Prisoners

[pemerton]

Historically, raiding parties, and armies tended to view "the enemy" as combatants to be dispatched. Yes, that includes civilians. Look at all the historical examples of towns being looted, pillaged and worse by advancing armies.

<snip>

it's pretty disingenuous to talk about "medieval justice" and morality and simply gloss over the legend of Robin Hood.

To add to your comment about Robin Hood - there were contemporaries who regarded some of the sacking of towns that you mentioned as morally objectionable. Just as in our own time, one has to be careful in treating actual behaviour as a sign of moral conviction, as opposed to (eg) immoral/hypocritical conduct.

And doubly so when we are looking to emulate fictions that present an idealised conception of things - which is pretty typical for fantasy adventure fiction. (Even something like Conan, and certainly LotR and its imitators.)

One of the biggest problems with alignment, is that the DM's personal sensibilities become the cosmic law of the universe.

This is why I'm not a big fan of mechanical alignment.

It's possible to use alignment labels and concepts - or similar ideas like fidelity to a god etc - without GM mechanical adjudication, though.

 

[aramis erak]

To add to your comment about Robin Hood - there were contemporaries who regarded some of the sacking of towns that you mentioned as morally objectionable. Just as in our own time, one has to be careful in treating actual behaviour as a sign of moral conviction, as opposed to (eg) immoral/hypocritical conduct.

There is currently a sociopolitical movement to whitewash the past, to find the dissenters and claim they were a silent majority...

The widespread nature of rapaciousness in warfare pre-renaissance is well documented, and assuming it was amoral or hypocritical is statistically unlikely. Even into the renaissance, the sheer brutality of warfare is astonishing.

The thing is, we don't have the exposure to all the casual violence - we don't see the butcher carving the meat, or pa or grandpa catching tonight's chicken for dinner and killing it. We don't go to hangings nor public lashings as social events. We don't have stocks, lashings, nor dunkings as public punishment. We don't physically mutilate criminals as a rule.

At least not in the first world and most of the second world nations.

 

[pemerton]

There is currently a sociopolitical movement to whitewash the past, to find the dissenters and claim they were a silent majority...

I didn't say anything about being a silent majority. I don't think they were a majority - I think they were predominantly clergy. And I don't think they were silent. If they were, their views wouldn't be known anymore.

The widespread nature of rapaciousness in warfare pre-renaissance is well documented, and assuming it was amoral or hypocritical is statistically unlikely.

I don't know what your basis is for positing statistical likelihood, or unlikelihood, of hypocrisy.

we don't have the exposure to all the casual violence - we don't see the butcher carving the meat, or pa or grandpa catching tonight's chicken for dinner and killing it.

Who are you speaking for?

In any event, my post was not about the psychology of violence. It was about the morality of violence. Before they took Jerusalem, the crusaders processed barefoot around its walls. Did they really think that the killing that subsequently accompanied the sack of the city was morally permissible? Here's Runciman's account (A History of the Crusades, Volume 1: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (CUP 1951, 1994 imprint), pp 237-38):

The massacre at Jerusalem profoundly impressed all the world. No one can say how many victims it involved, but it emptied Jerusalem of its Moslem and Jewish inhabitants. Many even of the Christians were horrified by what had been done, and amongst the Moslems, who had been ready hitherto to accept the Franks as another factor in the tangled politics of the time, there was henceforward a clear determination that the Franks must be driven out.​

The killing of prisoners taken in battle was obviously something different from massacring the people of a city. Though if a promise of quarter was given in exchange for surrender, and then was subsequently broken, there were plenty of contemporaries who would judge that to be wrong.

In the D&D context, one difficult concept is "in battle". Few D&D combats are clearly military conflicts between soldiers. But the idea of surrender in exchange for quarter should certainly be applicable.

 

[Fergurg]

Let them go, or kill captured enemies? There is a third way, but you're not going to like its traditional name - enslavement.

Heroes being heroes, they're not usually going to employ chattel slavery, but more of an offer to change sides, while making it clear that it's not really a question.

The TV show Person of Interest did a good job of it twice. Season 1, three crooked cops working for the evil group HR tried to kill the hero; two of them died and one ran away, thinking he escaped. He was tracked down by the hero and told, "You work for me from now on." Bad guy cop ended up becoming a good guy, inspired by working for someone with a better moral compass than crooked cops, eventually being the one to take down the leader of HR.

Third season, different cop ally of the hero was targeted for murder by a rookie cop recruited for HR and one of their contacts, a bartender. She killed the bartender and set up evidence framing the rookie recruit. "Why would anyone come after me? I was never in view of the cameras and he was killed by your gun." "Why are you telling me this?" "So that you understand. You don't work for HR anymore; you work for me."

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Any proper Tolkien-based campaign. Orcs are corruptions of Elves, and born incapable of full free will, inherently evil.

If you are including orc women and children and villages you have already strongly departed from the idea of a "proper Tolkien-based campaign". And killing without remorse is something that to Tolkien would see as making you an "orc", rather than a righteous cause to be pursued.

