[BoVD]Well, since I can't seem to post this on Wizards forums...

[SemperJase]

I was originally talking about people who didn't question it, who were not Founding Fathers. Normal slave-owners who were arguably nice people. People who didn't question the morality of slavery because society had ingrained on there minds that it was normal and OK.

Actually, the debate about the morality of slavery (in the "new world") went all the way back to the earliest colonies that had slaves. It was never universally approved.

Even so, the people who did not believe they were committing evil still had negative consequences from their actions. That is, if you believe Booker T. Washington.

Actually I think Hitler was extremely mentally ill.

Not evil?

 

[Tiefling]

Actually, the debate about the morality of slavery (in the "new world") went all the way back to the earliest colonies that had slaves. It was never universally approved.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that in the South during the first half of the 19th century, society had a mostly uniform thought about it.

Either way it's beside the point. If someone is otherwise a nice person, does the practice of owning slaves automatically make them evil, in your opinion?

Not evil?

I try not to classify people as good or evil. I sometimes classify actions as good or evil, and I may have an opinion on whether a person needs to be stopped, but I think it's ultimately futile to classify people. If you don't believe that either a person is totally good or totally evil, then you're left with trying to judge people based on relative merits either way. You have to also take into account intentions and moral upbringing. Since there's no way to quantify morality, peoples opinions will inevitably differ, and since there's no benefit to classifying someone as "Good" or "Evil" anyway, it's a waste of effort.

 

[SemperJase]

If someone is otherwise a nice person, does the practice of owning slaves automatically make them evil, in your opinion?

No. Good people sometimes do evil.

 

[Tiefling]

So are the orcs automatically evil for practicing slavery? Deserving death? I'm assuming you didn't know them personally, so you wouldn't know what they're like otherwise.

 

[takyris]

So what if your party was attacking a cave that happened to contain the families of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington?



-Tacky

 

[SemperJase]

So are the orcs automatically evil for practicing slavery? Deserving death? I'm assuming you didn't know them personally, so you wouldn't know what they're like otherwise.

The lesson is that there are consequences for actions. The orcs who fought against the liberation of the slaves died for that.


Tacky -

If Jefferson and Washington fought to protect their slaves, and died, they would have been paying the consequences of their actions. After all IRL tens of thousands of confederate soldiers did.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

To the folks who mentioned the "evil for the DM" thing -- SJ has already responded to this. Multiple times, in fact. It might not be a response you agree with, but it's been beaten to death.

His take was that DMs don't internalize their NPCs the way PCs do their characters. For what it's worth, I agree with him on that point. My Evil Orc isn't someone I'm trying to deeply empathize with. Some NPCs I put a lot of thought into -- others, I don't.

My response? A) get a DM who gets into character more (there are villains that I've created that I like playing far better than most of the player characters I've made and run), or B) learn to distance yourself from your characters more. Yeesh, your character is just that, a character. You aren't supposed to make every character a mirror image of yourself, in elf form, or whatever, you're supposed to exercise your imagination and be creative. If the point of playing a character was to extend one's own ethics into the characters as some people seem to suggest, I'd have a party of players who'd never go adventuring and would have long since died, having paused to think "maybe we should try to capture this evil red dragon and drag him in before a magistrate. He does have rights to due process, after all"

It's a game, people. Let that phrase guide you through the twisting turns of your dimentia and try to remember why you got into role-playing to begin with. I know I certainly didn't start playing because I wanted to start moralizing anything, and yet here I am today, roughly 18 years later, a law-abiding person who doesn't go around slaughtering people and keeping them in my freezer.

 

[Hopping Vampire]

so the BoVD drowns people?

 

[Tiefling]

The lesson is that there are consequences for actions. The orcs who fought against the liberation of the slaves died for that.

So you stopped and explained to the orcs why you were attacking them?

If Jefferson and Washington fought to protect their slaves, and died, they would have been paying the consequences of their actions. After all IRL tens of thousands of confederate soldiers did.

Oh great. Now you're telling people that the confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War deserved it.

 

[SemperJase]

So you stopped and explained to the orcs why you were attacking them?

Its only evil if slavers admit its evil? I don't agree.

Oh great. Now you're telling people that the confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War deserved it.

I suppose you can say that. Its tragic that so many gave their lives for an evil institution.