When modern ethics collide with medieval ethics

[Elf Witch]

In response to: How do you adjudicate between medieval and modern ethics in your games?

I handle this problem in my own games by allowing generous interpretations of alignment and ethics. I am actually studying for a graduate degree in philosophy right now, with a sub-focus on moral psychology. Almost all people have ethical emotions and intuitions that strongly color their perception of certain situations. Knowing this, I usually avoid alignment arguments in my campaigns. It's hard enough to make sure everyone is on the same page in an undergraduate ethics debate. I've found it's even more difficult to pull it off in a DnD group. Sometimes you even get people who think that morals should not be an issue of logic, but only an issue of emotion and intuition.

So here's my solution: everyone signs up with an agreement to cooperate and compromise where necessary. If you think killing an unarmed person is always evil--that's your belief. But if a player in my game can make a compelling case for why a lawful good character would kill an unarmed person, then he gets away with it--end of story. If your character wants to roleplay an outraged response, feel free, but keep in mind that it's a game. The strictest simulation will fail if there's no one left to play it.

That being said, I tend to fall more on the gamist side of the debate, for two reasons. These are more issues of personal preference than anything (not trying to insult anyone or say that there's only one way of doing things...)

Number One: Most DMs have a really impoverished idea of what medieval culture was actually like. Their ideas have usually been filtered through years of video games and roleplaying. I have several close friends pursuing postgraduate degrees in history and I find it almost impossible to talk to any of them about the subject--they rarely agree on anything! So I like to say that my settings are strongly inspired by history, but never a simulation; I try to avoid justifying any in-game convention based on a historical one. Maybe this is just wordplay, but it tends to keep people happy. Historical arguments have no place at my gaming table.

Number Two (controversial): It's easy to drop the ball when you include things like outrageous sexism in your games. I once played with a DM who insisted that his completely made-up game world had to mimic medieval gender relations. He warned people that female characters would be frequently threatened with rape, talked down to, groped, or ignored. This same individual saw no problem with things like crazy anachronisms (Roman-era weapons alongside firearms, super-advanced sailing technology, etc.) and blatant plot inconsistencies. The questions that I always ask: How well are you getting your point across? Is it working? Are you having fun? When I told him I wanted him to include rampant sickness to make it more realistic, he disagreed on the grounds that this wouldn't be fun and would make it harder to play his game. Needless to say, the ONLY female player in the game dropped out after about two weeks.

So while I agree with the OP on this, I admit that I normally encourage DMs to err on the side of player cohesion. If you can run a strict simulation and keep a full group, more power to you. If you have to choose between simulating medieval ethics and keeping your players in the game, I'd suggest the latter. When it boils down to ethics, look to the players.

This is an excellent post and how I run my games. It is how the DM is trying to run hers.

I would like to say that while we are both more simulation than gamist neither of us are trying to run a historically accurate game.

it is a fantasy setting cobbled together from a lot of different sources.

The cleric incident is an example of how she views the game. While the setting does not view what the cleric did as morally wrong it is fine with her if other characters see it as such. In the game we had six members then and it was pretty evenly split on what happened. It made for some interesting campfire discussions.

What gets her back up is a player telling her well you are wrong it is an evil act and as DM you should not have let it slide.

 

[Elf Witch]

I think that for a lot of people, morality is not an intellectual construct.

It's something deeper, something laid down in childhood and other formative experiences. But this means that it is really hard to exchange your moral construct for a different construct. Intellectually, maybe they think they can do it, but when push comes to shove, their personal beliefs reassert themselves.

If this is the case, I don't think there's really much you can do, aside from playing with different players. You'd be better off playing a campaign where the campaign morals match that of the players.

But since people have different views on this it might be hard to come up with a gaming group who all think the same way.

If we are all adults and we agree to play in a DM game then we should try and behave like mature adults. If you find the game not to your liking then expecting everyone else to change is wrong you need to be the one to leave the game.

While there has been a couple of in character issues this is the first real bad player vs player issue that has come up. And we have been playing this campaign since 2008.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

I don't feel like it is fair to penalize me because I remembered and acted on that memory.

It's definitely not fair. I generally hand out short setting guides if we're in a homebrewed environment. Just bullet points of the important differences from what the players usually see. Different levels of punishment and respect based on one's rank in society would almost certainly be on such a list.

they want the DM to admit that both she and I were wrong on how we interpreted what was happening at the encounter.

Was that one a homebrewed adventure? 'Cause it's kind of hard for the GM to 'interpret wrong' something that she wrote herself. In fact it's pretty much impossible. I've had that happen to me as a writer, people explaining that I don't understand the subtext behind my own story, and they do. It's frustrating, moronic, and always wrong.

And considering you picked up on clues that the GM admitted were there in a situation that she couldn't possibly have interpreted wrong based on information that was provided to all of you... Yeah, forget XP penalties, if this happened to me I'd be giving the player in your situation an XP bonus and the others slaps on the wrist because only one person even cared enough to pay close attention/remember things.

 

[Elf Witch]

It's definitely not fair. I generally hand out short setting guides if we're in a homebrewed environment. Just bullet points of the important differences from what the players usually see. Different levels of punishment and respect based on one's rank in society would almost certainly be on such a list.



Was that one a homebrewed adventure? 'Cause it's kind of hard for the GM to 'interpret wrong' something that she wrote herself. In fact it's pretty much impossible. I've had that happen to me as a writer, people explaining that I don't understand the subtext behind my own story, and they do. It's frustrating, moronic, and always wrong.

