D&D General Worlds of Design: Is Fighting Evil Passé?

When I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (1975) I had a clear idea of what I wanted to be and to do in the game: fight evil. As it happened, I also knew I wanted to be a magic user, though of course I branched out to other character classes, but I never deviated from the notion of fighting evil until I played some neutral characters, years after I started.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

To this day I think of the game as good guys against bad guys, with most of my characters (including the neutrals) on the good guy side. I want to be one of those characters who do something about evil. I recognize that many do not think and play this way, and that's more or less the topic of this column. Because it makes a big difference in a great deal that happens when you answer the question of whether the focus of the campaign is fighting evil.

In the early version of alignment, with only Law and Chaos, it was often Law (usually good) against Chaos (usually evil). I learned this form from Michael Moorcock's Elric novels before D&D, though I understand it originated in Pohl Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. That all went out the window when the Good and Evil axis was added to alignment. That's the axis I'm talking about today.

This is a "black and white" viewpoint, versus the in-between/neither/gray viewpoint so common today. But I like my games to be simple, and to be separate from reality. I don't like the "behave however you want as long as you don't get caught" philosophy.

Usually, a focus on fighting evil includes a focus on combat, though I can see where this would not necessarily be the case. Conversely, a focus on combat doesn't necessarily imply a focus on fighting evil. Insofar as RPGs grow out of popular fiction, we can ask how a focus on fighting evil compares with typical fiction.

In the distant past (often equated with "before 1980" in this case) the focus on fighting evil was much more common in science fiction and fantasy fiction than it is today, when heroes are in 50 shades of gray (see reference). Fighting evil, whether an individual, a gang, a cult, a movement, a nation, or an aggressive alien species, is the bedrock in much of our older science fiction and fantasy, much less so today.

Other kinds of focus?

If fighting evil isn't the focus, what is?

• In a "Game of Thrones" style campaign, the politics and wars of great families could provide a focus where good and evil hardly matter.
• "There's a war on" might be between two groups that aren't clearly good or evil (though each side individually might disagree).
• A politically-oriented campaign might be all about subterfuge, assassination, theft, and sabotage. There might be no big battles at all.
• A campaign could focus on exploration of newly-discovered territory. Or on a big mystery to solve. Or on hordes of refugees coming into the local area.

I'm sure there are many inventive alternatives to good vs evil, especially if you want a "grayer" campaign. I think a focus on good vs evil provides more shape to a RPG campaign than anything else. But there are other ways of providing shape. YMMV. If you have an unusual alternative, I hope you'll tell us about it.

 

[DammitVictor]

Because The Outer Planes exist.

I can't tell if that's circular reasoning or just Thermian, but no, that's not an answer.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

I can't tell if that's circular reasoning or just Thermian, but no, that's not an answer.

Well it's the best answer I got.

You could also just accept that there is no answer and just not worry about it ad try to have fun with the game, but you're well within your rights to not do that.

 

[Yardiff]

Firtly, you dont know they're evil Gods (you can assume, you cant know). Secondly it is not a requirement of worship of an evil god to be evil yourself (plenty of Neutral and even Good followers of such deities, and there are plenty of Evil worshippers of good gods).

Presume I told you right now I worship some kind of Devil. Am I evil?

Contrast to: You see me murdering a helpless baby. Am I evil?

In a game like 5E where I can be a LG Warlock of Asmodeus, or a CE Cleric of Torm, judging a person by the God they worship is fraught with danger.

In earlier editions a cleric could not be more then one step removed, alignment wise, from the Deity they were worshiping. ex: Deity is Chaotic Evil, cleric had to be Chaotic evil, Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil.

And 5e not have limitations on somethings like stat minimum for classes and these ridiculous non alignment restrictions are, in my opinion, some of the major issue of 5e.

I personally can see a LG/CE Deity granting clerical power to a CE/LG being with such drastic difference in basic philosophy.

 

[DammitVictor]

You could also just accept that there is no answer and just not worry about it ad try to have fun with the game, but you're well within your rights to not do that.

Well, that's what I've already done and have been doing for twenty years-- it's easy enough when I'm the one running the game. It's not as easy when I'm playing in someone else's game and I don't really like the modern versions of the game that have already come to the same conclusion as I have.

 

[Oofta]

I wonder how many times I'm going to have to ask a simple question before anyone bothers trying to answer it:

If D&D's morality isn't supposed to have anything to do with real-life morality, why does D&D need to have a rigid and punitive morality system at all, in the first place? What is your justification for this?

I would say that 5E is far less stringent about alignment than previous editions (especially 3.5 and earlier)

For my game? I already posted a brief overview here: Worlds of Design: Is Fighting Evil Passé?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I wonder how many times I'm going to have to ask a simple question before anyone bothers trying to answer it:

If D&D's morality isn't supposed to have anything to do with real-life morality, why does D&D need to have a rigid and punitive morality system at all, in the first place? What is your justification for this?

I think that @pemerton gave the most specific reason I’ve heard so far....in the earliest days of the hobby, a Lawful alignment made the game harder for the player. It set constraints on their characters behavior and abilities, and offset those constraints with certain beneficial effects for spells and so on. Being non-Lawful left you more free to play your character however you’d like, free of constraint, but you missed out on some of the boons.

