Except that isn't what is happening in a DnD game. The DM isn't determining that the knight character has a sin or dark secret that is holding them back. They just rolled poorly. We know the resolution mechanic, so we know the narrative layered on top being that it was an internal failing of the character is not true.
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If the morality of the character does not alter their dice rolls, then the morality of the character has not made it so they would lose or win
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What is actually happening is luck, the character isn't changing.
You can make up that they are changing, you can try and make it fit, but it is a lie. It is a lie because the force controlling the resolution is not the hand of the author which will guarantee rewards fall upon the worthy. It is blind chance, which could not care less about your worthiness.
So often on ENworld people use the second person, or in this case the plural first person, when they should use the singular first person.
I have no reason to doubt that you are talking truthfully about how you play D&D, and that you interpret your dice rolls as signs of the happenings in a nihilistic fiction. But your generalisation is false, at least as far as I am concerned. It's false in regard to the power imputed to the GM - why would
the GM have to be the one to make the determination, in order for it to be true in the fiction? - and it is false about what "we" know about the narrative.
Here is an actual play example from 4e D&D (and the mechanic did not even involve a die roll, just an instruction that a certain effect imposed by a NPC would come to an end at a certain point):
a cultist had hit the paladin of the Raven Queen with a Baleful Polymorph, turning the paladin into a frog until the end of the cultist's next turn. The players at the table didn't know how long this would last, although one (not the player of the paladin) was pretty confident that it wouldn't be that long, because the game doesn't have save-or-die.
Anyway, the end of the cultist's next turn duly came around, and I told the player of the paladin that he turned back to his normal form. He then took his turn, and made some threat or admonition against the cultist. The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."
Contrary to what you (Chaosmancer) say that "we" know and do, you will see that (i) the player established the fiction, and (ii) that the fiction did not pertain to mechanical inevitability but rather to divine intercession.
Here is an actual play example from Burning Wheel (I posted an outline of my PC Thurgon
upthread):
The characters continued on, and soon arrived at Auxol,. The GM narrated the estate still being worked, but looking somewhat run-down compared to Thrugon's memories of it. An old, bowed woman greeted us - Xanthippe, looking much more than her 61 years. She welcomed Thurgon back, but chided him for having been away. And asked him not to leave again. The GM was getting ready to force a Duel of Wits on the point - ie that Thurgon should not leave again - when I tried a different approach. I'd already made a point of Thurgon having his arms on clear display as he rode through the countryside and the estate; now he raised his mace and shield to the heavens, and called on the Lord of Battle to bring strength back to his mother so that Auxol might be restored to its former greatness. This was a prayer for a Minor Miracle, obstacle 5. Thurgon has Faith 5 and I burned his last point of Persona to take it to 6 dice (the significance of this being that, without 1 Persona, you can't stop the effect of a mortal wound should one be suffered). With 6s being open-ended (ie auto-rolls), the expected success rate is 3/5, so that's 3.6 successes there. And I had a Fate point to reroll one failure, for an overall expected 4-ish successes. Against an obstacle of 5.
As it turned out, I finished up with 7 successes. So a beam of light shot down from the sky, and Xanthippe straightened up and greeted Thurgon again, but this time with vigour and readiness to restore Auxol.
The successful dice roll
at the table establishes something about
the fiction, namely, that the Lord of Battle has answered Thurgon's prayer.
Here are some examples suggested by Gygax in his DMG (pp 82, 111):
It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption . . . Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by
constitution bonuses - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. . . . the accumulation of hit points and the ever-greater abilities and better saving throws of characters represents the aid supplied by supernatural forces.
In other words, the way that you approach action resolution, and its relationship to the fiction, is not the only possible way. Which is something I have posted upthread more than once.
Because we also know that a knight who is full of sin can win all the battles, regardless of their opponent, if they roll well. Even if they aren't even keeping their darkness a secret.
What do we know about the fiction, until it has been established? What do we know about ultimate victories, until they have been played out at the table?
