D&D 5E Yes to factionalism. No to racism.

[Bolares]

So for game rules purposes, we need to pick a level (say, ethnicity or nation) and use that. But it does not need to be very well-defined, any more than race does.

That's what I was trying to get at when saying we need to define culture. In a game design sense.

 

[Yaarel]

Yep, you could be a bricklayer by day, culturally from Poland, but know how to play the violin and participate in classical music culture, and serve as a Pastor at a church on the weekends.

This is a good argument for why any character can at least attempt any skill check.

 

[Yaarel]

So fun fact: in anthropology, the study of culture, there's no universally agreed on definition of culture. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens when groups* of people interact. Any kind of group that can be described (not even really defined) has some kind of culture. And groups can be defined all sorts of ways. Two people is the minimum for a culture, though that's usually too small a culture to be worth studying.

So for game rules purposes, we need to pick a level (say, ethnicity or nation) and use that. But it does not need to be very well-defined, any more than race does.

For the magnitude of a culture, I would pick "community".

An ethnicity would comprise different kinds of communities.

 

[Lyxen]

Yep, you could be a bricklayer by day, culturally from Poland, but know how to play the violin and participate in classical music culture, and serve as a Pastor at a church on the weekends.

And seeing that "bricklayer" is your job, it's probably a background of Guild Artisan, which says nothing about the culture(s) that he is a member of.

This is a good argument for why any character can at least attempt any skill check.

This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, and is not how the game works, players describe their actions and the DM may decide to allow a skill check. And once a character has been defined in a certain way, he does not suddenly become part of any culture that the player thinks might be advantageous to get a skill check in...

 

[cowpie]

Pondering this a little more, and I think the base "problem" with racial alignments is either a non-problem or a new problem.

The non-problem argument is: if you actually read the whole books, DnD has almost never had absolute alignment, and in those cases it wasn't really about morality. Orcs or drow or whoever have never been portrayed as always irredeemably evil, (even when no good examples were given) - even celestials can fall which means fiends must be able to rise. The only "always always evil" creatures are undead, and that's because the negative energy they run on is itself classified as evil. No matter how she behaves, a vampire pings as evil, and if you removed the evil she'd be a well-dressed corpse. The outrage against 'orcs are always evil' is against something that isn't really there. (except maybe in certain home games, but we shouldn't hold WotC accountable for that.)

The new problem argument is: why is this suddenly a discussion in 5e? Is the text less clear about these things? Is the audience different? Is it really just a fringe group of very loud complainers? I'm inclined to dismiss the last option - there's always been whiners but there do seem to be a lot more confusions these days - and the 5e text does not read the same way as, say 3e's descriptions of monster alignments. But without real numbers I can't really say.

The new audience seems to be arguing that alignment, and concepts of good and evil or law and chaos will only be used to as labels to stereotype characters. Stereotyping is a no-no, so alignment has to go. Morality and Ethos can be descriptors of people's actions, though, so you can say a character is a person who is "doing" an evil act, or is acting "chaotically".

However, you can have societies that embrace and practice immoral or unethical practices, even if the individuals in the society don't share those positions. So you could have an orc society that practices evil actions, and normalizes them, but still have an individual orc who isn't evil. For example, an orc warlord riles up a group to go raid a nearby settlement. Any orc who doesn't go along with this is going to be punished by the leaders promoting the evil acts, so they all participate, and have cultural rationalizations to say it's ok. When an individual orc isn't being watched, he shows mercy to someone during the raid, because he's actually a good person, swept up in a society that's requiring him to commit evil acts.

This is an idea explored by TV shows like Vikings, or movies like The Godfather, or fantasy books like Elric.

It seems like WOTC wants to avoid controversy by sidelining alignment in general, which I can understand--it's a real PR headache to deal with people haranguing you about how your game is morally bad. It does mean you could be missing out on making content that's subtle or thought provoking.

