Alignment Riddle, Or "Is This Evil?" (Kind Of Long)

[Villano]

Okay, I'm not a big fan of the alignment system since it seems to provoke more arguements than anything, but I just watched a movie and wanted to get an opinion about something (and it might spark an interesting debate).

The movie in question is from the '70s and is called Simon, King Of The Witches. The print I saw was taken from tv, so some things are most likely cut, but that doesn't really matter for this discussion.

The basic story is that Simon is a warlock, or "magician" as he likes to refer to himself. He leads a pretty spartan existence. He has no job and seems to make money selling trinkets and telling people's fortunes. He has no home and lives in a storm drain.

After getting arrested (more on this later), he meets up with a nice, fairly naive guy who introduces him to a group of rich hedonists. These people are kind of common in '70s films, holding parties and invite people from the fringes of society.

At the party, Simon's friend tells everyone about Simon's supernatural powers. One of these rich guys cuts Simon a big check in exchange for having his fortune told. Also at the party Simon meets a girl, the daughter of the DA, who becomes his girlfriend.

Simon takes the money and rents a basement apartment for him and his friend. However, he's almost immediately evicted because the guy from the party put a stop on the check, almost getting Simon arrested again.

Another rich guy from the party, who doesn't really believe that Simon has any powers, suggests that if he puts a curse on the guy who cheated him, that guy will give him his money back. Simon refuses repeatedly, but is eventually goaded into doing it.

The curse is manifested as a glowing ball of light which tips a flower pot off a balcony onto the head of the cheapskate. Simon is next seen moving back into the apartment (presumably, the guy writes him another check).

Now, Simon has been studying his magic and has discovered a sort of cosmic loophole. At a certain time he can enter the realm of the gods and become one himself.

However, the DA doesn't like Simon and doesn't want his daughter associating with him. It turns out the DA is pretty corrupt. He has a cop who works with him who plants drugs on people he finds "undesirable".

So, the cops raid Simon's apartment and, lo and behold, they find a stash of drugs! Luckily, Simon's friend catches him before he goes home so that he doesn't walk in on the cops and get arrested. However, because of the DA, Simon misses his time of ascension.

Naturally, Simon is more than a little angry at this. Not just because he missed becoming a god (which would get anyone mad), but because the DA would frame him just to get him to stop seeing his daughter. Simon decides he's going to bring the "whole corrupt system down".

First, Simon does a little spell that severs his ties with his friend. He doesn't want him involved in what he's going to do. Next, he has 2 hippy friends lure the crooked cop into the sewer where they knock him unconscious and tie him up. After sending the hippies away, Simon kills the cop in a sacrifice.

This act activates a huge spell. Before you know it, the corrupt cop's house is raided and the drugs are found. Now the police commissioner is investigating everyone, including the DA and a whole bunch of people that the DA wrongly put away are going to be released.

Unfortunately, everything falls apart for Simon at the end. In a Twilight Zone-like climax, the universe realigns itself, snapping back the opposite way and undoing everything the spell has wrought. Simon's girlfriend dies of a drug overdose. These drugs are traced back the the commissioner, who, it turns out, is just as corrupt as everyone else and is a major drug supplier. Since the commissioner is revealed to be a crook, his investigation of the DA comes to an end and the DA swears to crack down even harder on crime. And poor Simon ends up stabbed to death by one of the hippies who appears to be in some sort of trance.

Now, we can ignore the ending (even though it was a nice twist) since it's pretty irrelevant to what I want to discuss.

Simon's very charismatic, so, if he was a PC, he'd most likely be a sorcerer. Looking at the character at the beginning, he hangs out with some minor criminals (pot smokers) and has no great love of authority (he has no job and presumably pays no taxes). He doesn't want to use his magic for revenge at the beginning, but has to be goaded into it. However, his target did cheat him, almost getting him arrested for passing a bad check. The spell doesn't kill the guy, but probably did put him in the hospital for a few days.

All of these things look to be pretty CN to me, although some people might say that he's CG.

