Alignment myths?

[delericho]

Due dilligence in the middle of a forest?

No woodsman is going to do any of that (put up barriers, etc.), and no one will expect him to. It isn't something that any woodsman anywhere would be doing.

In an area with significant traffic of people, when people are engaged in the hazardous activity of cutting down trees, they absolutely do go to lengths to make sure the area is clear before they begin. Obviously, those lengths are reduced in areas remote from civilisation, but then the odds of a random child happening to be about at the time are markedly reduced.

In a pseudo-medival or other type of historical fantasy setting?

In fact, if we go with medieval Europe, it would likely have been seen as divine will, and the only way the woodsman would receive any punishment is if the parents were important and capable of levying punishment

Firstly, I fail to see how the morality of an action is altered by the historical period in which it occurs. The perception of that event might well vary, but that's another issue entirely.

Secondly, whether the woodsman would face social consequences for his action is also irrelevant to alignment. Murdering a peasant child is just as Evil as murdering the heir to the throne, and that applies whether the murderer is a peasant himself or a Samurai (who, legally, might have the right).

That is a modern attitude/practice. Not a historical one.

D&D isn't remotely historical.

 

[hamishspence]

Thoughts vs Actions

The belief that all people are inherently mildly evil until they start doing good acts is unpleasant in my eyes. It may be the default religious belief, but I'm not keen on it. But it isn't the topic here.

Inaction: Azimovs Robot laws gives a clue. 3 laws, that make a robot behave in a manner
usually identified with Good.
1:A robot may not harm a human
2:A robot may not permit a human to come to harm unless doing this would break Law 1
3:A robot may not permit itself to come to harm unless it doing this would break Laws 1 & 2

This is pretty useful on the perspective of inaction.

Forseeability: Important. If you commit an act, KNOWING that in the visible chain of events, evil will be caused, your act is evil. E.G. destroying an evil city which has good people in it.

Set-in-stone Evil: Acts which are ALWAYS evil regardless of intent. In D&D torture, even to save millions, is an evil act.

Thoughts: Good thoughts or evil thoughts matter much less than acts do. A sociopathic person who never does anything bad is not truly evil (Fiendish Codex II)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, no, cutting down the tree wasn't evil. Killing the child was.

There ya go, then. The woodsman didn't commit an evil act. His act was to cut down the tree. The tree comitted an evil act: it killed the child.

Like you said, the woodsman can't be held responsible for actions that are out of his control. Random chance, wind speed, the type of wood, the day and time on which it actually fell...these these are out of his control. These are what killed the kid (the aforementioned "entropy," or, to put it more medieval terms, "act of God").

I mean, you could argue that the child was killed because of their own evil act: they didn't have to be skipping down the trail, at that time, in an area where people were felling trees (certainly with stumps around, the kid could tell). The kid comitted an evil act by contributing to the death of an innocent -- his own death.

...of course, is he still innocent if he committed the evil act of contributing to his own death?

Again, my main issue is one of, not intent, but whether the woodsman's act is culpable under the alignment rules. I'm pretty sure it's not -- one has to *choose* to do evil, just as one has to *choose* to do good. One can't accidentally commit an act that has an alignment.

 

[Amitiel]

Myths that bug me:
Good means you have to be nice to everyone.
Good takes prisoners
Good means you have to care about everyone you meet.
Good means giving your last copper to a begger.

Neutral means you don't care about anything.
Neutral means you don't have to make moral choices.
Neutral means apathy.
Neutral is selfish.

Evil means being a jerk.
Evil means being stupid.
Evil means you can't be the hero.
Evil means you can't be nice to people
Evil means you can't have friends
Evil means your untrustworthy

This all stems from a lack of understanding about what makes good or evil. Its entirly possible to be an 'evil' hero or a 'good' villian.

How you may ask?

Evil heroes: What makes a hero, great deeds that help people. The only differance between the good hero and the evil hero is not the ends but the means. The good hero slays the dragon to protect the innocent, the evil hero may simply bribe the dragon to move to a differant kingdom and kill the innocents there (and failing that poison his coffee).

The villian holds a child over the acid pit with the 'Stop or I'll drop her.' speech. The good hero pauses, the evil one shoots the child and says 'Now what skippy.'.

One of the games I ran last year had evil characters.

Colleen was a sharakim (RoD an orc subrace) and a necromancer, she wanted immortality. She was also vain about her looks so wanted 'eternally pretty' immortality. When the party ran afoul of a Deck of Many Things. Colleen got hit with Balance card turning her evil. She got slightly more dark, and more willing to use undead minions. But otherwise she stayed the same. She founded a town and protected it. She eventually got her immortallity (via a necromantic construct body). But she was attacked at every turn by the forces of 'good'. Not because anything she did was evil in the end, but rather her means to get there was on the dark side.