 

[FrozenNorth]

That's was one of the question I always wonder.... If you are in an society, that say in this case that Inquisitors have the right to try people on the spot, do not need to hear the accused, do not need evidence, can pass judgment on the spot as a single sitting judge and without appeal, are you supposed to loyal-neutrally embrace this job because "that's the law"? The NPC in case is certainly a jerk, but he's obviously empowered to do that by the lawful ruler of the land... The designers obviously thought that when procedures are blatantly wrong, but legal, a LN character would follow them [I didn't get the feeling he was having a blast burning people at the stake, he was just doing his best to protect his country against the demonic threat, much like McCarthy acted against the communists, except demons are real ].

I acknowledge that you are responding from the perspective of the character and this may not necessarily reflect what you believe.

That being said, I don’t believe this successfully defends the character in question, Halruun, LN Inquisitor of Iomedae, goddess of justice, for a number of reasons.

First, I am not inclined to cut any slack to an Inquisitor of Justice for murdering a priest of a good faith, without even trying to listen to his defense. Even if he were empowered as an Inquisitor to act, it’s not Justice to decide he’s guilty and ignore his attempt to defend himself.

Need more? As an Inquisitor, doesn’t Halruun have access to the Zone of Truth spell? This is as if McCarthy had access to a Communist-detector, didn’t use it, and still thought his actions were justified.

Second, the burning of non-evil witches was also taking place before the fall of Kenabres.

Third, “that’s the law” is not a defence when as one of the highest ranking people in Kenabres, and a representative of the goddess of Justice, you likely have the power to change the law.

Fourth, burning non-evil people at the stake, even if permitted under the law, is still extremely evil. At best, Halruun’s actions are lawful evil.

At of course, as an Inquisitor, Halruun’s actions reflect on Iomedae herself. So murdering good-aligned priests without a trial and burning witches is definitely a bad look on the LG goddess of justice.

 

[Lyxen]

An ethnicity would comprise different kinds of communities.

First, we are down to "ethnicities" now ? And second, no, not necessarily. There are rich environments in which one could be part of multiple communities with one ethnicity, and other environments in which it's not the case, especially in a fantasy world, it's a common trope which is not unjustified.

 

[cowpie]

This is a good argument for why any character can at least attempt any skill check.

yes, but only if the character is Polish

 

[Yaarel]

Re game design, backgrounds are like the Lego bricks that cultures are made out of.

 

[Scribe]

I acknowledge that you are responding from the perspective of the character and this may not necessarily reflect what you believe.

That being said, I don’t believe this successfully defends the character in question, Halruun, LN Inquisitor of Iomedae, goddess of justice, for a number of reasons.

First, I am not inclined to cut any slack to an Inquisitor of Justice for murdering a priest of a good faith, without even trying to listen to his defense. Even if he were empowered as an Inquisitor to act, it’s not Justice to decide he’s guilty and ignore his attempt to defend himself.

Need more? As an Inquisitor, doesn’t Halruun have access to the Zone of Truth spell? This is as if McCarthy had access to a Communist-detector, didn’t use it, and still thought his actions were justified.

Second, the burning of non-evil witches was also taking place before the fall of Kenabres.

Third, “that’s the law” is not a defence when as one of the highest ranking people in Kenabres, and a representative of the goddess of Justice, you likely have the power to change the law.

Fourth, burning non-evil people at the stake, even if permitted under the law, is still extremely evil. At best, Halruun’s actions are lawful evil.

At of course, as an Inquisitor, Halruun’s actions reflect on Iomedae herself. So murdering good-aligned priests without a trial and burning witches is definitely a bad look on the LG goddess of justice.

This misses a few things.

1. Alignment is not a straight jacket.
2. As the game demonstrates for the player, a LG Paladin, can make an Evil choice, and remain LG.
3. There are dialogue options and mythic path options which he will heed.

He's not Evil, he's not Good. He's Lawful, even if he's in the midst of a mental or moral breakdown regarding the Desna priests.

Who, you can save, and have Halruun allow to leave with their lives.