D&D 5E Next session a character might die. Am I being a jerk?

[Oofta]

I would, kindly suggest it is, A standard, in fantasy, (and indeed a prominent banner), but not the sole banner.

The Song of Roland, in the character of Fierabas, the Saracen Knight, has a conversion of a character from ‘evil’ to ‘good’, by the moral terms of the work’s ethical framework.

The Lord of the Rings, hinges upon the pity and mercy of Bilbo and Frodo.
If Bilbo slew Golem, then Sauron wins!

More importantly, Tolkien did not focus on Orcs. We know from The Silmarillion, that Morgoth, tortured elves that had not seen the Blessed Lands to make Orcs.

One can make an argument that in Tolkien world, there are instances, taints of Evil that can not be removed....except perhaps in the Blessed Lands.

Melkor, could not be reformed, we don’t know about Orcs or the burden of Frodo.

Which is a long winded way of saying, even the banner you are flying, has exceptions.

The Conan stories are largely amoral, (some might argue immoral, )
The tales of Lord Dunsany, amoral.
Norse mythology and Icelandic Sagas, amoral.
Tristan and Iseult, The Well at the World’s End, and many other chivalric tales are largely amoral.

Your foeman, is your foeman in these stories due to opposition of the protagonist’s goals, not due to some cosmic, inherent blemish of evil.

This is also, a prominent banner and trope of fantasy literature.

I never said there were not other tropes. Every group will have to decide what works for them.

I don't have a problem with that. Well, I have a problem with relative morality in a game where orcs are considered CE meaning that it's just their culture but that's a different issue.

If CE is defined only by relative morality then I don't think D&D really works. After all if that's the case than even Asmodeus isn't really evil because there is no such thing as evil.

It's just a game, I don't mind if it's a bit over-simplified here and there.

P.S. I also disagree with relative moralism on an individual level even in the real world. Some people get they're jollies harming others. That fits my definition of evil.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not going to agree - certainly not because monsters in a fantasy world are real. Imagine if cats and mice were both intelligent enough to define moral behavior. I can't help but think that their take on morality would vary a great deal depending on whether they're naturally the predator or naturally the prey. The way cats grab live mice and play with them in the process of killing and eating them would be utterly cruel and evil from a mouse's perspective, and morally neutral, at worst, from a cat's perspective.

No, what would have the most impact on the suitability of moral relativism in D&D is the presence of moral forces that are concrete enough that a character (whether PC or NPC/Monster) can be measured against them. It wouldn't matter if an orc thinks their society, social values, and personal behaviors are good or not. If they don't measure up to good, they aren't going to be detectable by magic that detects good or affects it in some special way.

My personal definition of evil? You don't give any value to other sentient individuals. You actually enjoy inflicting harm on others.

Doesn't matter if that's because you're a human serial killer or an orc as described in the MM.

If you think serial killers don't qualify as evil then we're just going to have to disagree.

 

[Var]

Morals are a construct of the society that births them to begin with.

Civilizations and time periods have very different ideas of what i.e. a person is.
Slavery would be a okay for almost everywhere of the Roman times. A good horse could easily beat the value of several peasant lives during medieval times.
Compared to that all of us (I assume?) got raised with a different standard for human life, so it's quite difficult for us to comprehend what it must be like to not even think of a social group or caste of other human beings as a person.
Stark differences in physical appearance make it a lot easier on the mind, hence racism is easy maintenance as far as mental constructs go. Dehumanizing your enemies/hated opponents by targeting the differences in between them and you has been a go to tool since forever.
This exists on all levels on the social scale. We're pretty good at applying the same arguments to tell people about that neighbor/town district/city/county/country etc we oh so hate.
Applies nicely to "all Orcs are CE period", no they're not. That's statistically speaking nigh impossible.

Religion is another big pillar of socially accepted values. Classic human "we" against "them" is ingrained in our genes, probably since we have a lizard brain. Even birds and fish are capable of shunning their own or resorting to murder their "family" (outside of for food).

