The Problem of Evil [Forked From Ampersand: Wizards & Worlds]

[Irda Ranger]

I think I like a bit of moral relativism

I don't put up with moral relativism in games or real life. There are universal rules of right and wrong. I'm with C.S. Lewis on this one.

Now, sussin' out what's right and what's wrong can be interesting talk, but I'm with Jasperak when I consider it agora-talk, not game-table-talk. Games and serious ethical discussion just don't mix well.

And the rest of DarkKestral's post is exactly why I feel that way. Those too-many too-long paragraphs? Not what I want at the game-table. Sorry.

That's part of the reason that Black and White doesn't do much for me: it breaks my suspension of disbelief. If something is too easily defined, then it feels fake. It comes across, to me, as just wishful thinking. Things just aren't that easy.

That's why we have Cosmic Evil. It makes it easy.

The other part is it's boring to me. The Hero is Good, he will always be Good, and Good triumphs because it's nice that way. There's not a lot of room for complexity and depth. Superman vs. Watchmen.

D&D doesn't need moral ambiguity to be fun. Cosmic Evil is one of the design constraints that allows fun.

I liked reading Watchmen (or watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer). They're thought provoking. But I don't "play" those. I play Chess. And there's a not a whole lot of moral ambiguity in Chess, is there? We don't ask if the Rook really deserved that, or if Queen vs. Pawn is "fair." Chess isn't about that. It's about the fair competition between players. So is basketball, go, etc. D&D has some neat roleplaying aspects that allow the players to define what "success" looks like, but fundamentally it's a game. In games you accept certain rules and constraints, then take no prisoners until you win. That's called "play", and it's pretty fun.

And this brings me back to another Jasperak alluded to: Most DMs aren't Alan Moore or Joss Whedon, let alone Thomas Aquinas. And the chance that the DM is exploring new ethical ground is pretty slim. That's some well covered ground, if you know what I mean.

Now, just to make sure I've stated my position here:
1) Sometimes the players are tricked. That guy who hired them was an Evil Necromancer (whoops!). But that's not moral ambiguity. That's "Darn, we got suckered!". Once you know he's a Necromancer you can proceed quickly to Kill Him & Take His Stuff.

2) Sometimes you ally with one Evil to fight another Evil (like when Buffy worked with Spike in Season 3 to defeat Angel). That's not moral ambiguity. That's enlightened self interest and convenience. It doesn't make Spike good.

3) Sometimes the group decides pre-campaign that it's going to be an S&S campaign where might makes right and the best things in life is to sweep aside your enemies and hear the lamentations of their women. That's not moral ambiguity either. It's amorality. Conan doesn't ask those questions. Alignment is not used in these games.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's not moral relativism. Kirk doesn't question if the Federation is right or if the klingons deserve whatever they are trying to take. Kirk is the cowboy with the white hat. That to me is heroic fantasy. That is what I want from my entertainment.

That's all well and good, and I'm positive that D&D should continue to provide a place for that, because it's very mythic and very archetypal. I enjoy that on occasion, too, and I'm glad I can turn to D&D to provide that for me (even if, for me, it's usually things like demons and devils providing it more often than orcs and goblins). Normally I think videogames do it better, but every once in a while, even in a campaign filled with shades of gray, you just want to take ALL the mofos out.

I don't really think ANYONE, even in a "shades of gray" campaign, is interested in tackling The Nature of Evil in Reality or anything. I mean, that's the virtue of D&D being fiction -- whether or not the orcs are justified is a fictional consideration, made by a fictional character, who then does fictional things based on his fictional beliefs. Rather, the "player challenge" of adhering to a character's belief system -- even when it might harm innocents or thwart the party's goals -- or of abandoning that belief system and dealing with those consequences, is an interesting challenge to me.

Is it cool if Scott and I go play a game where PC's have to make difficult moral choices? I mean, I know you might not enjoy it, but hey, we don't need to be Shakespeare to deal with a little fantasy relativity any more than you need to be Tolkien to deal with a little fantasy absolutism.

You do understand I am writing about what I want and not as where we are taking the future of the game, right?

Consider me insulted and done with the thread.

Aw, c'mon, man! I don't think he was trying to be insulting, just kind of describing why it's not for him, which is fair enough. Sometimes your cultists of evil ARE mislead, after all. Or in it for different reasons. After all, in one of my games, the PC's may start by fighting the cultists, but they might end teamed up with those cultists against the thing which is CAUSING the cultists to form in the first place, which will solve the problem of the cult without forcing the PC's to hunt down and kill every individual cultist.

Jas isn't a fan of that kind of challenge. For me, that's okay -- just like it's okay if people don't like puzzles (for instance), or if combat is boring for a player or two. Part of what is generally cool about D&D in principle is that it can adapt to different play styles like that.

