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.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Huh? I'm not even following. My opinion is that LG does not have to follow the laws of the land, even of their sovereign nation. The rules and code a LG follows do not, in my opinion, have to come from an external source.

I was replying to this part of one of your posts:

While alignment being just one more descriptor of a character and there is no detailed explanation, LN does explicitly state " individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes."

And I was saying that a LN person cannot follow both a set of LN laws and their own personal LN code, if there is a conflict between the two. Either they give up their code and stick with their kingdom's laws or they stick with their code and risk becoming non-Lawful by no longer following the laws of their land.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I think this is where we see the limits of alignment.

Vikings are real. Hobbits and The Shire are not - they are JRRT's romanticised ideal of pre-industrial English society.

So it's no surprise that Hobbits can be fitted into the alignment system pretty straightforwardly, whereas Vikings - being actual people with an actual and complex history - cannot.

And considering all we have learned about Vikings since Tolkien's time, it is a lot more complex now than what he would have known about them then.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think there is scope for a lot of nuance here.

<snip>

Oh my goodness yes. Nuance galore.

In an RPGing context, a GM who sets up a situation where it makes sense to talk about laws at all and yet they are very unjust is simply making it irrational to play a LG character. Which may or may not be fair enough, depending on what the group is expecting. I think it's noteworthy, though, that most romantic fantasy doesn't put such situations in the foreground.

I think in terms of what the alignment system provides in terms of guiding character behavior, it takes back and then some in the way DMs seem to feel the need to constrain player actions based on it. LG good is somehow the nail that sticks up far further than anything else in this regard. As far as romantic fantasy goes I think the emphasis is most often on good versus evil, and the legal issue, which seems to take a front and center role for this discussion, is generally viewed in terms of good and evil, or fair and unfair.

I don't now if you're familiar with EP Thompson's Whigs and Hunters, which in its epilogue has a very famous discussion of the rule of law in 18th century England.

Thompson is writing a Marxist social history of the period, and so his discussion of the rule of law is nuanced - he describes the rule of law itself as an unqualified human good, but is very critical of the laws themselves and those who administered them. He also notes that the legal system had purchase even on those whom it harmed because they themselves lived in a world shaped by law and legal rights (various petty agrarian property rights, which the system of enclosure was dismantling).

The Shire is something like the world EP Thompson is writing about but shorn of all the actual events of history! I see this as part of what makes LotR a rather reactionary novel. But there's no doubt that it equally makes for excellent FRPGing!

I would agree. I also think that with Tolkein there is a harkening back to historical periods where larger legal apparatus were absent, and society instead relied on custom, tradition, and much more foreign kind of written law than what modern North Americans are familiar with. The cultural emphasis on oaths, oath keeping and oath breaking in NE history is strong. The rightness of a action, or even the truth of an account, was judged by oaths and the opinion of one's neighbors. In short, it was about right action and right speaking within a system of tradition and custom, and only lightly supported by written laws, which in their earliest forms tended to be more about assessing penalties for certain things, in a predominantly monetary way. The fact that Tolkien's characters swear oaths about important decisions is not window dressing.

EDIT: As I'm reading through posts I'm seeing an emerging dichotomy - if LG is not about the laws of a society than it must be about an internal code of ethics, which is no real constraint at all.

What's missing in that dichotomy is organic society - like The Shire that @Fenris-77 has described - which is external to the individual, but is not just a code of laws demanding content-neutral obedience.

If a group of RPGers can't take that sort of notion seriously - and I would understand why, for instance, some Americans may not be able to given that they live in the most modern society on earth - then it makes more sense that LG would be a problematic category.

This is part of the reason I suggested that LG would be much more profitably examined absent any great focus on the legal system. For a Paladin, that organic society could certainly be his order and wider faith, but in order for that to be the guide it needs to be I think players would have to invest more mental energy into imagining that society and devoting more than a couple of casual brushstrokes to filling it in or bringing it to life. It sounds like a Captain Obvious sound bite, but character background is maybe more important than some people think, at least some of the time. In fairness, what I'm talking about is probably more correctly described as character context, rather than background, a distinction that will allow us to neatly sidestep the messy issue of multi-page background novellas.

In order to really sink your teeth into alignment it needs to firmly located within, or in relation to that organic society.

 

[Fenris-77]

And considering all we have learned about Vikings since Tolkien's time, it is a lot more complex now than what he would have known about them then.

