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Evil Monster Ancestries - Yay or Nay?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9287817" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Except I am not.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Except within the space of a fiction, if the author within that fiction asserts the objective truth of morality or ethics, then it really is. If the story is an Aesop, as many of them are, then the author is also asserting that what he describes in the fictional realm has a correspondence in the real one. You don't have to believe that is true, and that's fine, and you don't have to agree in part or in whole with any author's claim, but that's a wholly different claim than you claiming that objective morality leads to a boring story. </p><p></p><p>The claim that there exists an objective morality does not require everyone to believe that it exists. Lots of things that are true (or probably true) don't have universal agreement. Many authors write explicitly for the purpose of swaying the reader to believe that the morality they advance in the story is an objective one. You don't have to be so swayed, but that's not the same as saying that a story coming from a place of objective morality tends to be a boring one. </p><p></p><p>Indeed, it's quite possible to take the tact that the reason the overwhelming majority of popular fiction down the centuries advances some sort of objective morality or the other is that people typically enjoy that more than the moral ambiguity of daily life. Maybe that's right and maybe it isn't, but that such a philosophy has been advanced by many people suggests that your take that stories coming from a place of objective morality or which incorporate an objective morality in the setting (whether it's Harry Potter or The Wizard of Oz or whatever it is) are boring is a radical opinion shared by few.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's a straw man. If the player has agency, then they can assert whatever they want. Indeed, the alignment framework explicitly validates that they do that. Could theoretically a GM be an angry god dispensing punishment on anyone that strayed out of what he saw as objective truth? Absolutely. And yes, I've had experience with the GM as Satan setting out to punish anyone for daring to have a moral standard instead of being pragmatic murder hobos that he believed was the objectively correct way to play within the setting. But neither of those things are requirements of the game and indeed are dysfunctional DMing not endorsed by the text, including the Gygaxian text. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Except that it doesn't do so. Not anywhere. No where does it say that being Chaotic Neutral is objectively wrong. Indeed, to the extent that the Great Wheel cosmology pushes a philosophy at all it pushes Neutrality. Great wheel cosmology comes very close to dabbling with the idea that balance is the definition of virtue and extremism the definition of wrong. But even that is an inference from the fact that it tends to display the cosmology as a uniform wheel like a round table around which peers are sat. It's not a necessary fact of the setting, and certainly nothing that the text explicitly mandates or validates.</p><p></p><p>It's you adding to the game for your own reasons that would say that. Don't blame the game or the alignment system for your take on it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9287817, member: 4937"] Except I am not. Except within the space of a fiction, if the author within that fiction asserts the objective truth of morality or ethics, then it really is. If the story is an Aesop, as many of them are, then the author is also asserting that what he describes in the fictional realm has a correspondence in the real one. You don't have to believe that is true, and that's fine, and you don't have to agree in part or in whole with any author's claim, but that's a wholly different claim than you claiming that objective morality leads to a boring story. The claim that there exists an objective morality does not require everyone to believe that it exists. Lots of things that are true (or probably true) don't have universal agreement. Many authors write explicitly for the purpose of swaying the reader to believe that the morality they advance in the story is an objective one. You don't have to be so swayed, but that's not the same as saying that a story coming from a place of objective morality tends to be a boring one. Indeed, it's quite possible to take the tact that the reason the overwhelming majority of popular fiction down the centuries advances some sort of objective morality or the other is that people typically enjoy that more than the moral ambiguity of daily life. Maybe that's right and maybe it isn't, but that such a philosophy has been advanced by many people suggests that your take that stories coming from a place of objective morality or which incorporate an objective morality in the setting (whether it's Harry Potter or The Wizard of Oz or whatever it is) are boring is a radical opinion shared by few. That's a straw man. If the player has agency, then they can assert whatever they want. Indeed, the alignment framework explicitly validates that they do that. Could theoretically a GM be an angry god dispensing punishment on anyone that strayed out of what he saw as objective truth? Absolutely. And yes, I've had experience with the GM as Satan setting out to punish anyone for daring to have a moral standard instead of being pragmatic murder hobos that he believed was the objectively correct way to play within the setting. But neither of those things are requirements of the game and indeed are dysfunctional DMing not endorsed by the text, including the Gygaxian text. Except that it doesn't do so. Not anywhere. No where does it say that being Chaotic Neutral is objectively wrong. Indeed, to the extent that the Great Wheel cosmology pushes a philosophy at all it pushes Neutrality. Great wheel cosmology comes very close to dabbling with the idea that balance is the definition of virtue and extremism the definition of wrong. But even that is an inference from the fact that it tends to display the cosmology as a uniform wheel like a round table around which peers are sat. It's not a necessary fact of the setting, and certainly nothing that the text explicitly mandates or validates. It's you adding to the game for your own reasons that would say that. Don't blame the game or the alignment system for your take on it. [/QUOTE]
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