And considering you picked up on clues that the GM admitted were there in a situation that she couldn't possibly have interpreted wrong based on information that was provided to all of you... Yeah, forget XP penalties, if this happened to me I'd be giving the player in your situation an XP bonus and the others slaps on the wrist because only one person even cared enough to pay close attention/remember things.

While over all we are playing the adventure path Age of Worms she also writes a lot of side adventures and rewrites parts of the module herself.

This encounter was hers it was written to get some magic items into our hands that we need further along in the adventure path. We some how skipped a part of the adventure path where they were given out because none of us picked up on the clues to follow through.

The only way they were penalized was that they didn't get the same XP for the encounter and they didn't get a reward. I got an extra 1000 XP and 5,000 in treasure. Considering that we are 12 level that is not game breaking. And I was behind them on XP and this brings me closer to them.

She is being left with figuring another way to get the magic items into our hands.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Murr... So an event which didn't really inconvenience the other players in any way other than prove them wrong is causing them to kick up a fuss and create extra work for the GM? Sounds like a bit of an annoyance. Probably shouldn't be allowed of them.

 

[Kaodi]

We also have the concept that all men are created equal.

The liberal conception of equal worth should not be confused with a conception of equal ability.

Someone born to a peasant family is "less" than someone born to a noble family. It's not just a matter of being born to the wrong parents and how much money they have, their actual DNA and game stats says they are not as good as a noble borrn.

What historical precedent could possibly support the idea that the aristocracy is actually " excellent " in being just naturally better than everyone else? In fact, given the inbreeding in the royal houses, one could better argue that the average nobleman's DNA was actually inferior to the average commoners. Differences in ability mostly stemmed from differences in educations. In D&D terms, the peasants would have better stats, but they would be commoners, which have few skill points, while the educated nobles are aristocrats or experts, which have far more skill points, but they would in fact have worse stats.

In D&D the only people that are guaranteed to be of better " blood " are the PCs.

Within that framework, that means a good noble PC can have a slave that keeps his house clean, serfs that tend his fields.
The PC should decide disputes for them and come to their aid during famine or attack.
the PC should expect nor accept any disrespect or trouble from his lessors.

As per above, if status were a matter of " stuff " and not of mere accident, the PCs would in fact be obligated to lord over the nobility.

You can argue that people in World X believe that the aristocracy is more excellent, but just as it the real world, it is not going to be true. Not without extra setting provisions to make it so that go far beyond historical simulation.

 

[Daztur]

I think there's a few different issues here that need to be picked apart:

Player ignorance: in modern America mouthing off to a cop is dumb, but in Medieval times an important noble could mouth off to some watchmen with impunity. Often the best way to model this ignorance is to have the character be just as ignorant as the player by making sure that players who aren't going to bother reading up on the local culture are RPing foreigners.

Alignment issues: saying "the church of X says you should kill members of the church of Y" is one thing, saying that you can kill unarmed members of the church of Y and be Lawful Good is another since it appears that the DM is approving aspects of in-setting morality. The DM needs to clearly explain what alignment means in the setting or not use it (or at least not use it for normal PCs).

Differences in morality in the party: if some players buy into the local morality and others find it repellent that's an issue and should be handled like any other kind of disagreement in the party, the DM shouldn't be seen to take one side or the other in play, but could make some ground rules before play starts.

Once those different streams get crossed, things can get messy.

 

[S'mon]

Rape, as far as I know, has never been acceptable behavior in any historical period, in any country.

You need to distinguish between intra-community and inter-community. It's normal to prohibit rape, murder, theft and other crimes within a community. It's also been normal to permit the rape of, murder of and theft from members of an enemy community. Throughout most of history most cultures have had no concept of 'human rights' that apply inter-community. The most common admonishment is to kill the enemy men and take their possessions - including their women and children - obviously without the consent of the women.

 

[S'mon]

I used the term medieval ethics when I should have used the term fantasy ethics.

The point I was trying to make was not using earth 21 century morality and ethics.

Sure, I take your point. Using slightly different ethical systems can make for fun games. Even the kind of '1830-meets-1975' morality in my Yggsburgh game is quite alien to a typical 2012 sensibility. Using anything like actual medieval-European ethics would be very challenging though.

The big ethical issue in my games currently is in 'Southlands', the PC who killed two high status noblewoman prisoners, aided by another PC (who then drowned trying to swim down a deadly river). They were fairly powerful wizards and one of them had animated several dead soldiers as zombies, although she claimed the men had volunteered pre-death. The 'execution' was messy and violent as they didn't die easily, and I'm pretty sure the other players were uncomfortable. I was fairly uncomfortable too. It does set up an interesting dynamic though, with the husband and brother of the dead women out for righteous revenge.

 

[S'mon]

Which she can't they were not real city guards she was playing them mouthing off to my character as clue that something was wrong. She has apologized and said that in the future she will make an effort to remind them how things work that she is sorry she didn't run the encounter better and is sorry for the miscommunication. But that is not good enough they want me to also admit I did something wrong in my choice of actions as a player.

You guys really should not be playing together. It seems to me that your incompatible playstyles are harming your friendship. The male players you describe come across as real jerks - whether they are or not, it's clear that you and your DM should be playing with people a lot more sympathetic to your play style and her DMing style.