As the game has moved on, I think this has become less and less meaningful, and alignment has shifted more toward a general outlook on the part of the character, and perhaps cosmic tribalism of some sort. How this may matter in play has become far less certain or universal.

Some editions seem to want to enforce alignment as a meaningful choice. In these kinds of games, alignment may affect choice of deity, it may impose certain standards of behavior, and may limit choice of character class or other game elements.

But the game has moved away from those mechanical expressions of alignment in favor of a more flavor-based approach. Now it’s more a suggestion of how to roleplay than it is anything else. There’s bot even really a way for one character to discern another’s alignment, except in the case of supernatural beings.

Personally, I have little use for alignment beyond it being a descriptor and geberal guideline, so i’m fine with the way things have gone. But I think that @pemerton had the right of it that it was really more a sign of the challenge of playing a Lawful character.

I mean, look at the PCs of Gygax and Arneson and their initial players. Those characters and what I’ve read of them didn’t seem to imply a “good versus evil” style of play.

 

[dragoner]

I wonder how many times I'm going to have to ask a simple question before anyone bothers trying to answer it:

If D&D's morality isn't supposed to have anything to do with real-life morality, why does D&D need to have a rigid and punitive morality system at all, in the first place? What is your justification for this?

It is an expansion of Lawful vs Chaos, where Lawful is order, as personified as not being the chaos of crime, violence, destruction, etc.. Easy enough to call rape, murder, looting, and burning: "evil"; though expanding it, at some point of philosophy, it becomes absurd. A quick search brings up a lot of hits to Shakespeare, Hamlet in particular.

 

[DammitVictor]

I mean... if y'all are saying that alignment worked fine before we decided to have two separate axes, and then pretending we understood the difference... yeah, I feel ya. It was also before you had punishments for "not playing your aligmment right" and over half the classes in the PHB had alignment restrictions.

My entire point is that D&D works better without all of this nonsense. Unfortunately, I don't like the games that WotC made after they figured it out, too.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But if a group wants to run a "fighting evil" game - which is the premise of the thread, I think - then works like LotR, Arthurian legend, and the like would be the relevant sources.

I meaaaaaan Arthurian Legend, fighting evil? You read Le Morte d'Arthur right? Ain't none of those knights definitely "G" in alignment (not even my beloved Gawain). I mean later sources for sure though so I'm probably being ridiculous. Also I'm for any campaign that involves beating up Saxons in post-Roman Britain so I should be more positive!

LotR though for sure, though it very much matches up with modern morality, I can't off-hand think of a deviance from fairly conventional/MoR 20th/21st-century Western morality. I mean, it's clearly not in favour of industrialization or capitalism I guess but that's about as unconventional as it gets.

Re: Lankhmar etc. yeah, I broadly agree, you don't but I thought you were talking about drawing from the sources D&D aspires to draw from, and I always felt like the 1E alignment system, if taken entirely seriously, was always a poor fit for most of Appendix N, unless it was expected that most PCs would be N in moral alignment.

And I think those suggest a pretty consistent morality: wanton killing is evil; defensive violence is permissible (pacifism might be admirable in some contexts, but is not obligatory); retributive violence is permissible, at least against serious or inveterate evildoers; and consensual violence is not per se evil, though it might be problematic to engage in it too readily or too enthusiastically.

I think what's missing here a bit is context, motivation, and benefit.

Unless your group RPs extremely atypically for D&D, I feel like the looting and personal gain associated with most D&D (including hard-baked into the rules of 1E!!!!!!! XP for gold value! Optional rule in 2E, perhaps to prevent things being potentially so mercenary), even if it's more of magic items and so on than those precious GPs tends to really undermine any attempts to claim this kind of delicate morality.

(not an insult to that morality - I think that is a fine one and works in some games - I just feel like in D&D the sheer amount of "I search the body" and "Ooooh nice sword! Mine!" and "How much are these horses worth?" kind of makes it look like a pretense a lot of the time!)

I'm replying to @Lanefan, who doesn't play 5e. And I still think 5e has Upper and Lower Planes where living beings' spirits/souls/etc go when they die.

Since 2E it think it's been established (by Planescape if nothing else) that not all souls go to the upper/lower planes, though I know there's a lot of setting-specific stuff there and variance and so on. But the 1E-ish days of "You were LE so will become a Lemure when you die" are long gone.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean... if y'all are saying that alignment worked fine before we decided to have two separate axes, and then pretending we understood the difference... yeah, I feel ya. It was also before you had punishments for "not playing your aligmment right" and over half the classes in the PHB had alignment restrictions.

My entire point is that D&D works better without all of this nonsense. Unfortunately, I don't like the games that WotC made after they figured it out, too.

I think from earliest days of D&D, despite preferring G characters and often being the goody-two-shoes of the group in D&D, I would definitely say L-N-C works drastically better than the two-axis alignment system. Whilst debates about the precise nature of "Lawful" happen (not Chaotic, weirdly), they tend to peter out quickly, whereas the G-N-E stuff can cause havoc. And LG remains the most dangerous alignment to an adventuring party (albeit a thousand times less dangerous in 5E than 2E and before).