Again, looking at the other characters in D&D terms, we have a pretty rotten system in this town. The DA and cop are probably convinced that they are doing the right thing and keeping order by putting potential troublemakers in prison before they can commit a crime. Simon is arrested at the beginning of the film for simply walking down the street and looking like a hippy (loitering). This seems very LE to me.

The police commissioner I would dub NE. He seems to be only out for himself, using his place in the system to commit crimes.

Now, these are the people in charge. In a game, we could look at the cop as the captain of the city guard, the commissioner as a general or other high ranking official, and the DA as the king. If the PCs encountered a city like this, they would probably judge it to be a LE dictatorship.

So, here's the puzzle. If Simon committed the sacrifce in your game, would you shift his alignment?

It has me scratching my head. In a game, if Simon killed the cop in a fight, no one would care. The guy was evil and the PC defended himself. Even committing a coup de grace while he was unconscious after a fight wouldn't bother many DMs.

But tying him up and then killing him in a ritual?

And even that isn't cut and dry because the ritual is designed to topple an oppressive regime which has falsely imprisoned who knows how many people.

But, to complicate matters more, the act was done as a form of revenge against the DA.

However, even more confusing, aside from missing his ascension, Simon is also rightfully angry that the DA tried to frame him. Think about it. Simon could go away for many years (perhaps a very long time if the cop planted enough drugs to label Simon a dealer) all because he didn't want him dating his daughter. So, while selfish anger is a part of it, it isn't the only reason.

But, should this even matter? Is killing an unwilling human sacrifice evil, even if the person was evil himself, and the result topples an evil government?

Like I said, I honestly don't know.

 

[Cheiromancer]

[snip]
Is killing an unwilling human sacrifice evil, even if the person was evil himself, and the result topples an evil government?

Like I said, I honestly don't know.

Yes; human sacrifice is evil.

 

[Drawmack]

Pseudo Intellectual babble....

Is Human Sacrifice Evil?

Okay we have a vote that human sacrifice is evil. I would argue that this, like anything else, is not black an white.

I know that people hate it when I do this, I don't care but I know. Let's take a look at the dictionary and get a good definition of killing, sacrifice and murder anyway, shall we?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=killing
Killing – To put to death or deprive of life

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=murder
Murder – The unlawful killing of someone

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sacrifice
Sacrifice – The act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person.

Now we need to look at Simon’s actions on a two dimensional axis. Alignment in Dungeons and Dragons consists of a Good Evil fulcrum and a Lawful Chaotic fulcrum. You can look at this as a square with an x and a cross hairs inside. The center of the square where the x and the cross meet is true neutral. The four corners, clockwise from top left are NG, LN, NE and CN. The four points where the cross meets the edges, clockwise from the top center, are LG, LE, CE and CG. Someone of any alignment can exist anywhere in the piece of pie that lies between the line to the left of their alignment and the line to the right of their alignment, and in case you haven’t figured it out this allows for a lot of over lapping.

Alignment is the driving principle in someone’s life and not their actions taken individually. So we are trying to define two things. First is human sacrifice, always evil and to extrapolate a bit is any singular action always evil. The next thing we will look at is Simon’s alignment.

First, is the act of paying homage to or satiating a deity with human death evil. Here is a scenario. Lets take the Jews in biblical Egypt as an example. (this is not a religious debate it is simply an example taken from well known literature which can be viewed as fact, fiction or myth by the reader. I am in no way attempting to expose or debate anyone’s religious views.) In biblical Egypt the Jews were slaves to the pharaoh. Moses came along to free the slaves. At one point a curse was placed on Egypt to kill the first born son in any house that did not have a cross painted with lamb’s blood over the door. Moses brought this curse down with the blessing of God. One could argue that these first born children were sacrificed to propitiate the Jewish God. So was this evil? I would argue that it was not evil as it was for the greater good of an entire peoples. So we arrive at the first point that human sacrifice is not always an evil act.

