Are groups capable of dealing with good vs good conflict?
- Thread starter Dareoon Dalandrove
- Start date
Dareoon Dalandrove
First Post
Ok here are some replies.
First the werewolf is overall a good person. No the church doesn't bother to find out the alingment (to use a dnd term) of the target. They are monsters and the must die. Do you ever stop to check the alignment of a gnoll before cutting it down? It's a monster.
The churches view on clones right now is that they have souls and are people but are strongly against cloning (taking life out of gods hands).
The crusades are not a good example. To put things in a more black and white category imagine a war between two LG churches in dnd.
First the werewolf is overall a good person. No the church doesn't bother to find out the alingment (to use a dnd term) of the target. They are monsters and the must die. Do you ever stop to check the alignment of a gnoll before cutting it down? It's a monster.
The churches view on clones right now is that they have souls and are people but are strongly against cloning (taking life out of gods hands).
The crusades are not a good example. To put things in a more black and white category imagine a war between two LG churches in dnd.
Byrons_Ghost
First Post
Ok, none of this is on the "good vs. good" topic, really, but I wanted to throw out some thoughts.
From the sound of things your players (or at least Shadow) enjoyed the evening and the situation you presented them with. They just took it in a different direction than you expected. For IC moral discussions, the trick is to make sure that things stay IC and civil OOC. Make sure everyone uses character names and refers only to actions the characters took. Take frequent breaks in the discussion. If two or three people are intently involved in a thread apart from the rest of the group, it may be easier for them to go to a different room or step outside for a bit, just to keep the air from getting too cluttered.
Some of the players sound a little trigger-happy, which can happen a lot in a new campaign, especially after switching from D&D. Make sure the group knows whether or not this will be the type of campaign where you want them blasting away at things in bars. If you're fine with it, then there's no issue, but you may not want them to make a habit out of it. The gunplay also cuts the moral discussions short, for some reason people tend to resort to violence quickly in rpgs, whereas most of us (who are sane) don't actually shoot the guy passing out pamphlets on the street, even if we want to.
It seems to me that the characters made a fairly solid decision against what the church is doing. If you had planned on a hunters game, you may have to change things somewhat. One idea would be to start up a "supernatural underground" sort of game, where the characters try to get targets (starting with the werewolf) safely away from the hunters, or perhaps cured. If you want to keep on the good vs. good thing, you could have an arm of the church that does is sympathetic and tries to help, but has to step around the more fanatical, and more well-established, elements. While of course, keeping the church and general public unaware as to what is going on.
From the sound of things your players (or at least Shadow) enjoyed the evening and the situation you presented them with. They just took it in a different direction than you expected. For IC moral discussions, the trick is to make sure that things stay IC and civil OOC. Make sure everyone uses character names and refers only to actions the characters took. Take frequent breaks in the discussion. If two or three people are intently involved in a thread apart from the rest of the group, it may be easier for them to go to a different room or step outside for a bit, just to keep the air from getting too cluttered.
Some of the players sound a little trigger-happy, which can happen a lot in a new campaign, especially after switching from D&D. Make sure the group knows whether or not this will be the type of campaign where you want them blasting away at things in bars. If you're fine with it, then there's no issue, but you may not want them to make a habit out of it. The gunplay also cuts the moral discussions short, for some reason people tend to resort to violence quickly in rpgs, whereas most of us (who are sane) don't actually shoot the guy passing out pamphlets on the street, even if we want to.
It seems to me that the characters made a fairly solid decision against what the church is doing. If you had planned on a hunters game, you may have to change things somewhat. One idea would be to start up a "supernatural underground" sort of game, where the characters try to get targets (starting with the werewolf) safely away from the hunters, or perhaps cured. If you want to keep on the good vs. good thing, you could have an arm of the church that does is sympathetic and tries to help, but has to step around the more fanatical, and more well-established, elements. While of course, keeping the church and general public unaware as to what is going on.
Kahuna Burger
First Post
Dareoon Dalandrove said:
hmmmm.... last time I ran into gnolls in a campaign, they were allies of the party. I have yet to play with anyone who used "cut it down" as a default response to a mere encounter of ANYTHING that wasn't clearly on the side of an established enemy. (thats individual enemy, not just a species we've fought with).
I'm curious, how many people actually play this way? "Its a monster"? Moreimportantly, how many people play this way without a DM who makes it clear at the outset that these "monsters" will all universally be hostile and unable to be reasoned with?
