Book of Exalted Deeds - I don't get it...

[hong]

As for discussions of morality. I hope they do a very "Catholic" take on things. I won't pretend to know much about moral philosophy - but I think a modern take on things (e.g. utilitarianism) would just be out of place, and a battle of good vs. evil doesn't really work from, say, a buddhist perspective.

It just depends on how you view the elements of your game, and the way they relate to each other.

My current game is set in the Britannia of Ultima 4. If you don't remember it, U4 was a game about the quest for avatarhood, which was a thinly-disguised take on Buddhism/Daoism's search for enlightenment. You achieved enlightenment in a number of "virtues" (eight in all) and the game culminated by descending into a dungeon to retrieve the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom.

Virtue in such a world is less about righteously smiting enemies of the faith, and more about discovering essential truths about the world and one's place within it. Of course, living a good life is still important, but it's not enough if you want to become an avatar (enlightened one).

That said, irredeemable evil still has a central part in the world. For example, orcs in my game are spirits of Hatred, the opposite of Compassion, which is one of the virtues. They spawn in the bowels of the Underworld when mortals succumb to hate. There, they make their way to the great dungeons, where they are organised into armies, and from which they emerge to make war on the surface world.

There are no such things as female or baby orcs, which solves neatly the hoary old problem of whether paladins should kill orc babies. Orcs also never surrender and always fight to the end, even if it means certain death. They don't _want_ others to feel pity for them: the more that they're hated, the stronger they become.

It's all very allegorical, but then fantasy _should_ contain allegorical elements, especially if alignments/ethics/virtues/etc are going to play a major part in your game.

 

[WizarDru]

If you go to the BoVD or BoED and look for an in-depth discussion of moral truths, you'll be disappointed. It's a game supplement. You won't find a discussion of whether or not an act is particularly evil (the classic "paladin/orc baby" discussion) because it's not relevant to the books goal of providing game elements to be used.

BoVD is about presenting evil prestige classes, spells that only evil people would use (for flavor moreso than power), hong's favorite magic item, prestige classes for demon/devil worshippers, descriptions of the arch-demons/devils and their environments, and so on.

Expect a similar treatment on places like Celestia, holy avatars and so on for the BoED.

You want a treatise on the moral dialectic present in standard D&D? Go read Sepluchrave's story hour, linked in my .sig. There's more material there than you'll ever need for that sort of thing.

 

[DonAdam]

Um... I could be wrong, but I seem to recall James Wyatt saying that the book addresses exactly that situation.

 

[Jhamin]

As for discussions of morality. I hope they do a very "Catholic" take on things. I won't pretend to know much about moral philosophy - but I think a modern take on things (e.g. utilitarianism) would just be out of place, and a battle of good vs. evil doesn't really work from, say, a buddhist perspective.

The interesting thing here is that my very first 3.0 campaign was played with myself as the GM and three buddhist priests in training.

We were about half way through character creation, and one of the students really wanted to play an elf, but didn't like the implied bigotry of the Elf/Orc history of confict. After about an hour of discussion, one of the the priests (my longtime friend & a longer time gamer) finally spoke up to say that pretty much by default *all* D&D characters are not particularly good buddhists as they lack buddhist concepts of spiritual awarenes and a dharmic view of reality. Otherwise they wouldn't be out killing owlbears.

He reminded everyone that this was a game of pretend & we went on with character creation.

Not sure how that applies to this discussion, but I thought it was fun.

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

Originally posted by WizarDru
If you go to the BoVD or BoED and look for an in-depth discussion of moral truths, you'll be disappointed.

What I want(ed).
- the rules to take a firm stand on the rigidity of alignment, stop fence-sitting
- that said, these are very supplemental material. Once the firm stance above is in place, I wouldn't mind seeing an "Unearthed Arcana" style take on other ways to present alignment - including how to setting-specify alignments. Note bene: I do NOT want my cake and eat it too - the official take on aligment and these alternatives should be clearly seperated from one another. Mixing the two in the book just brings us back to the mess that already exists in D&D.
- a look at both extremes that doesn't devolve into Beavis and Butthead giggling about nipple clamps. The discussion is about using the aligned as antagonists and as player characters or just as campaign theme elements.
- crunch as needed (feats, skills, races, monsters, core classes, etc).

