D&D General Inherently Evil?

[Steampunkette]

S'cool that you caught what I'm throwing down, @Filthy Lucre.

I was really confused by the "It can be more than one at once" thing with description and proscription and ideal... that's just mindblowing.

 

[jasper]

How would you design a biological race that is Inherently Evil? I think the main way would have to be through some supernatural imperative.

Maybe a race of goblins that are so biologically territorial that they fly into murderous rages whenever someone trespasses on what they believe to be their territory? They might not be necessarily evil when left alone, but default to behavior considered to be evil at the slightest attempt at interaction (barring magical sending spells, etc).

Perhaps a race of elves that look like withered and wretched hags, but gain extraordinary beauty and vitality when they sacrifice someone? This doesn't seem quite inherently evil, but strongly incentivizes evil behavior through biological means (as opposed to cultural means).

A race of dwarves engineered in a wizard's laboratory to breed true, and who experience incredible pleasure when they betray and trample on others, or violent nausea when they act in an altruistic manner? This is similar to the incentive above, and comes from a biological source, but would it still be cultural? Since it's a series of positive and negative reinforcements that guides their behavior towards evil acts?

How would you do it?

Their gawd makes them that way. The End.

 

[Faolyn]

I did something similar for a creature on my world. It doesn't feature what we call classic fantasy races, so I needed an antagonistic intelligent creature. They aren't humans by any sense of the world. They share ancestors with humans, but descend from some Neanderthal groups that instead of trading with, intermarrying with and eventually getting subsumed by humanity decided to reject everything that humanity stands for. This is a species that has actively bred out empathy out of their gene pool -because the most empathetic joined humanity and each cub that is born "weak" and needy is promptly devoured by its littermates if not its "mother" -. They aren't exactly antisocial as much as lacking any semblance of society. They are loners that only tolerate each other to mate every once on a blue moon or when intimidated by a bigger and stronger member of their species. Even their young get weaned off early and are quickly abandoned upon reaching certain age. There are times when they can form small temporary groups, but such alliances are weak and fleeting, usually spurred by the presence of a dominant "alpha". They don't even have a language of their own.

I'm not sure how well done the idea is. I'm still trying to iron the kinks out.

These people are not going to have any sort of technology, no matter how intelligent they are, because they're not willing to teach or learn from each other. Meaning each one has to learn on their own and reinvent everything on their own. I've read that this is one of the reasons why octopuses as a species aren't as capable as they could be--they can't learn tricks from their parents since mom dies when the eggs hatch and dad dies a shortly thereafter. If parent octopuses managed to stick around long enough to pass their knowledge down to their offspring, they'd probably be as sentient as humans are.

 

[Voadam]

And yet for half of the gme's history Paladins, Clerics, Bards and Barbarians aren't capable of having a full range of morality.

Because it's still a straightjacket.

The class alignment requirements were mechanical straight jackets.

XP penalties for switching alignments was another mechanical straight jacket.

DMs who said you were playing your character wrong were straight jacketing their players.

Alignment on its own, meh. Mostly descriptive.

 

[Maxperson]

You two are talking past each other. You're treating "evil" like a type or class to which things can be members regardless of their behavior.
@Steampunkette is saying that your morality is exclusively and exhaustively determined by your actions.

You are speaking in terms of practicality/utility/definitionally and she is talking about things in absolute metaphysical terms.

You think that good/evil is something that you are, but she thinks evil is something that you do.

"Alignment realism" is, in my opinion, untenable for exactly the reason you two are struggling to come to terms. You can be a moral realist without giving alignment some sort of real metaphysical weight. You can be forgiven though, since D&D has for a very long time enabled that assumption with spells like "detect good/evil". So your interpretation might be more supported by the rules and lore of D&D... but that does not make it the more rational of the perspectives.

I'm actually saying that it's both. It's something that you are if you are a demon, celestial or other creature that embodies an alignment, as well as something that you do, as they are not constrained to only those acts that match their alignment.

 

[jasper]

I'm not a philosophy major. I'm a philosophy PhD.

Well I a philosophy colonel which out ranks a major. Well except for Bob Newhart who was major major major. But you could only catch him if you rolled a 22.

 

[jasper]

I get that part. I'm just asking about terminology. If you can't call it inherently evil, then what do you call it?

Needless naughty? People not accepting of my society normals. Mother in laws?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

"Alignment realism" is, in my opinion, untenable for exactly the reason you two are struggling to come to terms. You can be a moral realist without giving alignment some sort of real metaphysical weight. You can be forgiven though, since D&D has for a very long time enabled that assumption with spells like "detect good/evil". So your interpretation might be more supported by the rules and lore of D&D... but that does not make it the more rational of the perspectives.

While certain recent settings got rid of the metaphysical existence of good and evil by the mean of clearly communicating gods, and 5e by the menas of spells (a tendancy that started with the loss of one of the silliest things ever... the alignment languages... alignment defined the way you spoke) there are still celestial beings embodying them and planes defined by them. There is still a strong support for alignment as a measureable in-game characteristic.

The alignment stemming from actions also forces to define a cutting line. I mean, if you're an angel defined by good, you're doing good thing, including when you wipe out a city to make an example, and if you're a demon, you do evil thing, and if you save a baby, it's baby Hitler. If you want alignment to reflect actions... at what point do you consider someone has atoned? If the demon killed billions of living beings, then took a millenia of paid leave sitting in a tavern and drinking (while paying dutifully for lodging and beer, without ever being inebriated), he's still evil? Nobody, even the local long-lived elves, have ever seen him doing something evil. Or has he changed enough, but just stopping to do evil things, that you'd made him change his alignment? And how would the paladin entering the tavern and killing him outright being judged? And after inaction, there is the overall balance... if he helps an old lady to cross a road, will he be forgiven for the billions innocents killed? Action-based morality is much more nuanced and less appropriate as a fantasy gaming concept than the metaphysically-enforced order of things (including times where it's metaphysically botched, like the warring paladins casting Smite Evil at each other example above).

Edit: if one want to think about it, outside of this thread, there is currently a trial of a then 18-years old secretary girl who worked for a brief time in an extermination camp in Germany. She's charged with 11,412 counts of complicity of murder, since crime against humanity have no statutes of limitations. Is she now, at 96, the same person she was at 18? Was she fully responsible when typing and doing paperwork in the camp, or was she the product of her time and education? Those are the tough question the judges will have to answer... Not an easy task and something that is clearly outside of the range of alignment tools.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oof. I mean, I guess that’s a valid philosophical position, but it doesn’t say very positive things about any of us, who willingly consume products made by an exploitative system.

Yeah participation in one’s culture cannot rationally be considered fully consensual. It’s like saying someone is evil because they eat.

I'm not a philosophy major. I'm a philosophy PhD.

That just makes the attitude of trying to shut down casual discussion exhibited here even worse.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Needless naughty? People not accepting of my society normals. Mother in laws?

Hey my mother in law is basically a saint.

Damn, I guess you really can’t make black and white delineations!