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]

Whatever my objections to the presence of D&D's morality system, it certainly didn't help that the alignment descriptions in AD&D 2e read more like personality disorders than moral philosophies. I wouldn't want any of those people watching my back in a dark hole in the ground full of monsters.

No reasonable person switches sides in the middle of an armed conflict because their side was winning, and no reasonable person lets that goddamned lunatic live after the first time they've pulled it. Seriously... there's a good chance the person who wrote those is on these forums or someone here knows him-- I would really like someone to pull him aside some day and ask him what he was thinking.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

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 use irl morality

Others see difficulty in that

Ive literally never run into an issue

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Lol. @Ruin Explorer i actually think LG is the most dangerous alignment to most planes of existance in d&d let alone the adventuring party.

The ability to be utterly convicted that your way is truth hope and love and that there can be no negotiation. That nothing must be allowed to resist you. So so so very dangerous.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Assassins and Necromancers can't be Good

I think that's problematic, actually, because I've seen some superb examples of trained assassins in fantasy who were much more Good than countless noble knights and other "heroic" figures. Being trained to kill particular targets, with precision, from stealth, does not, I think, make you necessarily non-Good. Your motivation and targets will surely determine your alignment.

Necromancers are a more complex issue that varies from edition to edition and based on the metaphysics of the setting (as well exactly what spells they are casting).

If you're saying that the play of a typical D&D game makes it (near-)impossible for the PCs to be good, then that would be a sad indictment of the alignment system. I don't know enough about the typical play of the current edition to adjudicate the fairness of any such indictment.

I would say that, historically, if we look at D&D across all editions, and if we use your particular delicate definition of Good (which again, I quite like), then yes, it's unlikely that they will really be Good by your standards, because their motives will be too impure. In 1E, in fact, the Gold = XP thing was specifically designed to motivate characters who were not noble heroes, but accidentally serves also to motivate you not to be noble heroes, by rather slayers who got through the pockets and belt-pouches, and make sure they loot every single tomb.

Later editions of D&D have gradually moved away from that, but there's still a significant focus on looting and reward and so on as motivating factors to the point where it's rather problematic.

I know this is true for 5E to a significant extent due to discussions on the 5E reddit, where a lot of people feel that, for example, if an LG mercenary (if such a thing can be conceived - but NG/CG also applies) wasn't paid to protect a village, which he knew would be imminently attacked by orcs and suffer many casualties (i.e. the people refusing to pay were idiots or didn't value human life), then he could just walk off and say "See ya morons, if any of you live!" and still be "Good". Which is definitely not going to work under your definition, nor, I suspect, most definitions.

Eomer, who is undoubtedly a paradigm of good in the story

Yeah, I get that you think that. I don't think anything Tolkien has written about LotR supports him being definitely LG, for example. I'm not denying he's "awesome", or "on the side of light", but I am saying that I suspect if Tolkien was forced, at gun point perhaps, to assign D&D alignments to his characters, he wouldn't necessarily be giving Eomer an LG (LN, certainly nothing Evil). I feel like your opinions on Tolkien are predicted on reading LotR but really not reading stuff Tolkien said about LotR. In that this is incredibly common and typically of probably 95%+ of people who "love LotR" or "loathe LotR", that is unsurprising and I can't really hold it against you, but I always find it a little disappointing.

Tolkien also allows for change and redemption, so perhaps he would say Eomer Eadig was indeed LG, even if earlier on he wasn't meeting that standard.

And that's before we get to LotR's theory of just rulership which, as I said earlier, would make even Franco blush.

And which you are have failed to acknowledge, that in his letters and general writing, Tolkien was very clear was not his philosophy, and he didn't regard it as some sort of pure good (or possibly even good at all). He didn't think anyone who insisted on dominion over others was a wholly good person. That specifically included Aragorn. This isn't a matter of opinion, I would suggest. Tolkien was not unclear in his letters nor his opinions re: tyranny.

The ability to be utterly convicted that your way is truth hope and love and that there can be no negotiation. That nothing must be allowed to resist you. So so so very dangerous.

To be fair, you don't have to be like that if you're LG. But you kind of do have to LG to be like that.

