Evil Monster Ancestries - Yay or Nay?

[Celebrim]

I don't mind a setting where "this particular kobold is evil," the part I don't like is "all kobolds are evil."

I think I understand why, but it's really bizarre. If you are willing to concede the possibility of the statement "this kobold is evil" and thus imply objective morality, then the statement "all kobolds are evil" is an obvious possibility. And if you are not going to say that there is an objective morality, if you are going to say it's just a social construct or something, then you can't really say "this kobold is evil" The best you can say is "this kobold is my enemy", but you then still would concede the possibility of "all kobolds are my enemy" and you couldn't using the idea of morality as a social construct condemn that statement.

Can we at least concede that your objection to it just contextual to the real world and common immoralities that we see in it? Because I'm perfectly OK with that, it's just I feel like you are trying really really hard to pretend there is more to it than that.

Well that, and it's just lazy storytelling. "If it's a goblin, it's automatically our enemy and we respond accordingly."

There is nothing lazy about that at all, or least we cannot infer from the above whether the story telling is lazy or not. I've dealt with this idea that objective morality leads to lazy storytelling at greater length above, but it's a (to use a word you like) ridiculous assertion. Nothing is more obvious than people with all sorts of philosophies can be very gifted story tellers, and you can read them and go, "You know, I don't agree with what X says, but wow can they write!" I have that experience all the time, and I'm terrified of anyone that claims otherwise.

Ironically perhaps, both of us agree to allow goblin PC's and even non-evil goblin PC's. I have a massive backstory about how the goblins came to be mostly evil that I won't go into here, but suffice to say that though Maglubiyet is a vile monster he also has a bit of a point. And fundamentally it comes down to a question of, "Do you believe you can correct injustice through injustice?" or "Do you believe the ends justify the means?" Because if you do, maybe Maglubiyet seems like a hero to you, doing the only logical thing he could do to restore paradise.

When I start talking about things that are so alien and un-human that they don't/can't understand these concepts, or lack the free will to choose between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing, I would say they are Unaligned.

That feels self-contradictory to me. You're asserting that things get more and more evil until at some point they get so evil they become unaligned. Lucifer, since you bring him up, would be insulted and if he was capable of any other feeling than hatred, would hate more on the basis of that claim.

The only difference between an angel and a devil in my campaign, for example, is ideology: devils are fallen angels, the cultists who sided with Lucifer to overthrow Heaven, and failed. Devils chose evil, they weren't born into it.

As a personal matter, I really wish that either people would not take any aspect of real-world religion and put it into their fiction, or if they are going to name drop and use someone's real beliefs in their fiction that they would at least investigate the orthodox beliefs and thinking and treat the material respectfully. While it is true that demons have chosen evil, it's also true that they have lost the capacity to choose anything else. The idea here is that they aren't like the humans of HPL's conception who are unable to correlate all the contents of their minds and as such they don't have that human advantage of ignorance and frailty that partially protects them from their choices. If they make a choice, it is because they have fully correlated the contents of their mind made it irreversibly and irrevocably. But that doesn't make them less evil, as you would have it. That makes them more evil.

 

[niklinna]

First, it is the authors choice to create such thing, which they don't need to do. Secondly, I'd argue that a creature that is not capable of making moral choices cannot be a moral actor, so cannot really be "good" or "evil" any more than a hurricane can.

Free license to heroically kill 'em all, either way! If they are inherently evil, well they are inherently evil, so heroically kill 'em on sight of their telltale skin/fur color or scary horns or funny houses or weird language or whatever, regardless of what they're, I don't know, doing. If they cannot be moral actors, well then there are no moral consequences to heroically killing 'em all on sight of their telltale skin/fur color or scary horns or funny houses or weird language or whatever, regardless of what they're, I don't know, doing.

And then take their stuff, of course. For the greater good.

(And because it's the Internet, I'll point out that that was sarcasm.)

 

[velkymx]

The world is a harsh tapestry woven with threads of violence and danger. In this unforgiving landscape, some creatures have become synonymous with brutality and destruction. Orcs, for example, are more than just ugly visages – they're the embodiment of chaos, their entire culture built on raiding, pillaging, and leaving smoldering ruins in their wake.

Sure, some might advocate for understanding, for looking beyond fangs and claws to see the potential for good. But history speaks a harsh truth. Countless villages bear the scars of orcish onslaughts, their fields burned, families slaughtered. These aren't isolated incidents, but a terrifying pattern etched across generations.

Can we truly afford the luxury of naivety? Can we risk the lives of our loved ones on the hope that a particular orc might be different? In this world, trust is a precious commodity, earned through generations of peaceful coexistence. Orcs, through their actions, have forfeited that trust.

Imagine a lone traveler encountering an orc in the wilderness. Is there time for a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil? Or should the traveler rely on the hard-learned lessons of survival, recognizing the orc as a potential threat and acting accordingly?