 

[Jasperak]

That's all well and good, and I'm positive that D&D should continue to provide a place for that, because it's very mythic and very archetypal. I enjoy that on occasion, too, and I'm glad I can turn to D&D to provide that for me (even if, for me, it's usually things like demons and devils providing it more often than orcs and goblins). Normally I think videogames do it better, but every once in a while, even in a campaign filled with shades of gray, you just want to take ALL the mofos out.

Is it cool if Scott and I go play a game where PC's have to make difficult moral choices, though? I mean, I know you might not enjoy it, but hey, we don't need to be Shakespeare to deal with a little fantasy relativity any more than you need to be Tolkien to deal with a little fantasy absolutism.

You are absolutely right KM. D&D has always embraced the way different players want to play the game. I hope it continues that way.

 

[Jasperak]

/snip what I wish I had said

I think you did in one post what I could not do in about 30. Thanks.

Btw, I have to spread the love around before giving you any more. Damn XP rules.

 

[Imaro]

Hey, I'm just curious but to those who play with good and evil absolutes... where do Warlocks stand in your campaigns? I'm just curious to see where the class falls for most in a black and white world.

 

[Badjak]

I don't understand why roleplaying games aren't the perfect format to talk about ontological evil. First, the fact that it is a game means there's never the risk of stepping on people's toes, unlike if you talked about say the united states and its treatment of indigenous natives, or the bath party and its treatment of kurds. Conversations in which you bring in historical anecdotes have a tendency of heating a convesation. But is there anyone whose going to be morally offended on a orcs behalf if we stereotype a little.

Certainly not in the middle of a session, obviously, where politics and religion should be curtailed to keep the trail on its well greased rails, but afterwards, really whats the harm. I tend to think that people are too quick to be offended by these conversations.

Either they accuse you of being pedantic or relativistic, which is obviously redundant, because of course you are, that's the whole point of using a fantasy game to bring up philosophical conversations, and why do they got to be a spoiled sport. Or they draw a line in the sand and say right is right, wrong is wrong, which is kind of silly to me. Kind of like playing a roleplaying game called "offices & taxes" I mean if you can afford some imagination in your hacky/ slashy why not in your quasi-roleplayed discussions on moral philosophy.

anyway, if i was going to have a discuss the concept of evil in dungeons and dragons, and I am...

then i would point out that slavoj zizek in his book violence, i thought did a spectacularilly good job of categorizing violence down in two three themes
symbolic violence
objective violence
subjective violence

symbolic violence relates to the nature of a system of symbols that makes language inherently violent.

subjective violence is subjectivized obviously. Like Saddam Hussein or the eye of Veccna,

and objective violence is a cultural system in which the very mechanisms of culture create creates an architecture of violence, like american ghettos, or third world countries, or orc villages.

In response to an earlier poster who was talking about evil cosmologies vs. relativity and relating it to pillaging, raping, farting, dirty orcs, i 'd like to point out that objective evil/subjective evil aren't necessarilly dualistic, but linked. Certainly, orcs are cosmologically evil, much as in the the same way terrorists are cosmologically evil, because we create the nature of our cosmos. This is a difficult idea for us to grasp because we like to think of ourselves as subjectivized, as agents which I think we are I'm not disputing that, i'm just pointing out that an ontologically evil orc, and an orc nurtured into evil are not necessarilly to different things. To use a knee jerk liberalism analogy, i might say, "look of course orcs are evil, you'd be evil too if you were forced to live on the steppes and eat your own kind, and was a dissadvantaged orc youth, never getting a proper education, giving up on your dreams etc." orcs are evil because they have to be. Because we made them that way. but they are still cosmologically evil, and as someone who is basically a slave to the system, i'm not going to stay up nights over how many I've murdered.

 

[Jasperak]

Hey, I'm just curious but to those who play with good and evil absolutes... where do Warlocks stand in your campaigns? I'm just curious to see where the class falls for most in a black and white world.

They don't. People that make deals with the Devils or Cthulhu do not fit in as player characters in heroic fantasy. Thats like saying Conan and Thulsa Doom are sitting in a tavern... and that's a S&S example. Gandalf and Sarumon sitting at a table waiting for their next adventure is just as absurd.

 

[Badjak]

I don't understand why roleplaying games aren't the perfect format to talk about ontological evil. First, the fact that it is a game means there's never the risk of stepping on people's toes, unlike if you talked about say the united states and its treatment of indigenous natives, or the bath party and its treatment of kurds. Conversations in which you bring in historical anecdotes have a tendency of heating a convesation. But is there anyone whose going to be morally offended on a orcs behalf if we stereotype a little.

Certainly not in the middle of a session, obviously, where politics and religion should be curtailed to keep the trail on its well greased rails, but afterwards, really whats the harm. I tend to think that people are too quick to be offended by these conversations.