Translating that to D&D it translates to all sapient creatures.
Stamping all Orcs as CE is forgetting that they tend to be raised in a CE environment. Sure that's where 99% of them get raised and survival of the fittest leads to the vast majority to be just that, a fit for their given environment.
Give Orcs a couple hundred years of isolation, peace and quiet in fertile lands in your setting and they're possibly going to change a heck of a naughty word lot. Nothing to war on and subjugate, with a much easier path of less resistance available.
Or go for a tribe of Orcs turning their back on pillaging and raiding because they turned out to be formidable herders and could live much more comfortable focusing on that for the last few generations. They're not realistically going to be violence free or all Lawful Good. But they might worship a Neutral god of nature and the wild, gravitating around True Neutral alignment on average.

Branding everything with an alignment and never looking back is at best boring.
There's evil angels for heck's sake. The stories may claim someone Zariel got "corrupted" which suggests she didn't get a say in the matter. As long as some sort of free will is involved there is nothing but potential as the starting point for a intelligent creature. The chances for a Chaotic Evil cannibal unicorn (by choice and circumstance) might be abysmally small, but it might still exist. The same way there might be a Lich too bored to plot machiavellian plans towards world domination. And instead found joy (or at least could kill some time) creating a thriving economy based on undead labor for the village he fondly remembers from his meatbag days. Much like a regular human would start an ant farm (or in modern times PC sim game) and then gets oddly attached to the little buggers.

D&D is a game and tends to pretend its multiverse is a lot more ordered and binary that it should be. Think for 5 minutes about all the nuanced wack naughty word we can see happening every day across the world, good, bad and merely worth musing about. Why should the D&D worlds not have the equivalent of tigers adopting goats or humans trying to save sharks from extinction?
Everything has a natural tendency towards Neutral in my book - Neutral being the pure potential to unfold into literally anything you can imagine given the right circumstances and opportunity.

 

[Todd Roybark]

I want to say thank you Oofta, for sharing your views. This is an interesting discussion. I hope everyone, feels safe in expressing their viewpoint.

If CE is defined only by relative morality then I don't think D&D really works.

In my view, if the sentence quoted above is true, then the Objective Moral Reality inherent to D&D is an existential threat to the game’s longevity.

If D&D can only tell one particular type of story, then it’s RPG niche is very small.

I lost interest in 2e D&D, not due to any mechanical defects, (We did not use kits ),
but rather, because I felt, I had exhausted the creative potential of the metaphysics hard baked into the mechanics.

An evergreen version of D&D, HAS to have moral relativity as a prominently viable option, or else the bloom will come off the rose, as it were.

The system, has to be able to tell multiple tropes well, or like prior editions, the story types 5e excels at ‘telling’, will get stale.

After all if that's the case than even Asmodeus isn't really evil because there is no such thing as evil.

No, Asmodeus is the personification of Necessary Evil. Chaos, and demons are elective evil.

The Higher Planes, are the only realms, where Absolute Good can exist.
The Higher Planes are the only locations in the multiverse, where one can have their cake and eat it it too.

In effect, the Higher Planes are the locations in the multiverse, not bound by Cause and Effect, which is what Karma is in essence, Cause and Effect.

An Angel, such as Zariel for example, that becomes embroiled in concerns outside of the Higher Planes, becomes subject to the Necessary Evil, of Cause and Effect, and will ‘fall’ over time.
One can not wage war,( in the context of Cause and Effect), and not be changed, or hardened from it. This goes double for ceaseless war.

This framework, preserves Absolute and Relative Morality as viable viewpoints and stories within the same campaign, no less. It is also the cosmological framework in the flavor text portions of Mords’ Tome of Foes.

Some people get they're jollies harming others. That fits my definition of evil.

As a thought experiment: are smokers evil by the rules inherent in the above quoted part? The question is open to everyone, not just Oofta.

Doing something that just makes you feel better, but actively harms those around you, seems to meet the definition of harming others for one’s jollies.

Since, no Human, (or other race), is an Island, a person that thinks that smoking is just their choice, is ignoring the rich web of interconnection that IS life.

Doing harm to oneself through smoking, for a momentary pleasure, ignores the harm to others, the harm that is caused to others, by weakening your health and hastening your demise.