Her town, attacked by 3 adventuring parties, 1 dwarven 'army of light', and a lone paladin/pious templar of Corellon. The 1st adventuring party came to *ahem* 'rid the town of her evil', the town was less than pleased with this idea and chased them out of town. The second party was there to solve the towns 'undead problem', since the skeletons were being used as cheap labor on the farms and were from a long abandoned graveyard the townsfolk were also less than pleased. The third came to 'kill the evil necromancer and rid the town of evil' Colleen cast Horrid wiliting on them and let the town guard (a group of well paid trolls) pummenl them into submission. The 'army of light' was there to rid the town of Orcs, Trolls, and other evil beings. Unfortunatly the Orcs, Trolls, and Sharakim they came to wipeout were the towns only inhabitants (they along with Colleen's undead built the town). They were soundly defeated by the rather nasty necromantic defenses, and well armed citizenry. The last was a personal villian for Colleen.

Yes, that's right, a paladin as the villian. As a pal/PT of Corellon he was sworn to destroy orcs. A town full of them sent him on a quest to kill them all(the statue of gruumash in the town didn't help). He took personal offense to Colleens very existance and one detect evil later targeted her as 'a source of evil' (the enevitable who showed up because of her change to a construct form convinsed him he was right.) when they took him down Colleens husband (a wartroll) had long words with him about evil not always meaning bad.

 

[Rystil Arden]

The belief that all people are inherently mildly evil until they start doing good acts is unpleasant in my eyes. It may be the default religious belief, but I'm not keen on it. But it isn't the topic here.

Inaction: Azimovs Robot laws gives a clue. 3 laws, that make a robot behave in a manner
usually identified with Good.
1:A robot may not harm a human
2:A robot may not permit a human to come to harm unless doing this would break Law 1
3:A robot may not permit itself to come to harm unless it doing this would break Laws 1 & 2

This is pretty useful on the perspective of inaction.

Forseeability: Important. If you commit an act, KNOWING that in the visible chain of events, evil will be caused, your act is evil. E.G. destroying an evil city which has good people in it.

Set-in-stone Evil: Acts which are ALWAYS evil regardless of intent. In D&D torture, even to save millions, is an evil act.

Thoughts: Good thoughts or evil thoughts matter much less than acts do. A sociopathic person who never does anything bad is not truly evil (Fiendish Codex II)

You may want to check your laws of robotics, since you didn't remember them correctly and the part you misremembered is crucial to the point you were making

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

 

[hamishspence]

Good point, which I remembered minutes later

I forgot that Law 2 was "Obey" Law 1 was what I wrote as Laws 1 and 2.

The "Inaction" part is important as well: "all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing"

I'd say that Fiendish Codex 2's concept is actually very modern: that Lawful Evil societies propagate many of the perspectives common to medieval societies. And, that actions trump thoughts: a person with nasty thoughts is only in trouble if that put them into action. If you go with the Freudian perspective that all people have unpleasant thoughts, it might be said that not acting on them is what makes a person good, or at least, solidly Neutral.

The Unintendend Conseqences bit is covered quite well in BOVD: here, it is Paladin chaced up a scree slope by scary monsters: is he responsible for the stone slide that might happen? The answer given there was: Yes, IF the risk was forseeable. it said "Sacrificing yourself to save others is a good act, sacificing them to save you is an evil act"
Given that only fiends and most undead are irredeemably evil, the rule is the same even if the village was an orc village. The same applies to rescuing someone who turns out in the future to be a bad guy. Rescuing is compulsary regardless of future alignments.

The "would you shoot a dictator if you could go back in time to do it before he grew up" argument may vary depending on personal views. But, in D&D, murder is murder, and always evil. There is room in the rules for Lawful killing, but not murder.

the question is: is the more black and white D&D concept of morality a Good Thing, or not?
I'd say in some ways it leads to a more moral perspective: that some things are always, always wrong.

I would say D&D has given me a lot of food for thought: I like philosophising, and the issues raised can be very interesting to think about.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Colleen was a sharakim (RoD an orc subrace) and a necromancer, she wanted immortality. She was also vain about her looks so wanted 'eternally pretty' immortality. When the party ran afoul of a Deck of Many Things. Colleen got hit with Balance card turning her evil. She got slightly more dark, and more willing to use undead minions. But otherwise she stayed the same. She founded a town and protected it. She eventually got her immortallity (via a necromantic construct body). But she was attacked at every turn by the forces of 'good'. Not because anything she did was evil in the end, but rather her means to get there was on the dark side.

So how many people did she murder to get what she wanted?

Okay, maybe her plans never required murder. How many people did she screw over, hurt, or otherwise walk all over in her quest to get what she wanted?

No one? Why not? Was she never, ever placed into a position where she could advance herself and her interests by hurting other people? Doesn't have to be firends or people she cared about. Not saying that. Just refering to people she didn't know or feel she owed anything to.

