) or (b) you use the concept of Cosmic Evil to take that possibility off the table.
__________________ I don't "tell stories" when I play D&D. I adventure. Afterward, when the gold is counted and the bodies piled high, we may tell stories about how it all went down. Or not.
But you can't "see what happens" in a moral argument...
Sure you can, if that 'argument' takes the form of fiction, or a less-filling fiction-like substitute, such as RPG play sometimes is.
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But if you play long enough you'll find your PCs in a situation with no moral course of action.
With my group this takes about 5 minutes. Make that three minutes .
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What do you do then?
Laugh and start rolling dice?
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(b) you use the concept of Cosmic Evil to take that possibility off the table.
I've never found the Cosmic Evil to offer much in the way of comforting rationalization when it comes to soothing the moral quandaries implicit in killing-heavy RPG play. It's indulges SF/F's ugly tendency of using the wonderful world of human imagination to imagine enemies that, while they look and/or act person-like, are, in fact, irredeemable un-people that can murdered without a second thought (or hand-wringing, or something).
Instead of Cosmic Evil, I prefer campaigns that either 1) admit that protagonists are essentially gleefully immoral freebooters--the standard S&S approach-- or keep the Cosmic Evil to a bare minimum, using plain old-fashion conflicting goals/desires instead.
__________________ "We're pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way." -- Boyd, Dollhouse.
Indeed, I fully agree that "seeing what happens" is the fun that's unique to RPGs. But you can't "see what happens" in a moral argument; you have to either decide (make a moral decision) or abdicate (by either being amoral or allowing someone else to make the moral decision). You can't roll a d20 to discover the moral course of action.
That is precisely why it so interesting to see what happens. For one brief moment, the PCs are the moral deciders whose next decision will determine what kind of world they live in.
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But if you play long enough you'll find your PCs in a situation with no moral course of action. What do you do then? It's bound to happen, unless (a) the DM never lets it happen (in which case there was never any ambiguity in the first place; it was all a charade) or (b) you use the concept of Cosmic Evil to take that possibility off the table.
That's the good part. When you place someone in a situation where there is no really ideal solution, the answer they provide you tells you something. In a clear moral situation, many people will react in a very similar way. But in an ambiguous situation, you find out what people think is the most important principle to preserve. Now, you don't want to turn games into an endless series of no-win situations, but I think it adds something when they have to choose between two goods, or when they do occasionally have to choose between Gwen Stacy and a carload of teenagers.
What do you do then? You do something. That reinforces the best part of humanity, that when the chips are down, some of us resolve to do something.
I find people quoting and talking about Tolkien's orcs to be hilarious, because he had troubles for a long time with making a race that was considered cosmically evil. So in the end, he didn't. That's right, in Middle-Earth, orcs were born naturally evil, but he very specifically wrote that they weren't "irredeemably bad." He also stated "We were all orcs in the Great War."
In other words, stop using Tolkien for your moral absolutism.
__________________ Psionics are too sci-fi, not like the traditional method of spell casting that has existed only in D&D, involves research, laboratory work, and formulas, and was cribbed directly from a series of science fiction novels. I mean, come on, calling forth the power to alter the world from your own center of will? That's not magical in the slightest! Not at all like my wizard's spell "Telepathy!"
I find people quoting and talking about Tolkien's orcs to be hilarious, because he had troubles for a long time with making a race that was considered cosmically evil. So in the end, he didn't. That's right, in Middle-Earth, orcs were born naturally evil, but he very specifically wrote that they weren't "irredeemably bad." He also stated "We were all orcs in the Great War."
In other words, stop using Tolkien for your moral absolutism.
Like I said upthead, that's exactly what my orcs are like.
Though in my next campaign I think I'll base my orcs on the Cosmically Evil Pigmen of The House on the Borderland. So nyaah.
![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)
comment) I am implying every DM. Does it really change anything if I remove the 's' from DMs and change the 'their' to 'his'? I would be pissed off at any DM that acted like this at my table.
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