This too, also meets the ‘Jollies’ definition of evil.

Note, the above is for Thought Experiments purposes, not a sanctimonious scree against smoking. Though I am an ex-smoker

 

[billd91]

In my view, if the sentence quoted above is true, then the Objective Moral Reality inherent to D&D is an existential threat to the game’s longevity.

If D&D can only tell one particular type of story, then it’s RPG niche is very small.

I lost interest in 2e D&D, not due to any mechanical defects, (We did not use kits ),
but rather, because I felt, I had exhausted the creative potential of the metaphysics hard baked into the mechanics.

An evergreen version of D&D, HAS to have moral relativity as a prominently viable option, or else the bloom will come off the rose, as it were.

Considering D&D is pushing 50 and going strong despite having an objective moral reality inherent to it, I'm going to say your analysis is dubious. Individual groups have always had the power to use, abuse, or ignore the alignment system as fits the tone and theme of their games. And they pretty much always will.

 

[Oofta]

I want to say thank you Oofta, for sharing your views. This is an interesting discussion. I hope everyone, feels safe in expressing their viewpoint.



In my view, if the sentence quoted above is true, then the Objective Moral Reality inherent to D&D is an existential threat to the game’s longevity.

If D&D can only tell one particular type of story, then it’s RPG niche is very small.

I lost interest in 2e D&D, not due to any mechanical defects, (We did not use kits ),
but rather, because I felt, I had exhausted the creative potential of the metaphysics hard baked into the mechanics.

An evergreen version of D&D, HAS to have moral relativity as a prominently viable option, or else the bloom will come off the rose, as it were.

The system, has to be able to tell multiple tropes well, or like prior editions, the story types 5e excels at ‘telling’, will get stale.



No, Asmodeus is the personification of Necessary Evil. Chaos, and demons are elective evil.

The Higher Planes, are the only realms, where Absolute Good can exist.
The Higher Planes are the only locations in the multiverse, where one can have their cake and eat it it too.

In effect, the Higher Planes are the locations in the multiverse, not bound by Cause and Effect, which is what Karma is in essence, Cause and Effect.

An Angel, such as Zariel for example, that becomes embroiled in concerns outside of the Higher Planes, becomes subject to the Necessary Evil, of Cause and Effect, and will ‘fall’ over time.
One can not wage war,( in the context of Cause and Effect), and not be changed, or hardened from it. This goes double for ceaseless war.

This framework, preserves Absolute and Relative Morality as viable viewpoints and stories within the same campaign, no less. It is also the cosmological framework in the flavor text portions of Mords’ Tome of Foes.




As a thought experiment: are smokers evil by the rules inherent in the above quoted part? The question is open to everyone, not just Oofta.

Doing something that just makes you feel better, but actively harms those around you, seems to meet the definition of harming others for one’s jollies.

Since, no Human, (or other race), is an Island, a person that thinks that smoking is just their choice, is ignoring the rich web of interconnection that IS life.

Doing harm to oneself through smoking, for a momentary pleasure, ignores the harm to others, the harm that is caused to others, by weakening your health and hastening your demise.

This too, also meets the ‘Jollies’ definition of evil.

Note, the above is for Thought Experiments purposes, not a sanctimonious scree against smoking. Though I am an ex-smoker

Well, as always the disclaimer. There is no one true way.

People keep saying that demons and devils are evil, but with orcs it's all relative. That's where I simply disagree. If there are sentient creatures that are inherently evil, drawing a line based on origin has limits. Any line we draw about completely fictional creatures is arbitrary.

Orcs are a created race, created specifically to wage eternal war.

Compare that to Drow. Drow have a different origin, they were elves at one point but some of the elves were social misfits. Those elves were kicked out and turned to Lollth because she was the only one that would accept them.

So I can see an argument for Drow being evil because of culture more than orcs.

But orcs vs demons or gnolls? I just don't see why putting orcs into a different category changes anything. If Gruumsh were a demon would it have mattered?