Given that he was a renowned scholar of Scandinavian history and folklore I might suggest this isn't all that likely. Not that new developments haven't occurred in the field, they have, but this isn't a branch of history that was unexplored until recently, so the list of revelations and field changing discoveries is going to be pretty limited.

That said, while I am a medieval scholar, the Vikings are not my primary specialty. If someone has some game changing recent discoveries to list, lay 'em on me. I'm making no claims to omniscience here.

 

[Oofta]

I was replying to this part of one of your posts:



And I was saying that a LN person cannot follow both a set of LN laws and their own personal LN code, if there is a conflict between the two. Either they give up their code and stick with their kingdom's laws or they stick with their code and risk becoming non-Lawful by no longer following the laws of their land.

I couldn't disagree more. Laws of the land have nothing to do with a lawful person's code. A LE person is going to murder someone if it is necessary, a LG is not going to agree to the murder of innocents even if it's "legal".

I have no idea where this "law of the land trumps personal morals" comes from but if that's how you run it, go for it. Have a good one.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I couldn't disagree more. Laws of the land have nothing to do with a lawful person's code. A LE person is going to murder someone if it is necessary, a LG is not going to agree to the murder of innocents even if it's "legal".

I have no idea where this "law of the land trumps personal morals" comes from but if that's how you run it, go for it. Have a good one.

Maybe because while I think a lot of real world laws are stupid and repressive, if my personal moral code tells me to break them and I get caught, I get to pay fines or even go to jail for breaking the laws of the land? And since I am not Chaotic, I have to place the Lawful laws above what may be my personal Lawful beliefs. But in fantasy worlds with legal systems based on the systems from hundreds of years ago, being put in prison may be the least of the punishments, even for something minor. But that is a different topic, as there have been plenty that have asked how to make the PCs fear the punishment of the law, rather than laughing it off and doing what they want, probably violating their alignments in the process.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

The Nature of Law (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Just gonna drop this here.

 

[Fenris-77]

It's really not that complicated. If players are actually playing their characters and not cardboard cut out murderhobos then just play and find out. Decisions that have consequences is the very heart of role playing. Sometimes you have to slap you puppy's nose with a newspaper before it learns not to piss on the rug.

And one more time, the legal system is not the primary index of the word lawful in lawful good, despite many and repeated claims to the contrary.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My, rather reductionist, take on alignment:

Lawful: You follow an external code (laws, ethos, religion, fraternal order, knightly order, etc.)
Chaotic: You reject external codes.

Good: You sacrifice yourself to help others.
Evil: You sacrifice others to help yourself.

This is about as four colors as I really want alignment in my D&D to be.

In the above, though, Hobbits would probably be anywhere between lawful good and neutral. Lawful good if you focus on their social structures and the ways they help each other (which is a bit lacking in the source material). Neutral in that their social order doesn't seem to get much veneration and they don't go out of their way to help anyone but their own. Individually, Frodo seems neutral good -- he clearly sacrifices himself for others, but doesn't appear to adhere to or reject an external code. Sam is similar. Aragon is lawful good -- he adheres to an external code and sacrifices himself. Boromir would be lawful neutral -- his adherence to external codes is strong and he's not terribly concern with helping or harming others in following it. Gollum is chaotic evil -- he rejects any outside codes and willing sacrifices others for his own good. Orcs seem lawful evil -- they follow an external code, but will harm others to help themselves. Goblins maybe neutral evil to chaotic evil? Not a lot of data there.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Maybe because while I think a lot of real world laws are stupid and repressive, if my personal moral code tells me to break them and I get caught, I get to pay fines or even go to jail for breaking the laws of the land? And since I am not Chaotic, I have to place the Lawful laws above what may be my personal Lawful beliefs. But in fantasy worlds with legal systems based on the systems from hundreds of years ago, being put in prison may be the least of the punishments, even for something minor. But that is a different topic, as there have been plenty that have asked how to make the PCs fear the punishment of the law, rather than laughing it off and doing what they want, probably violating their alignments in the process.

Does following laws that spite your personal code make you more lawfully aligned? Think carefully about that. It actually doesnt. It may even make you less lawful when you fully think this through. Depending on which code you break to be in line with the law of the land it may alsonmake you less good but thats less interesting. The meat of all this is that your code. Conflicting with the law of the land doesnt necessarily mean breaking your code to be in line with the law of the land makes you more lawful. Its more complicated than that is my point.