But we are talking D&D here, not Tolkien. Where is the text stating that orcs are creating soul-less creatures? Every source, from OD&D onwards describes orcs as an race of humanoids.

AD&D 1E somewhere advises monsters should never be more than 1 step on each axis away from the racial norms; the listed alignment is Lawful Evil. That would allow LE, LN, NE, and N. The 1E DMG implies Monster Alignments shouldn't be different from listed. Thus, early versions of AD&D, by groups who took the rules as rules, not guidelines, tended to have most monsters stuck in their alignments.

Rubbish. That would preclude a lawful good elf. Was this impossible in 1st edition? No.

It would also preclude Nilonim, who as neutral with "good tendencies" is more than 1 step away from "chaotic evil" on the alignment spectrum. In an adventure written by Gygax.

L5R, all editions, Bakemono ("goblins") are inherently evil, as they are shadowlands creatures...


Meanwhile, the Naga and Nezumi, while inhuman, are capable of good, and while the Nezumi are resident in the shadowlands, they aren't shadowlands creatures.

Interesting, but irrelevant to the topic, as they are clearly more of a demon than the clearly humanoid orcs.

I've run campaigns where orcs were inherently evil, and ones where they weren't. The later were different in tone. Both can be fun.

Great. But I'm not asking about your homebrew.

Warhammer FRP 1E limits even PCs to 1 step either side, but uses a different alignment scale, 1 axis: Lawful • Good • Neutral • Evil • Chaotic. The walking fungi called Orcs and goblins/gretchins are evil, thus individuals can only be N, E, or C.

Yes, neutral. So non-evil.

(and again, we are discussing D&D, not Warhammer)

pemerton is correct, a lot of this seems to be your own interpretation rather than anything written into the text.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Not really. Yes, adventures did say, treat females as lesser monster X and young as lesser monster Y. But that was done because they WERE NOT HELPLESS INNOCENTS. They were evil, murdering MONSTERS, to the core, from birth, and that was why they had evil alignments. And it wasn't a matter of PC's hacking apart defenseless and weak fuzzy-wuzzys - it was a matter of PC's needing to defend themselves AGAINST those vile critters seeking their PC blood by using rocks and pointy sticks if that's all they had.

Later, other game authors and DM's inserted into D&D the idea that no monster is ever inflexibly evil and that you couldn't just gank even the worst monsters because eventually one of them was going to turn out to be LG and then it would be the players who were guilty of murder for A) not conducting detailed psychological analysis on every individual to determine their personal philosophy and beliefs instead of making blanket racist assumptions, and B) not arresting them instead and taking them back to the nearest town for trial by jury for their illegal deeds, and possibly C) turning themselves into authorities for acting like judge, jury and executioner without having been duly elected as law enforcement officials. But that's not how it was EVER intended at the outset and the females and young were not placed into adventures as morality traps for the PC's to rush headlong into because they wanted to hear the screams of dying innocents.

Which adventures said anything like this? As in, printed, not in your own imagination, which seems to be strangely bloodthirsty. (Who are all of you people getting excited about slaughtering women and children?)

 

[Wasteland Knight]

Presenting children as "evil, murdering MONSTERS, to the core" is problematic and should be concerning to any decent parent.

it’s a game. Written in the 70’s. You can un-clutch your pearls now.

 

[Eric V]

it’s a game. Written in the 70’s. You can un-clutch your pearls now.

LOL

Thank you for revealing who you are. Authentically appreciated.

 

[dragoner]

Technically, for defeat. Not for killing.
Rolemaster is the one that gives extra XP for killing.

I'll note that many young GM's missed the distinction. Me included for a number of years.

It provided for reinforcement to be a good person, at least in a negative manner. As having a Slavic father meant getting my face slapped, and from my mother, her explaining how the Germans turned half our family to ash in the Holocaust, I never had my Paladin do anything like killing the females and children again. It was sort of one of those trap situations, esp since the game promoted doing the xp grind to level.

 

[Nytmare]

The three ten-to-twelve year olds I'm DMing for:

• Offered to let two surviving Kobolds join them. One decided it was a good deal, the other ran away later.
• Made a deal with the Bugbear Witch (who knew the cure to what ailed their village) and agreed they would leave each other alone
• Sent the two surviving bandits tied-up and in custody of the bandits' two captives who were going to the next village.

So far they've always tried to stop the fallen foes from dying if they weren't dead yet. They also try to capture anything vaguely an animal that attacks them to try and tame. I suggested to one last night that the Ankheg might not be safely trainable even if they did stop it from dying. He rethought and let it go.

Edit: Let the idea of taming it go. They probably would have let it escape if it gave them a choice.

In my son's first D&D game, after his Link clone finished beating up the Ganondorf clone, I asked him if there was anything his character wanted to say to the bad guy. He got all quiet and withdrawn and mumbled under his breath "I'm sorry for fighting with you." and then offered to shake the bad guy's hand and be friends.