I also admit I haven't paid much attention to D&D's planes of existence in ... well ever. I don't use standard cosmology at all and never have. My planes are based on Norse mythology. But a quick read doesn't seem to support some of what you state (from a rules only perspective). You make statements like "The Higher Planes, are the only realms, where Absolute Good can exist." Where does it say that?

Orcs are not human and do not have to follow rules for humans. Their representation in D&D is just as fictional as demons and angels I see no reason to apply a different logic based on the rules in the book. Therefore it is completely up to each group how they want to handle it.

Saying that orcs are evil solely because of culture smacks of colonialist moral relativity. I simply don't want as part of my game's fictional narrative.

 

[Lanefan]

Is it relevant that when the US took itself to face a somewhat similar problem, it seemed prepared to maintain prison-camps on a pretty open-ended basis?

In any event, imprisonment by way of "benevolent quarantine" seems less brutal than killing.

Provided of course that the 'Goodly nation' has the resources to build, maintain, and guard such a prison pretty much in perpetuity. In the real-world example, not a problem. In a game-world situation? Uncertain.

Never mind that once the enemy (Orcs in this case) learn where such a facility is they're going to focus on capturing or destroying it, to free the prisoners.

 

[pemerton]

Look, folks, it is pretty well established that morality is subjective. In case you missed it, there are hundreds of thousands of people that have devoted their lives to studying it and sharing their findings - and there is no consensus.

I'm not sure what you mean by "well established". My guess is that, among English- speaing philosophers (as in, people employed in academic philosophy departments) the split would be about 60/40 in favour of morality being objective. Among those who study the matter as their main field of inquiry, I would say that majority increases.

This is at least in part because the arguments in favour of morality being objective are fairly easy - eg nearly everyone agreess that if I started taking pleasure in kicking dogs that wouldn't show that it had become OK to kick dogs; it would just show that I've become a cruel person - whereas the technical obstacles that confront a subjective or relativistic account of morality (issues around truth predication, the "Frege-Geach problem" for expressivism, etc) are very challenging.

But I don't think the metaphysics of morals is particularly important for RPGing.

Instead of looking for what the answers are about morality in the game, it is far more interesting to just ask the questions.

<snip>

Use the ambiguity and questions to propel the story.

In the context of RPGing, I think the more important issues is who gets to answer the questions, and on what basis or via what method.

For instance, there have been posts in this thread saying that the GM should have inflicted penalties on the pakadin in the OP for not doing the right thing. That sort of approach - whereby the GM is entitled to unilaterally answer these questions - will produce one sort of RPGing experience.

Other approaches will produce different sorts of experiences.

 

[Todd Roybark]

I'm going to say your analysis is dubious.

How is my analysis of my own personal reasons for leaving 2nd Edition ‘dubious’.
Are you, @bild91 claiming I am not self aware?

Are you claiming that 5e D&D should only support One Style of Gaming?
I’m not now, nor have ever, said that. Neither has Oofta, from what I have read from his posts.

Are you claiming that the philosophy of The Balance, as described in MToF, does not cast Devils, Illithids, and Gith races as necessary and sometimes countervailing forces?

What, I AM claiming, is: I think, you did not actually read my post
(Which is cool)

I am also claiming :
1) At it’s base level, 5e needs a robust set of rules, that work for many different stories.

2) This is more a definitive assertion, than a claim....I only skim the flavor text stuff on monsters.

I don’t actually care how Orcs in Middle Earth, or Oerth, or Aberil, or Ravinica are described. I only care about cool monsters, and how I will use them in my game.

Any monster I use, is going to get a rinse, and I wash before I use it, and then be modified to fit the campaign, I am currently playing.

I don’t want to mischaracterize, but I imagine the same is true for Oofta, Lanefan, and many other DMs.

If you find that all to be ‘dubious’, I am curious as in how?

If 5e D&D stated in the Monster Manual that No game, can have an “All Orcs are evil” approach, I would rail against that, as just as wrong headed, as any mechanical limitation that inhibits different approaches to game themes.

 

[Oofta]

One other simple answer to all of this. What role do monsters, including orcs, fill in the fiction of the game.

Because that's all that really matters.