Kahuna Burger
Merlion
First Post
I see where your coming from. although I must say there are some creatures(fiends of all sorts spring to mind, a few others) that are in fact pretty much always evil and hostile and unless their disguising themselves, you pretty much know it.
But anyway I think the point is that thease priests are basicaly good but maybe do need to learn to check a being out a little before wasting it.
But anyway I think the point is that thease priests are basicaly good but maybe do need to learn to check a being out a little before wasting it.
Celebrim
Legend
Yes, I think that they can.
In fact, in the majority of real world cases both sides believe for legitimate reasons that they are in the right.
For many things, the 'rightness' of a particular course of action cannot be determined with foresight. No intellectual process and no set of axioms is sufficient to determine a prioria whether or not what you are doing is 'good'. All they can do is point you to the right questions. The real test of goodness is always after the fact - what where the fruits of the action. Rightness is often as not simply being right, and doing the right thing at the wrong time is for the most part the same as doing the wrong thing.
This is not to say that I believe that the ends justify the means, because I believe that that is a false division and because I believe in what you might call 'the law of reaping what you sow'. Things begun with misguided intentions, false assumptions, and wrong beliefs are seldom likely to bear beneficial fruit (and even if they did that would only mitigate the harm that you caused in the process).
So, what you get is good and moral desires in conflict with each other over how those desires are best to be fulfilled. It doesn't usually help that in any such conflict at least a small but influential percentage of the people on both sides don't actually have good intentions and have ulterior motives for supporting the combat. This tends to direct groups away from solving problems by mutual agreement, and towards gamesmanship to gain advantages over the other group, ostenticibly for the benign reason espounded and believed by most members of the group, but quite significantly benifiting most especially the small group.
Real conflicts are seldom clear cut good guys and bad guys, but between good guys, bad guys, bad guys hidden behind moral facades, innocent supporters of bad ideas, misguided supporters of good ideas, good guys doing the wrong thing for right reason, good guys doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, good guys with all the right intentions doing all the wrong things, ignorant people on every side convinced of thier own moral superiority, generally innocent people caught up in evil causes, and generally evil people caught up in good causes, apathetic people fighting anything that stirs them from apathy, emotional people fighting against anything which encites fear in them, people trying to destroy the proximal causes of problems created by more distant primary causes, and people misidentifying a proximal cause as a primary cause and slamming into some good intentioned person who just thought he was trying to help.
In fact, in the majority of real world cases both sides believe for legitimate reasons that they are in the right.
For many things, the 'rightness' of a particular course of action cannot be determined with foresight. No intellectual process and no set of axioms is sufficient to determine a prioria whether or not what you are doing is 'good'. All they can do is point you to the right questions. The real test of goodness is always after the fact - what where the fruits of the action. Rightness is often as not simply being right, and doing the right thing at the wrong time is for the most part the same as doing the wrong thing.
This is not to say that I believe that the ends justify the means, because I believe that that is a false division and because I believe in what you might call 'the law of reaping what you sow'. Things begun with misguided intentions, false assumptions, and wrong beliefs are seldom likely to bear beneficial fruit (and even if they did that would only mitigate the harm that you caused in the process).
So, what you get is good and moral desires in conflict with each other over how those desires are best to be fulfilled. It doesn't usually help that in any such conflict at least a small but influential percentage of the people on both sides don't actually have good intentions and have ulterior motives for supporting the combat. This tends to direct groups away from solving problems by mutual agreement, and towards gamesmanship to gain advantages over the other group, ostenticibly for the benign reason espounded and believed by most members of the group, but quite significantly benifiting most especially the small group.
Real conflicts are seldom clear cut good guys and bad guys, but between good guys, bad guys, bad guys hidden behind moral facades, innocent supporters of bad ideas, misguided supporters of good ideas, good guys doing the wrong thing for right reason, good guys doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, good guys with all the right intentions doing all the wrong things, ignorant people on every side convinced of thier own moral superiority, generally innocent people caught up in evil causes, and generally evil people caught up in good causes, apathetic people fighting anything that stirs them from apathy, emotional people fighting against anything which encites fear in them, people trying to destroy the proximal causes of problems created by more distant primary causes, and people misidentifying a proximal cause as a primary cause and slamming into some good intentioned person who just thought he was trying to help.
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