Whatever my objections to the presence of D&D's morality system, it certainly didn't help that the alignment descriptions in AD&D 2e read more like personality disorders than moral philosophies. I wouldn't want any of those people watching my back in a dark hole in the ground full of monsters.

PREACH IT BROTHER!

 

[Son of the Serpent]

True @Ruin Explorer but im not saying that LG is this thing. Im saying that because LG is this thing so often (its not average but its honestly pretty common, especially in the "close enough" range) and because no other alignment even can be it makes LG the most dangerous. Because its the only alignment that is capable of being this way and fairly commonly.

Also, when i assign alignments i do so based primarily on motive, what alignment someone thinks they are serving, and what motives were stronger or weaker.

There is a certain past world leader who's often said to be more evil than satan who i would submit was in fact actually a bleeding heart LG who's evils were done in the service of his LG conviction.

LG is the nuke of alignments. Generally it wont go off and kill millions. Its just a little unhealthy to be around (like uranium). Get the geometry juuust right and the explosive triggering pressure juuust right too, and you have cracked the atoms necessary to unlocke the most devastating alignment of all. And its not even all thay rare. Just uncommon.

 

[pemerton]

the alignment descriptions in AD&D 2e read more like personality disorders than moral philosophies.

Well 2nd ed AD&D is probably a low point for the presentation of alignment.

My view, though, is that some people want alignment to bear more load than it can carry.

To reiterate a point made upthread, Gygax in his PHB and DMG expressly includes, under the label Good, all of the following: Benthamisms ("greatest good for the greatest number"), wellbeing, life, human rights, truth and beauty. It follows from this that the alignment system provides no answer to any question about trade-offs among those values, or about questions of whether the utilitarian calculus should yield (sometimes? allways?) to human rights concerns.

The only moral philosphy that Gygax's alignment system doesn't gloss over is the following: is community and tradition and organisation (bundled together as law) the way to foster the values of goodness, or is individual self-realisation (which gets labelled chaos) the better way? But the alignment system doesn't answer this question because it allows players to affirm either (by being LG or CG) or to deny either (by being LE, one agrees with the CG that self-realisation is the path to goodness; by being CE, one agrees with the LG that traditionan and organisation are the path to goodness).

The upshot of this is that, often, the dispute between law and chaos evaporates - or, as you say, turns into mere personality (dwarves are gruff clansmen; elves are flighty solo-ists) - because we end up saying that both LG and CG are not only possibel aspirations but are possible end-states.

The alternative would be to make the dispute between law and chaos something that is actualy up for grabs in play - Dungeon World or Burning Wheel-style - but I don't see much evidence of D&D alignment actually being played in this way.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

@Ruin Explorer i love tolkein's works as a collective body. Naturally my favorite is silmarillion. His writing has a lot if implied meaning that becomes far less clear if all youve read is lotr (ironically one of the last thongs by him that i read and not at all close to first). I agree that a lot of people misunderstand lotr. I think a large part of that is not having as firm a grasp on the mythological themes as would be advisable but also coming to conclusions after reading 1 or 2 of his works instead of most of them (which, witg jrrt actually does cause much to be missed).

 

[Helldritch]

Unless, of course, the party loses the combat - maybe in part because you switched - and you're suddenly on the winning side.

That's called being a survivor.

No, it is called a turn coat... As all CN are.

 

[DammitVictor]

No, it is called a turn coat... As all CN are.

Nobody does that. People don't do that. Not least of which because the party they're defecting to is going to kill them before the party they betrayed gets the chance.

 

[Helldritch]

I still can not understand why so many people associate LG with zealotry. LE and LN can be associated with this too. Just as LG can be about caring and understanding others and making sure that everyone has his/her rights respected and cared for. Any alignment can fall into zealotry. From the LG (Peace and Security for all) to the CE (Might makes right! Kill the top when you can! Be the top!) to CG (Freedom for all!) to CN (Freedom for me!) to LN (Everyone is equal in the face of justice!) to LE (Follow the boss' rules until you get to be the boss) to any mockery of a parody of any of the 9 alignments.

Alignment is a general guide line. It is not an all encompassing static thing. It is an ideal a character strive for. He can do it perfectly right or fail miserably but most of the time a character will be in the middle ground of his alignment.