Understanding doesn't negate reality. Orcs, and other monstrous races, have earned their reputation. While there might be a flicker of good within some individuals, the risk is simply too great. In a world where survival hinges on vigilance, judging by past actions is a necessity, not bigotry. We can strive for a better tomorrow, but ignoring the dangers of today is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I wonder why you have so much invested in subject morals in a game with defined terms (and alignment). If the lore states that evil exists and that the race is driven by evil, as are the Drow, then why do you feel the need to justify your position based on the real world? It's a game after all.

First thing I do when I run D&D, is to remove alignment. Thankfully in 5e it is completely vestigial, so this is super easy to do.

Is it that you personally struggle with your internal morality, and feel that you might be seen as evil or outside the norms, and have to bring that justification into a fantasy game to ruin it for everyone else?

No. I am pretty secure about my personal morals. I also do not aim to "ruin" the game; I think getting rid of alignment would be a big improvement.

 

[Morrus]

Is it lazy to say Nazi's are evil? I'm sure there were some Nazi florists, but on the whole (lol) they were doing some pretty evil stuff.

Correct. If you’re bringing up Nazis in a conversation about an elf game, you’re waaaaay beyond the rules of this forum. We all know what Nazis are. We don’t want this forum to be about Nazis. Drop it, please.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm suggesting that, as we do not have different species in the real world, you could point to a group of humans who all identified a specific ideology as evil. The parallel could be drawn to goblins as they all worship Maglubiyet and therefore its ideology. Individuals are one thing, a group is another, but in general evil groups, as a whole are evil. You're handwaving and ridiculous examples go to the heart of not wanting to have a reasonable discussion but rather spewing nonsense when your argument is challenged with logic and real examples.

An ideological group being "evil" is completely different thing than entire species being so. I think it should be blatantly clear, especially as one of the most obvious reasons we might identify an ideological group as evil is that they judge entire populations negatively. We can imagine all sort of things in fantasy, but what I do not want to imagine is a fantasy world where such people would be right.

 

[niklinna]

The world is a harsh tapestry woven with threads of violence and danger. In this unforgiving landscape, some creatures have become synonymous with brutality and destruction. Orcs, for example, are more than just ugly visages – they're the embodiment of chaos, their entire culture built on raiding, pillaging, and leaving smoldering ruins in their wake.

Which world is this? A conveniently fabricated imaginary world where it can be declared and rendered fictional fact (how's that for a noun phrase?) that all members of race X are inherently and irredeemably evil and therefore to be heroically killed on sight, it would seem.

Sure, some might advocate for understanding, for looking beyond fangs and claws to see the potential for good. But history speaks a harsh truth. Countless villages bear the scars of orcish onslaughts, their fields burned, families slaughtered. These aren't isolated incidents, but a terrifying pattern etched across generations.

History?

Can we truly afford the luxury of naivety? Can we risk the lives of our loved ones on the hope that a particular orc might be different? In this world, trust is a precious commodity, earned through generations of peaceful coexistence. Orcs, through their actions, have forfeited that trust.

Well no, of course not, in this imaginary created world all Orcs are conveniently by definition evil, to be heroically killed by our heroic heroes.

Imagine a lone traveler encountering an orc in the wilderness. Is there time for a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil? Or should the traveler rely on the hard-learned lessons of survival, recognizing the orc as a potential threat and acting accordingly?

That would be a great theme to examine in a roleplaying game. But I thought were just heroically killing all the definitionally evil people in order to be heroic.

Understanding doesn't negate reality. Orcs, and other monstrous races, have earned their reputation. While there might be a flicker of good within some individuals, the risk is simply too great. In a world where survival hinges on vigilance, judging by past actions is a necessity, not bigotry. We can strive for a better tomorrow, but ignoring the dangers of today is a recipe for disaster.

Reality?

It's a human urge to want to simplify and have pat answers to thorny problems(+ heroism!). Actual reality has presented us with this dilemma for quite some time, and in many ways. The dilemma itself has been a real problem, but so have "solutions" based on simplifying to "all people of nation/skin color/you-name-it are to be killed on sight". This even applies to extirpation of supposedly/arguably non-moral species such as, to name just a few examples, wolves, bears, and buffalo (although in the latter case there were some serious ulterior motives, based in part on the same simplification applied to another group of beings).

 

[velkymx]

It's a human urge to want to simplify and have pat answers to thorny problems(+ heroism!). Actual reality has presented us with this dilemma for quite some time, and in many ways. The dilemma itself has been a real problem, but so have "solutions" based on simplifying to "all people of nation/skin color/you-name-it are to be killed on sight". This even applies to extirpation of supposedly/arguably non-moral species such as, to name just a few examples, wolves, bears, and buffalo (although in the latter case there were some serious ulterior motives, based in part on the same simplification applied to another group of beings).

