I mean... No..?
I'm referring to party-disruption, not setting disruption. And the rest of the paragraph you chopped that line out of makes it pretty clear...
It's strange how many people are taking a single sentence out of context...
D&D General Some thoughts on Moral Philosophies in D&D
- Thread starter Steampunkette
- Start date
I'm referring to party-disruption, not setting disruption. And the rest of the paragraph you chopped that line out of makes it pretty clear...
It's strange how many people are taking a single sentence out of context...
It ceases to be about morality then, no? What you've described above is a system of economics, period.
Jaeger
That someone better
IMHO the moral philosophies of D&D's cosmology have nothing to do with party-disruption.
Jerk player gonna look for excuses to be a jerk player.
Most PC's don't engage in group disruption due to the meta social contract of: "We are an adventuring group and we're all more or less gonna get along and work together for common goals.".
Because no one at the table gives a fig about the reality of D&D's Morally Relativist cosmology if a player is disruptive to the game.
"But that's what my character would do!" May actually be 100% true. But no group one will accept it as an excuse at the table for acting like a Jerk!
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Jaeger
That someone better
... did you read the OP, like, at all..?
It has nothing to do with the philosophy of the D&D Cosmology. Which would be Scientific Fact rather than Philosophy.
It's about the Moral Philosophies of characters that players create to be heroes.
Sword of Spirit
Legend
Fun discussion! It makes me think of the moral crisis my current character is having.
In real life I'm something of a virtue ethicist who holds to semi-absolutist deontological views that I think lead to hedonistic consequences for individuals and the collective body of humanity.
But my characters usually are not. My current neutral good character is a non-reflective virtue ethicist with the adventurer's dash of consequentialism.
On a small island inhabited by giant apes and pixies, the pixies approached the party with a problem. Some trophy hunters (think the guys from Jurassic Park 2, but a little nicer, at least in the party's communication with them) are on the island hoping to capture a baby giant ape, and maybe kill an adult. The pixies both don't want this to happen, and are afraid that if they themselves are discovered to live there they might be next on the capture list. They ask the party to drive away the trophy hunters. The party agrees without thinking it through and tries to come up with a solution that doesn't get anyone killed.
As expected, meeting with the trophy hunters and telling them that some unidentified inhabitants of the island would like them to leave got a noncommittal response and left the party thinking the same as when they started, that nothing would come of that attempt. The idea they eventually settled on (and which my character was instrumental in deciding and implementing) was my character using speak with animals to warn the apes about the trophy hunters and encourage them to launch an overwhelming property destroying, yet non-lethal, assault on their camp in order to convince them that this was out of their league and cause them to flee for their lives. The apes (non-sentient unaligned (5e) creatures, but very intelligent for beasts) decided they liked the idea and gave it a shot.
The assault worked, and it seemed like the apes made a reasonable attempt at being non-lethal, but being animals and not enjoying being pincushioned with all of those arrows, they eventually did (partly through underestimating the squishiness of the humans and partly through rage) end up killing a small number of the trophy hunters. I think about 4 out of a couple of dozen. The rest did in fact flee the island in terror.
The innocently naive pixies were unhappy about the deaths, as was the party (including my character). Nobody felt good about it.
My character (and me, as I was role-playing from his perspective) had to examine his motivations. He felt a desire to protect the innocent pixies, and so wanted to succeed at the task. And the party believed that if the trophy hunters came into actual conflict with the apes as the hunters quite possibly would if left to their own devices, the consequences would have almost certainly been dead hunters (and maybe a dead ape, but maybe not). So, they reasoned, the consequences of their actions likely led to less deaths (sentient and not) than would have otherwise been the case.
But that was all ifs and maybes and hopes and fears, and at some level they knew it when they were doing it. The fact of the matter is that the hunters might have succeeded in capturing the baby ape without any casualties, and the party wasn't opposed to trophy hunting themselves, so that wasn't a big deal to them. Or the hunters might have scouted out the apes better first (as they had told the party they were planning) and decided on their own that the risks were too great and simply left (especially since they may have discovered that there wasn't even a baby ape). The scenario they were trying to avoid was in no way guaranteed to happen, and expecting that the giant apes would actually pull off a non-lethal assault was kind of self-delusional. The fact of the matter is that my character directly instigated a conflict that resulted in the death of innocents and was in no way certain to have saved more lives than it took.
This didn't need to happen. They could have instead told the pixies that they couldn't guarantee they could help, and instead offered to hide them until the hunters left. They could have relocated them permanently if they wanted to be. They could have tried harder to come up with another non-violent solution. But in his arrogance he instead decided to implement a hair-brained scheme with a totally predictable likelihood of ending up exactly as it did or even worse. People are dead and he (not having access to high level magic) can't take it back.
The decision doesn't sit at all right with him and he's trying to process the guilt he feels, actually think about things, see if the gods of the multiverse have any answers or absolution for him, etc. I'm planning on making it a character-defining experience, and I'm not sure where it's going to lead or what sorts of decisions or conclusions he's going to make because of it!
I'm very glad that I have a group who plays characters (even those of neutral or evil alignment!) where these sorts of things can be explored and not just glossed over. Other moral decisions we've had to grapple with included what to do with the troglodyte children when we cleaned out their lair (we eventually decided to usher them somewhere else and leave them to their own devices), how to handle our visit to Sigil where fiends walk the streets, and what to do when the duergar inhabiting the lower level of the Forge of Fury have as much a right to it as the human lord who hired us to drive the orcs (who they were officially at war with and reclaiming conquered land from) from his lands (including the upper level of the dungeon).
