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

[SemperJase]

Re: Once more into the breach...

You're totally avoiding the cartharsis angle.
....

This, among other arguments you've sidestepped, point to the fact your concept of the relationship between evil in the game/book/film and evil behavior out in the world is deeply flawed.

I have not sidestepped arguments. This question has been address. I do not believe in the catharsis argument. As others have said, you do not need to roleplay a rape in order to get it out of your system. As I have said before, those urges should be supressed, not expressed.

 

[Zappo]

Ultimately, we'd need some statistics on alignment played compared to criminal record. Sounds like some tough data, tho'.

 

[Henry]

First, to all, don't forget to separate Ethics from Morality.

Morality is what many people perceive to be the "absolute compass." This is the part that guides what is right and wrong, good and bad. (This applies not just to D&D, but life as well).

Most people who claim to adhere to a religious or personal code believe that morality is a clearly defined thing, for which there should be consequences for your actions.

Ethics, however, are not so cut and dried; and many people, lexicographers included, confuse ethics with morality. Ethics are those things that vary between social situations. It concerns duty or expected behavior, rather than any absolute code of right or wrong.

My proof?

mor·al Pronunciation Key (môrl, mr-)
adj.
1. Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
2. Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a moral lesson.
3. Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong: a moral obligation.

\Eth"ics\, n. [Cf. F. ['e]thique. See Ethic.] The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and rules concerting duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics.

-----------------------

Now, on to vile content...

Some have asked, who are these people who have been wanted material from BoVD?

Me, for one.

I don't want vile content for its sake alone; I want it because concrete rules content for vile actions is important to me, as a DM. I have for years thought that D&D was kept a little too tame - tame compared to White WOlf Products, tame compared to popular novels, tame compared to the Bible or the Koran, for that matter! As another tool in the toolbox, it's arrival has been looked forward to by me with anticipation since it was announced.

For being truly upset, there are plenty of other suitable targets - Jack Chick publications, snuff films, and The Netbook of Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, for starters.

 

[barsoomcore]

Finding out what is good and evil from a good perspective means that you are tyring to improve the world around you.

"From a good perspective"? Okay, so suddenly we're talking about intention. Fair enough.

So it seems we agree on the notion that exploration is worthwhile. I assume my argument has convinced you of that much, at least. You're now moving to the position that what determines the value of exploration is the intention behind that exploration. There are some profound problems with this idea. Let me lay out two of them:

Problem One: Knowing intention

Playing an evil character and exploring from that perspective indicates you are trying to find out what is evil so you can commit evil.

It sounds as though you are claiming to know the intentions of others, and condemning them for the intentions you are attributing to them. I find this breathtakingly arrogant. What gives you the ability to sit in judgement on others and determine what lies within their hearts? Where do you derive this confidence that you have all the answers -- that there is no possibility you might be wrong, that there might be other reasons to play an evil character? I'm very curious -- how do you know these things?

I argue that what you are proposing is impossible -- that there is no way for any human being to know the true intention of any other. Or at least, it is always possible for us to be wrong about someone else's (perhaps even our own?) intentions. Therefore there is no means for us to determine the value of an exploration by examining the intentions of those who conduct it.

Problem Two: Prejudgement

Aside from the issue of determining intention (which I have indicated is impossible), we also have the problem that determining value by intention implies determining value BEFORE the exploration even takes place. In fact, according to your scheme, the nature of the exploration doesn't enter into the value equation at all. If the intention of the explorer is what determines the value of the exploration, than clearly any exploration can be as good as any other. Or as worthless. This is plainly ridiculous, and flies in the face of all human experience.

One exploration is NOT as good as any other. Some explorations are clearly more valuable than others, regardless of who undertakes them. I agree that one person may derive more from a given exploration than another person, for any number of reasons, but I do not agree that we can determine the actual value before the exploration has taken place.

As an alternative, I suggest that the value of an exploration can only be known AFTER the exploration has been conducted. We have to examine what we learned, what new truths have been revealed to us, what falsehoods have been exposed, in order to judge the value of any exploration.

 

[takyris]

Re: Re: Once more into the breach...