For all your 'good' and 'evil' quotation marks, any character who qualifies as evil by D&D standards is a pretty nasty piece of work. Not unsalvageable, not without redeeming qualities necessarily, but still someone who doesn't mind hurting others to get ahead. I guess if you didn't want to play her as evil, she's your character, but the way you tell the story makes it sound like she was being unjustly persecuted.

 

[Hussar]

There ya go, then. The woodsman didn't commit an evil act. His act was to cut down the tree. The tree comitted an evil act: it killed the child.

Like you said, the woodsman can't be held responsible for actions that are out of his control. Random chance, wind speed, the type of wood, the day and time on which it actually fell...these these are out of his control. These are what killed the kid (the aforementioned "entropy," or, to put it more medieval terms, "act of God").

I mean, you could argue that the child was killed because of their own evil act: they didn't have to be skipping down the trail, at that time, in an area where people were felling trees (certainly with stumps around, the kid could tell). The kid comitted an evil act by contributing to the death of an innocent -- his own death.

...of course, is he still innocent if he committed the evil act of contributing to his own death?

Again, my main issue is one of, not intent, but whether the woodsman's act is culpable under the alignment rules. I'm pretty sure it's not -- one has to *choose* to do evil, just as one has to *choose* to do good. One can't accidentally commit an act that has an alignment.

IMO, the problem lies in reducing an event that much. If you break it down to all of its component actions, then you will find that no action is ever evil. Swinging a sword, in and of itself is not evil. Pouring a poison into a well is not evil. Etc. However, if you pull back the focus a little, and look at cause and immediete effect, then you can decide if an event is evil or not.

The problem with relying on motive I outlined above with the two knights. If I do nothing but good acts, with the evilest intent, does that make me evil? And, if because motives are so subjective, relying on motives makes alignment subjective. If my motive is good, "I am poisoning this cup to kill the evil tyrant", does that mean that my use of poison is good? If it is, then playing paladins becomes very easy. "I wiped out the town because it was a den of evil. That some people in the town weren't evil is irrelevant since I have ended the threat the town presented." If motive determines morality, then morality as a game construct becomes meaningless.

OTOH, if we use a somewhat wider focus (but not so wide as to include future possiblities), then we can say easier if an act was good or evil. Killing children is evil. That the woodcutter had no intention of killing the child mitigates it somewhat, but, it's still evil. A paladin woodcutter would have to atone. He could atone because it was unintentional.

By using a slightly wider focus, we can use alignment as a tool in the game. Muddying things with intent simply serves to add fuel to the fire of alignment disagreements. In this view of alignment (which isn't necessarily the only view), alignment is absolute. A given event is good, evil or neutral. We don't need to look any farther than that.

We can, certainly, but we don't need to. Note, this also only applies to events, not to characters. Since a character is nothing but a collection of motivations, we cannot separate motive from character. However, events don't need motivations to occur. They simply exist.

 

[prosfilaes]

OTOH, if we use a somewhat wider focus (but not so wide as to include future possiblities), then we can say easier if an act was good or evil.

Is hiring someone to kill someone else evil? Is creating a weapon with the magical ability to pierce the protections of the Good King Jones (made by spells unique to him) and selling it to a group of people who refuse to identify themselves evil? Both of those include future possibilities (and hired killers aren't known for their trustworthiness), but at least the first one is commonly agreed to be evil.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The problem with relying on motive I outlined above with the two knights. If I do nothing but good acts, with the evilest intent, does that make me evil? And, if because motives are so subjective, relying on motives makes alignment subjective. If my motive is good, "I am poisoning this cup to kill the evil tyrant", does that mean that my use of poison is good? If it is, then playing paladins becomes very easy. "I wiped out the town because it was a den of evil. That some people in the town weren't evil is irrelevant since I have ended the threat the town presented." If motive determines morality, then morality as a game construct becomes meaningless.

I'm relying on intent as one aspect to alignment. Poisoning the cup to kill the evil tyrant probably is Good. Wiping out the town, if it really was a proverbial Soddom filled with nothing but evil people, probably is also Good (though here, it should be noted, a town like that would be an exception. Usually, the town also has innocents, or at least Neutrals)....I mean, the OT Yahweh blew up pockets of evil people nearly every other week, and He did it because it was Good to Stop Evil.

You apply intent alone, and you end up as skewed as if you apply action alone. If there were some in the town that weren't evil, intent does not erase action -- you killed people who weren't evil, maybe even people who were good. Each of those deaths is wicked, just as each evil death is just, and you have committed several evil acts.

You've also committed a whole lot of good acts, assuming the town really was a den of wickedness. In my playbook, you could still be Good, assuming you did the right thing for all the non-evil people in the town (warned them, told them judgement was at hand, etc.). You might not be that way for long if the attitude continued (disrespect for life is a hallmark of Evil), but the single well poisoning wouldn't nessecarily change your alignment.

Context is *everything*.