In real life I'm something of a virtue ethicist who holds to semi-absolutist deontological views that I think lead to hedonistic consequences for individuals and the collective body of humanity.
But my characters usually are not. My current neutral good character is a non-reflective virtue ethicist with the adventurer's dash of consequentialism.
On a small island inhabited by giant apes and pixies, the pixies approached the party with a problem. Some trophy hunters (think the guys from Jurassic Park 2, but a little nicer, at least in the party's communication with them) are on the island hoping to capture a baby giant ape, and maybe kill an adult. The pixies both don't want this to happen, and are afraid that if they themselves are discovered to live there they might be next on the capture list. They ask the party to drive away the trophy hunters. The party agrees without thinking it through and tries to come up with a solution that doesn't get anyone killed.
As expected, meeting with the trophy hunters and telling them that some unidentified inhabitants of the island would like them to leave got a noncommittal response and left the party thinking the same as when they started, that nothing would come of that attempt. The idea they eventually settled on (and which my character was instrumental in deciding and implementing) was my character using speak with animals to warn the apes about the trophy hunters and encourage them to launch an overwhelming property destroying, yet non-lethal, assault on their camp in order to convince them that this was out of their league and cause them to flee for their lives. The apes (non-sentient unaligned (5e) creatures, but very intelligent for beasts) decided they liked the idea and gave it a shot.
The assault worked, and it seemed like the apes made a reasonable attempt at being non-lethal, but being animals and not enjoying being pincushioned with all of those arrows, they eventually did (partly through underestimating the squishiness of the humans and partly through rage) end up killing a small number of the trophy hunters. I think about 4 out of a couple of dozen. The rest did in fact flee the island in terror.
The innocently naive pixies were unhappy about the deaths, as was the party (including my character). Nobody felt good about it.
My character (and me, as I was role-playing from his perspective) had to examine his motivations. He felt a desire to protect the innocent pixies, and so wanted to succeed at the task. And the party believed that if the trophy hunters came into actual conflict with the apes as the hunters quite possibly would if left to their own devices, the consequences would have almost certainly been dead hunters (and maybe a dead ape, but maybe not). So, they reasoned, the consequences of their actions likely led to less deaths (sentient and not) than would have otherwise been the case.
But that was all ifs and maybes and hopes and fears, and at some level they knew it when they were doing it. The fact of the matter is that the hunters might have succeeded in capturing the baby ape without any casualties, and the party wasn't opposed to trophy hunting themselves, so that wasn't a big deal to them. Or the hunters might have scouted out the apes better first (as they had told the party they were planning) and decided on their own that the risks were too great and simply left (especially since they may have discovered that there wasn't even a baby ape). The scenario they were trying to avoid was in no way guaranteed to happen, and expecting that the giant apes would actually pull off a non-lethal assault was kind of self-delusional. The fact of the matter is that my character directly instigated a conflict that resulted in the death of innocents and was in no way certain to have saved more lives than it took.
This didn't need to happen. They could have instead told the pixies that they couldn't guarantee they could help, and instead offered to hide them until the hunters left. They could have relocated them permanently if they wanted to be. They could have tried harder to come up with another non-violent solution. But in his arrogance he instead decided to implement a hair-brained scheme with a totally predictable likelihood of ending up exactly as it did or even worse. People are dead and he (not having access to high level magic) can't take it back.
The decision doesn't sit at all right with him and he's trying to process the guilt he feels, actually think about things, see if the gods of the multiverse have any answers or absolution for him, etc. I'm planning on making it a character-defining experience, and I'm not sure where it's going to lead or what sorts of decisions or conclusions he's going to make because of it!
I'm very glad that I have a group who plays characters (even those of neutral or evil alignment!) where these sorts of things can be explored and not just glossed over. Other moral decisions we've had to grapple with included what to do with the troglodyte children when we cleaned out their lair (we eventually decided to usher them somewhere else and leave them to their own devices), how to handle our visit to Sigil where fiends walk the streets, and what to do when the duergar inhabiting the lower level of the Forge of Fury have as much a right to it as the human lord who hired us to drive the orcs (who they were officially at war with and reclaiming conquered land from) from his lands (including the upper level of the dungeon).
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this! This is a glorious read and I'm enjoying every moment of it.
Particularly the fact that you just flawlessly demonstrated Role Morality in a game-environment!
Had you not encountered the pixies first, your entire path would likely have gone quite differently! Without their interests at the forefront of your mind, you might have simply helped the hunters capture one of the apes and escape the island, safely. And meeting the Pixies later, possibly in an antagonistic position, fought them to defend your "Allies" the hunters!
The specific interactions you went through shaped everything that followed in a really cool and engaging way, and I'm super glad your DM went with it in the direction that they did. And that your party took the time to examine the weight of their decisions.
I -love- moments like this in a story!
Added this to the OP, but might as well bookend it so people who see it, here, too.
Of course, that statement is predicated on an implicit philosophy choice.
Flamestrike
Legend
It's predicated on DnD's implicit definition of 'Evil' which has (in recent years, since 3E certainly) always been 'Harming others'. This was made in clear in the BovD and BoED with both express and implicit text.
Rape, Slavery, Murder, Torture have always been in the realms of 'evil' because they all involve harming others.
Good OTOH is generally defined as 'Self sacrificing altruism'. Helping others, usually at cost to ones' self. Charity (Paladins have long been required to tithe wealth, and there is an oath of poverty in the BoED that does the same thing), mercy, compassion, altruism, empathy and kindness.
A lie doesnt (in and of itself) 'harm' anyone, and may in fact be a thing of mercy, with the liar taking on a burden in the lie to protect others. It can even be an act of Good.
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