Perhaps faith is irrational, and hope will be dashed. That must have been how it looked to some of the faithful, as they were washed up on the shores of Middle Earth. Or to some of the people of (fallen) Arnor, as their kingdom fell into ruin under the depredations of Angmar. Etc. But hope (Estel) prevailed in the end.
Suppose that I am playing Thurgon, and am defeated in single combat by a knight who is false? Does that show that it is not true that no knight who is false can beat one who is true? Does it show that there is no providence at work in the world? Or does it push me to ask, as Thurgon, "How was I false? What sin have I not purged?" Or even, "What purpose is at work here?"
You are assuming nihilism, and then drawing nihilistic conclusions. That's your prerogative. But it's not the only possibility in FRPGing.
You can't just declare that David's faith wasn't strong enough when the dice say he needed to roll an 18 and he rolled a 15. David's faith is an aspect of his character in the complete and utter control of the Player
Again, assertions that may well be true for you, but are not true in general.
Here is Gygax from p 81 of his DMG, discussing the in-fiction logic of the saving throw roll:
A character under magical attack is in a stress situation, and his or her own will force reacts instinctively to protect the character by slightly altering the effects of the magical assault. This protection takes a slightly different form for each class of character. Magic-users understand spells, even on an unconscious level, and are able to slightly tamper with one so as to render it ineffective. Fighters withstand them through sheer defiance, while clerics create a small island of faith. Thieves find they are able to avoid a spell's full effects by quickness/
Obviously if the saving throw fails, this casts doubt on the cleric's faith. If my roll, playing Thurgon, had failed to invoke the desired miracle, that would have cast significant doubt on Thurgon's faith. Or perhaps would have suggested some other divine purpose. I don't know exactly what the fiction would have been, because it didn't have to be authored, and so wasn't.
But the general point is that there is no reason, when playing a PC in a FRPG that takes the paladin ideal seriously, to assume that the player is always able to determine the strength and adequacy of their PC's faith.
And while you can say that this only applies to knights... well a Rogue's moral requirement is to never have a fair fight, and that is how they win. So if a knight who must win because they do not cheat even if their foe does faces a rogue who must win because they cheat... one of those sets of natural moral laws must take precedence, and if it isn't the Knights, then their code is fairly well ruined.
I don't know what natural law has to do with this. As I already posted, Arthur is not making a prediction or purporting to state a natural law. He is affirming his faith, and announcing his conviction in the workings of providence.
Mediaeval people were not unaware that bad things could happen to good people; that sometimes cheats were victorious. There are various ways of responding to this, both in real life and in how one engages with faith and providence in fiction. You are asserting that FRPGing
must take one particular approach. I know from my own play experience - some examples have been given just above - that you are wrong.
But that action is pre-ordained and inevitable.
Is it? Much ink has been spilled on this question, not to mention much blood in the Wars of Religion. It doesn't seem to be something that will be settled on these forums.
Are you constantly shifting the goalposts in your fiction then? Declaring that one of your PCs is destined to do something, then going "oopsie, must have actually been someone else" when they fail to do it?
Look, you and your players can lie to each other, and say that certain things were pre-ordained to happen, but after actually trying to run a "destiny states" style game... it was a mess. Because the dice will not cooperate with your grand plan. So you either need to ignore the dice (which means ignoring how the game is played) or make things so vague that any potential outcome is actually what the prophecy means.
Also, I REALLY find it rubs me the wrong way, that a character's rolls in combat would be used to tell the player that their character has some moral failing that they did not put in their character. I don't like forcing story beats on character's to begin with, but "you lost the duel, therefore you must not be as pure-hearted a character as you claim" is so many steps too far, I don't even know where to start. Especially since, those rolls are random, no matter how you might want to pretend they aren't.
I find you use of "lie" to describe the process of "making up imaginary stuff in the course of playing a RPG" rather annoying. What I call it is
authoring or
imagining. As for you saying that I am pretending the rolls are not random, given that you quoted me posting "it is random at the table" I'd prefer you not impute to me a belief that you know I don't hold.
The fact that your game was "a mess" tells you something about you. It tells you nothing about me. I have GMed games with paladins, and knights errant, without those games being a mess. I've given a few examples in this post. If you're interested, I'm happy to post more about the techniques that I use. They don't involve the sort of GM-driven thing that you seem to be envisaging.