Now what is Simon’s alignment?
In the beginning he appears to be chaotic because he is going against the law of the land. He even bucks the system in his own small way. However, role playing literature reminds us again and again that lawful does not mean following the laws of the land. However, as the story progresses we see that Simon does follow a law. He follows the law of the arcane. Since the law of the land stands in direct opposition to this law, it would only make sense that Simon bucks the law of the land, but still he is not chaotic. He is not a free spirit who simply does as he wishes. I would say that Simon is either Lawful or Neutral on this axis.

As the story progresses we also see Simon sway on his overall posture of good. It does take some convincing at first but he sways. He commits one act for pure retribution and a second act of retribution that could be viewed as also being for a greater good, but is really just a greater retribution. This is defiantly not the act of a good person but I would be willing to say it is more Neutral then evil. For it to be purely evil the convincing would not need to take place.

At this point we have that Simon could be LN, LE of True Neutral. I think a case can easily be made that he is not lawful evil. The lawful evil person would use the laws of the land to work for their own ends. The commissioner is much more a lawful evil archetype then Simon. I also think that the case for him being lawful period is very thin. Following the laws of the arcane could just be a means to an end. He must perform the rituals properly and at the right time or he cannot get the desired outcome. If Simon devoted his life to this order then he may be lawful, but it seems that he uses these laws when he must and ignores them other times. While this seems chaotic it is more neutral. He falls in the middle using rules sometimes and ignoring them others.

I am left with the conclusion that Simon is true neutral. This makes sense if you refer back to my earlier diagram. A person can fall any where in the piece halved by the midline of their alignment. True Neutral has no midline. This means that as long as they keep moving around and spend about an equal amount of time in each piece of our alignment pie, they maintain true neutral.

This brings us to the overall conclusion that you cannot take a single action as an indication of alignment. You must take into consideration the person’s overall behavior over time and their motives for the actions as well. This is why I think the alignment system sucks and should be removed from the game.

 

[S'mon]

Re: Re: Alignment Riddle, Or "Is This Evil?" (Kind Of Long)

Yes; human sacrifice is evil.

In D&D terms, human sacrifice is what the evil (indeed, diabolical) guys do, usually as part of a pact with infernal forces, and is definitely Evil. It's also regarded as evil in Christianity and western civilisation in general.
Cultural relativists will tell you the Aztecs weren't really evil, just misundersood, and probably didn'y sacrifice all that many people anyway. *shrug*

 

[Angcuru]

"Something is evil only in the context of a given morality." - Nietzsche

To a Christian, human sacrifice is abhorent and most definitely evil.
To an Aztec, human sacrifice is a normal and perfectly acceptable method of worship, and is therefore good.

To Christians, the consumption of wine is an important part of ceremonial worship, and is therefore good.
To Muslims, the consumtion of the Fermentation of Grape(wine) or Wheat(beer, vodka, most hard liquer) is an evil act.

What's good to Bob may be the most evil thing immaginable to Biff, and vice versa.

 

[S'mon]

[BTo Christians, the consumption of wine is an important part of ceremonial worship, and is therefore good.
[/B]

Not in the Bible Belt, it's not - they'll tell you that when the Bible says 'wine', it really means 'unfermented grape juice'.

 

[Angcuru]

Not in the Bible Belt, it's not - they'll tell you that when the Bible says 'wine', it really means 'unfermented grape juice'.

Well, those people are crazy, so lets not focus on them.

 

[Zappo]

In standard D&D, morality is largely an absolute. Human sacrifice is undeniably evil. The ends are irrelevant. In the very best case, it might be the lesser of two evils.

 

[S'mon]

Well, those people are crazy, so lets not focus on them.

I don't think that makes them any crazier than Catholics who believe in transubstantian, or Muslims who believe drinking wine is inherently sinful. Of the three, if anything the Catholic position sounds craziest to me.

...Waiting for Moderator boot to descend Monty-Python style...

 

[Mark Chance]

I don't think that makes them any crazier than Catholics who believe in transubstantian, or Muslims who believe drinking wine is inherently sinful. Of the three, if anything the Catholic position sounds craziest to me.

I'm amazed that you're actually discussing categories of crazy in a thread that approvingly quotes Nietzche.