Assuming that they think and act like humans of course. After all, they aren't presented as a human variant, but an entirely different species.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think any of that follows.

The fact remains that people do not agree what alignment means, especially law and chaos, thus it remains as a poor tool for communicating things. It is far more useful to say that a person is impulsive and honourable than try to communicate this via alignment.

And here is where I want to put my main focus. Because while I quibble with a lot of what you are saying and think it's highly illogical, it's here where I think we can most productively disagree.

The overwhelming majority of human produced fiction comes from a place of and advances objective morality. This includes the works of Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, JRR Tolkien, Raymond Chandler, Dante Alighieri, Orson Scott Card, CS Lewis, Rumer Goden, John Steinbeck, Jane Austin, Ursula K. LeGuin and on and on. Even authors that you might not think about advancing an objective morality are really only advancing alternative objective moralities - the author's take on how we ought to behave (but frequently do not). This includes works like Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, and Homer's 'Iliad & Odessey'. This is true across both western and easter literary traditions, all the differs is exactly what objective morality is being advanced by the author. Even many stories where you have a protagonist that's morally ambiguous and compromised and sometimes downright unlikeable, such as in the works of Gene Wolfe are still coming from a place of the author's objective morality. Obviously of course, you could claim that since all of these objective moralities contradict, that none of them are definitively objective, but that would be a very different claim than claiming that objective morals "tend to produce boring fiction". Even something like Beowulf is coming from a place of objective morality. You're talking about the bulk of stories that have captured the imagination of mankind through the centuries.

And this hasn't changed. If you go and read the Hugo winners or Nebula winners you'll find that while the particular features of the advanced objective morality have evolved or changed from what was most typical a few years back, your still dealing with stories where the author clearly believes there is a definitive right and wrong.

Now, a slightly smaller set of works but still quite common come from a place of amorality. That is to say the protagonist actions are presented without the author passing judgement explicitly on the character, such as perhaps in the "James Bond" works of Ian Fleming.

But the rarest sort of stories, one that almost never appears in the canon of literature is a story about subjective morality. I'm struggling to think of one that qualifies. Perhaps Camus's "The Stranger" is the strongest example I can think of where the author attempts to advance that morality is wholly subjective, and even then though I'm not sure he succeeds at that and being convincing about it. Nor am I prepared to claim it was a more exiciting and less boring story than the usual ones that do assume that good and evil are objective concepts back by certain characteristics and actions.

You seem to be confused about what objective morals mean. An author having a point of view is not that. Furthermore, even if one would think that this is what it means, in RPGs we do not have a sole author. It is group activity so it is counterproductive for the GM to shove their morals to the players via the game's objective morality.

Again, strongly pushing Chaotic Neutral here, but nothing about the alignment system precludes you doing that. If players want to play characters that believe they can freely make up their own mind what good and evil means to them, then they can play Chaotic Neutral characters and explore that.

Except that the game says that they're objectively wrong!

But they could also say, "Wait a minute, this time I want to play a character that doesn't believe he has the right to decide for himself what constitutes good and evil, that maybe good and evil are imposed externally by some other higher thing whether it's a deity or logic or society or whatever he sees as that source of higher truth." And that player can explore that, and maybe explore it in contrast to the character that believes that everyone ought to be bound only by the dictates of their own conscious.

Yes, that seems like fine chracter. And you don't need alignment system for that. People in the real world have such beliefs, (then they disagree with each other what "the objective morals" are.) All you need to know what the character (or perhaps their religion) believes the correct morals are. we do not need to determine whether these morals in some universal sense are "correct."

But the thing is, it always feels to me like an excuse for telling an amoral story where that really isn't explored to say that the story gets more interesting if there isn't any way to categorize or any framework around this discussion.

Look, I have played CN characters. I can make elaborate arguments that CN is the best and most right moral philosophy and defend it as an intellectual exercise. I'm just not about to force that one way is the only way "ism" on my game world. Heck, I can because I'm called on as the GM to RP Neutral Evil characters make elaborate arguments to justify that NE is the right and moral and correct approach to finding yourself in the world. But again, just because I can entertain those thoughts within the game world doesn't mean I believe them. It's just that I recognize that questions like, "Is morality subject or objective?" aren't simple clear cut things that have obvious answers, and even if I did believe that they did I'd never be particularly interested - as you appear to be - in playing out such a simplistic clear-cut setting where those important questions have already been decided.

This is such a weird take. I am not trying to push any specific moral perspective, beyond not having the game to dictate the morals for the players. This by no means means that characters need or should be amoral.

 

[niklinna]

Assuming that they think and act like humans of course. After all, they aren't presented as a human variant, but an entirely different species.

How convenient, for a game that's all about heroically killing beings, that are entirely different from us humans (and their variants), in spite of having language and culture, but of course no morals.

The wolves, bears, and buffalo that I pointed out in my post are entirely different species, too.