Either they accuse you of being pedantic or relativistic, which is obviously redundant, because of course you are, that's the whole point of using a fantasy game to bring up philosophical conversations, and why do they got to be a spoiled sport. Or they draw a line in the sand and say right is right, wrong is wrong, which is kind of silly to me. Kind of like playing a roleplaying game called "offices & taxes" I mean if you can afford some imagination in your hacky/ slashy why not in your quasi-roleplayed discussions on moral philosophy.

anyway, if i was going to have a discuss the concept of evil in dungeons and dragons, and I am...

then i would point out that slavoj zizek in his book violence, i thought did a spectacularilly good job of categorizing violence down in two three themes
symbolic violence
objective violence
subjective violence

symbolic violence relates to the nature of a system of symbols that makes language inherently violent.

subjective violence is subjectivized obviously. Like Saddam Hussein or the eye of Veccna,

and objective violence is a cultural system in which the very mechanisms of culture create creates an architecture of violence, like american ghettos, or third world countries, or orc villages.

In response to an earlier poster who was talking about evil cosmologies vs. relativity and relating it to pillaging, raping, farting, dirty orcs, i 'd like to point out that objective evil/subjective evil aren't necessarilly dualistic, but linked. Certainly, orcs are cosmologically evil, much as in the the same way terrorists are cosmologically evil, because we create the nature of our cosmos. This is a difficult idea for us to grasp because we like to think of ourselves as subjectivized, as agents which I think we are I'm not disputing that, i'm just pointing out that an ontologically evil orc, and an orc nurtured into evil are necessarilly to different things. To use a knee jerk liberalism analogy, i might say, "look of course orcs are evil, you'd be evil too if you were forced to live on the steppes and eat your own kind, and was a dissadvantaged orc youth, never getting a proper education, giving up on your dreams etc." orcs are evil because they have to be. Because we made them that way.

 

[Nymrohd]

One think I like about moral relativism in our campaign stories is the classic of the vaillain who may well be thoroughly evil, yet he is the product of the violence dealt to him because people in the D&D world follow the guidelines that if it is always evil, we can kill it. As for whether D&D deals with moral relativity, I think it does. At the very least 3E did extensively, especially in BoED but also in both its campaign settings, mainly FR (Eberron is far more about trope reversal than moral relativity imo). The story of Obould and the orcs of the North, the Empyrean Trilogy, Paul S.Kemp's books on Erevis Cale are just some examples of that and they all are part of D&D. Even 2E had that also. Personally when I read Faces of Evil, I very much started to challenge the notion that even evil outsiders are inherently evil but rather more the products of an extremely cruel society.

So yes, I think that moral relativism is really easily applicable in any D&D campaign. The important thing, the only important thing in D&D after all, is to tailor the game to your group. Some groups can manage to have campaigns where they agonize over killing baby orcs just fine. That doesn't change realism. Sure the evil cultists of Tharizdun are redeemable. And in the night by the campfire, the PC can remember that one of them used to be a friend. But they are hostile to society and dangerous to many others. If the PCs had overwhelming force and could actually capture them they should, but most likely they have a far better chance to kill them and even though it is regretable, it is still needed. But when the PCs kill a creature just because it is evil, without any knowledge of said creature being a threat to themselves or others, they should put unaligned in their character sheets.

Moral relativism is not a cease and desist order to all actions of violence. All it does is make sure the players actually have a motive for killing things.

 

[Badjak]

One thing about evil in dungeons and dragons is that there are really more then just one kind of evil, and evil, even in the crunch mechanics of dungeons and dragons doesn't necessarily fit cleanly into the alignment axis of 3.5. Take for example the evil of orcs and hobgoblins as opposed to the evil of cultists. Most cultist and orcs would be placed in the alignment of CE, but the difference between the two is quite large, so large in fact that, though it is possible for me to imagine playing the role of an orc in a campaign, (in fact I did so in an evil campaign a DM once ran, and it was a blast); it is almost impossible for me to imagine playing the role of a death cultist. Death cult evil is either thematically nihilistic or demonistic, it is spiritual in the sense that it wishes to expose some sort of core trauma in the way the game world operates (with the laws of nature being rescinded, the dead rising from the earth, gigantic maggots devouring cities for instance). Orcs, on the other hand, rely on a marxist historicist understanding of the universe. I mean in almost all fantasy I've played orcs always exist as some sort of Balkan or Russian steppe other. They are always outside the community of nations that make up elves, dwarfs, humans. Orcs are evil like Neco Bellic in Grand Theft Auto 4 is evil, therefore orcs are much easier to subjectized, because we can easily shift our perspective into being that of the other, the immigrant, the abject, etc.

Cult evil is incredibly hard to subjectivize. I mean how do you play a member of the ebon triad? The resistance that the cult member has to being a PC trope is interesting. You could probably write a very nice paper about that.