The fact that things rub you up the wrong way is your prerogative. I would therefore advise you not to play PCs who have a providential mindset. (I also note that you frame the response to the character losing in second person terms - "you lost the duel . . . you must not be as pure-hearted a character as you claim". This again, to me, suggests your idea of how shared fiction is established is via GM dictation. You might notice that the examples of play I have given involve the player speaking about their character in the first person.)
DnD TELLS US, point-blank, that there is an objective power, equally as strong as Good, equally as important as good, equally as capable of miracles and granting life as good, called Chaos. Now, you can think that outside of DnD, that is nonsense. Which hey, fine, but within the context of DnD the universe itself recognizes Chaos as a worthy goal in and of itself, and that is something we need to tackle within the context of DnD, not by comparing people to mass murderers. Which first off, would make them evil, and second off, could make all humans mass murderers if it turns out the Universe cares more about broccoli than humans.
I have already stated that I regard Planescape as incoherent.
Sticking to the core of AD&D, nothing states that the gods of Limbo are "equally as important as good", nor that chaos is a "worthy goal". Yes, these beings grant supernatural powers to their adherents. That doesn't tell us anything about their
value. I've already quoted the passages from Gygax's PHB and DMG which make it clear that
things of value are subsumed under the label "good". Chaotic neutral people, and their gods, affirm freedom, randomness, disorder and entropy
even when this is at the expense of value. That is not good. Nor worthy. Upthread I've described it as type of fetishism. You could say that it is a type of nihilism, or even a type of aestheticism. (Perhaps a caricature of a certain approach to existentialism.)
Nothing in the system requires me to accept that, although a type of disregard of value, it is nevertheless valuable.
If their views were not coherent or logical, then Kant, Plato and Singer wouldn't have even had anything to argue against. You can't argue against an incoherent argument that lacks logic. Besides, doesn't every single one of them have a contemporary who thought they were wrong and stupid?
Seriously? Your first two sentences here are neither coherent nor logical, yet I argue against them thus: if someone asserts that 2+2 = 5, they are not asserting something coherent or logical. They can be refuted, by producing a set-theoretic demonstration that 2+2 = 4. Or even just by the process of counting - holding up two finger on one hand, and then two on another, and then counting them off "1, 2, 3, 4" (credit to Wittgenstein for this particular argument).
As for the last sentence, do you really regard it as a sufficient refutation of a proposition that someone else denies it?
Did you catch Twosix's earlier post?
Yes.
@TwoSix said that "If the paladin is deciding what's right and good, and placing their own judgment AHEAD of the judgment that their deity has rendered already (by creating the oath), that's the chaotic act of pride that requires the paladin to atone."
Would the "order fetishist" not say that the supposed LG character is doing exactly that? That by deciding which laws to follow, they are pridefully placing their own judgement as superior to that of the proper law-making procedure? What is the difference between the LG Paladin who must follow their Oath, even if it appears to not be Good, lest they succumb to pride and the "Order Fetishist" who must follow the Laws, even if it appears to not be Good?
I don't really follow what the argument is here.
The paladin, being LG, is convinced that a certain degree of order and external discipline is necessary to permit valuable things - life, happiness, truth, beauty - to flourish on a widespread scale. They may be right or wrong - I've said nothing about that, and as per what I've already posted that would be something to discover in play - but that is their conviction, as noted by their LG alignment.
The LN person asserts that order and external discipline ought to be submitted to
regardless of whether they foster valuable things.
And so we can see where they come apart: suppose it turns out that order and external discipline are not fostering valuable things, for the paladin this will prompt a crisis of faith -
perhaps the CG people were right after all! - whereas for the LN person this does not prompt any sort of crisis at all. Even if beauty and truth and happiness are being crushed by the order and the discipline, they take comfort in the fact of order itself.
Now you may not think this contrast between worldviews, and the sort of scenario that would bring it to light and make it something to care about, is very interesting. Fair enough. In that case Gygax's alignment system has nothing useful to offer, and you would be best off just abandoning it.
