D&D General I really LOVE Stomping Goblins

[payn]

Wasn't that the gist of the "complaint"? Players just kill, because knocking out isn't easier than a full blown fight.

Yet if it were easier, than players would always try to avoid fights by using the easier knockout rule and then kill the enemy while they're down

This thread has oddly descended into a this or that dichotomy. Either you kill everything wholesale, or you are discriminate. Either you always use lethal force, or you never use lethal force. I dont really get it. At my table the players approach each situation as unique and employ the best tools for the job. Seems some folks stick to strict game loops. I thought that maybe lack of rules mechanics lead to this choice, but maybe some folks just want to play that way?

 

[DarkMantle]

This is such a pet peeve of mine.

For example:

• The hero frets: is it good or bad to kill the mass-murdering archvillain?
• Before that, the hero murdered or maimed a bunch of cops -- faceless mooks who actually have a loving family, and who thought they were doing the right thing hunting down a criminal.
• Before that, the hero ran a reckless car chase that caused innocent people to die or be maimed in car crashes.

But it's sparing or not the life of this archvillian that impinges on the hero's conscience??

Oh please, the genre cliches are so inconsistent in their moral valuations, it effectively renders them hollow and meaningless to me.

In human history, how many people have been assigned the alignment of "I Am The Other So You Can Kill Me And Still Go Home To Your Family And Call Yourself A Good Person". That's been happening for centuries. It seems to me that the fantasy version of that is based in real psychodynamics, and so still leaves plenty of opportunity for moral valuations.

To me, I could accept most fantasy settings, from shades of grey ALA Games of Thrones to binary good-vs-evil, except the ones that don't care enough to get their morality themes straight.

 

[Reynard]

No, he's right and you're both wrong and literally do not understand your own argument. Literally the "hangry" point you make has been discussed a great and no, you're just dead wrong to say that level of essentially emotional influence negates free will. It was extremely silly of you to bring up science and philosophy when you then just demonstrated unfamiliarity with both.

If there's no free will, then there's no morality, and there's no evil. It's a bleak and horrific vision, but it's consistent.

If there is free will, then you can have morality, and thus call something "evil", but where creatures don't possess the capacity for free will in certain regards, like, say, always reacting to fire by trying to spread it, cannot be called "evil" for that specific behaviour.

This should be fun.

Define "evil" in a philosophically cogent way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

• The hero frets: is it good or bad to kill the mass-murdering archvillain?
• Before that, the hero murdered or maimed a bunch of cops -- faceless mooks who actually have a loving family, and who thought they were doing the right thing hunting down a criminal.
• Before that, the hero ran a reckless car chase that caused innocent people to die or be maimed in car crashes.

You're missing what is usually a bit of the context here:

The mooks were typically killed in situations where the hero had no option (or little option) but to do so.

Whereas typically if they're fretting, the archvillain is unarmed/incapacitated or the like, and thus they do have an option.

Of course sometimes it's just bad writing. The car crash example is metafictional bollocks though. You're inserting things that didn't happen, diegetically, not even by broad implication, into the story, then attempting to argue based on those. That's bad.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This should be fun.

Define "evil" in a philosophically cogent way.

Why? That's completely irrelevant.

That you think that needs to be answered demonstrates that you're not understanding the fundamental words you, yourself have been using. You should think about this a bit harder mate. You can't make a moral decision without moral agency.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This should be fun.

Define "evil" in a philosophically cogent way.

A sociological construct used to both dissuade and to justify conflict.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Except we failed at step 1.

You can't be a sapient being with the ability to make choices and also be 'inherently' anything. That's not how any of those words work.

You're plainly wrong with this statement. Suppose you have someone who is completely sociopathic and is always/inherently motivated strictly toward their own self interest. They can still make free choices about how they achieve their inherent goal without being free to change what their goal is.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The mooks were typically killed in situations where the hero had no option (or little option) but to do so.

Or because the writer/director is actually a bad person and expresses their excitement for all the murder in interviews.

 

[DarkMantle]

You're missing what is usually a bit of the context here:

The mooks were typically killed in situations where the hero had no option (or little option) but to do so.

Whereas typically if they're fretting, the archvillain is unarmed/incapacitated or the like, and thus they do have an option.

Of course sometimes it's just bad writing. The car crash example is metafictional bollocks though. You're inserting things that didn't happen, diegetically, not even by broad implication, into the story, then attempting to argue based on those. That's bad.

Not sure what you mean? But....
1) I've seen enough scenes where the protagonists had a massive shootout with special ops, etc. without even flinching. Not a single time can I recall -- in a scene like that -- where the protagonist on-screen at least went through the motions of questioning their actions
2) OK we don't know 100% if innocent people died or were maimed in those car chases. But the protagonist doesn't know that either. It's still manslaughter if it did come to pass that way. Probability of that happening doesn't seem negligible to me.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

A sociological construct used to both dissuade and to justify conflict.

That's not the kind of definition he means. Your definition doesn't actually let anyone know whether or not any given act IS evil in particular.