What the books-as-published lack are all but the last one. Even if Exalted Deeds is perfection in a book it would be a welcome change of pace, but only half the result I would desired since to really be useful Book of Vile Darkness would have to be rewritten from the ground up.

 

[barsoomcore]

What I wanted from BoVD:

Lots of spells with really gross effects for me to spring on my players.

Hey, score!

What I would like from BoED:

Um, nothing. There aren't any good guys on Barsoom. There's just bad guys whose aims happen to temporarily coincide with the party's.

 

[WizarDru]

- the rules to take a firm stand on the rigidity of alignment, stop fence-sitting
- that said, these are very supplemental material. Once the firm stance above is in place, I wouldn't mind seeing an "Unearthed Arcana" style take on other ways to present alignment - including how to setting-specify alignments. Note bene: I do NOT want my cake and eat it too - the official take on aligment and these alternatives should be clearly seperated from one another. Mixing the two in the book just brings us back to the mess that already exists in D&D.
- a look at both extremes that doesn't devolve into Beavis and Butthead giggling about nipple clamps. The discussion is about using the aligned as antagonists and as player characters or just as campaign theme elements.
- crunch as needed (feats, skills, races, monsters, core classes, etc)

Minor Nitpick: that's "Eat your cake and have it, too."

According to James Wyatt's website, DonAdam is correct. To quote:

From James Wyatt's website
The good twin of last year's Book of Vile Darkness, this book takes a good hard look at what it means to be a good guy in the D&D world. Why is it a mature product? Primarily because its mission was to look at morality in the D&D world from a mature perspective. A lot of players don't want to think about things like what to do with the orc babies. Few sorcerers would try to convert a slaad lord to good, but Veshann tried.

Whatever you thought of Book of Vile Darkness, don't judge this one until you've seen what's inside. You might think of it as the player's companion to a vile campaign, or as a guide to the straight and narrow in a world of greed and violence. If you use it, your campaign will be different. I hope it will be better.

Maybe you might even be better. Isn't this all about being a hero?

That said, I'm still not sure what you mean by 'the rigidity of alignment'. If you mean, state what is or is not cause for an alignment change, and what actions precipitate same...I assume they've avoided specifying such details for the same reason they always have: because players of the game can't reach a consensus on the topic any more than the developers can, and they'd rather not force a particular style of play on an indvidual group if it doesn't significantly enhance the game overall.

In other words, it doesn't benefit WotC to invent rules you'll just ignore anyway if you don't like them. Given how many arguments continually resurface over the topic, I'd say that's a wise move.

 

[hong]

Originally posted by WizarDru
What I want(ed).
- the rules to take a firm stand on the rigidity of alignment, stop fence-sitting

That would be a 100% guaranteed way of pissing off at least half your market, and as such, it's unlikely to happen. Few things are so personal as one's take on alignment.

 

[Thresher]

I quite liked the BOVD, though it would be interesting to do a wordcount on how many times the word 'vile' gets bandied about it tends to be a poor read but the system mechanics and ideas inside are top notch. Still with the BOED at least it will seem to be a more complete text, as for some time nothing has been used out of the BOVD in any current games because, well, theres no real counterpart. If it was used I'd be kinda wondering if theres any real point to playing a good aligned character as all you'd get is beat on by baddies that can kick your arse so much better.
As is Im seeing a heavier shift in our group to fence sitting Nuetral characters, which may not be as motivated but you can bet they wont be as hassled outright by baddies abilities and the last group of characters we made up where mostly chaotic nuetral (3), NG (1) and little old me has turned up with a lawful good fighter... I can see this just meaning the baddies are going to chew on me first...