I do not believe in the catharsis argument. As others have said, you do not need to roleplay a rape in order to get it out of your system. As I have said before, those urges should be supressed, not expressed.

I disagree. I think the best thing to do is to explore those urges -- not to do them, but to figure out what makes you want to do them. That way you can fix the problem so you don't HAVE those urges anymore, as opposed to treating the symptom and suppressing the problem until the point where you snap and take out six of your co-workers with a machete.

As for how that whole thing relates to the argument... I don't think that the BoVD is going to do anything but clarify what's already there. Someone who wants to use D&D to live out their violence fantasies can already do it with a half-orc barbarian or dwarven necromancer. Making official feats and prestige classes for it just requires a little less imagination. And for the most part, I'm not going to play D&D with someone who is using it for a power trip/wish-fulfillment purpose -- be it good or evil. A guy who insists on playing his Anime-wannabe black-coated badass paladin and asking the DM to have girls swoon all over him while he ignores them, intent only on killing the evildoers, is just as distasteful to me as a guy who insists on playing a necromancer who gets his power from eating his victims after having sex with them.

-Tacky

 

[SemperJase]

It sounds as though you are claiming to know the intentions of others, and condemning them for the intentions you are attributing to them. I find this breathtakingly arrogant.

I don't find this arrogant. I consider it using common sense. People declare their alignment in the game before hand. Players declaring their characters good are trying to perform good actions. Players declaring their characters evil plan on committing evil actions.

I argue that what you are proposing is impossible -- that there is no way for any human being to know the true intention of any other.

Then there would be no need to declare an alignment. So you should Rule 0 alignment in your game.

Problem Two: Prejudgement

As an alternative, I suggest that the value of an exploration can only be known AFTER the exploration has been conducted. We have to examine what we learned, what new truths have been revealed to us, what falsehoods have been exposed, in order to judge the value of any exploration. [/B][/QUOTE]

I disagree. Good is good and evil is bad. One can know that before killing one's neighbor. So we have opposing views on this point.

 

[Piratecat]

My last game invovled revisiting the old Keep on the Borderlands. The party visited caves that were home to orcs and other monsters in order to rescue people captured as slaves. Non-combatants, women and children were not slaughtered.

My friend, your argument seems specious to me. You slaughtered dozens of intelligent and social humanoids who happened to keep slaves, all (or most) of whom were most likely non-combatants until you invaded their homes! And that's D&D, and it's darn fun escapism, but let's not split hairs and claim that it isn't premeditated murder.

That's why I mentioned inadvertent hypocrisy earlier, although I certainly didn't mean to offend or insult you. Telling ourselves that it's okay to ambush, attack and kill them because they were keeping human slaves doesn't relieve someone of the moral responsibility attached to the act.

It's like the wonderful "mourning the henchman" scene in Austin Powers. Evil henchmen are MEANT to be killed... but hey! Turns out they have friends, and wives, and personalities of their very own. Same thing should apply to creatures like orcs, if you really want a game like that. I don't, personally. In my D&D game, "murder" seldom comes up, as it's more commonly a kill-or-be-killed situation.

Anyways, the point is that I wouldn't get all hung up on the murder aspect of BoVD. It's not any more damaging to our mass psyche than normal gaming is, so long as you're an adult who can separate fact from fiction. People with good sense - like yourself - will not want to use it for PCs, and will want to use it for NPCs. People who do use it to run evil PCs aren't going to be scarring themselves for life.

Anyways, it'll be easier to judge once we've actually seen the book.

 

[Mallus]

I argue that what you are proposing is impossible -- that there is no way for any human being to know the true intention of any other.

Aha, but its not impossble to know these in the context of the game. There's a host of spells that will grant you such knowledge. If you even need to resort to magic, since [conveniently] some whole races are irrevocably evil, and the bad guys in general tend to wear large blackish hats... Not just intent but absolute moral alignment [hey, a pun...]

And that points to the uselessness of using the game [in high epic mode] as a tool for moral instruction. While I do wholeheartedly agree that the game can be used for all manner valuable psychological exploration [if that's fun for you], its value breaks down when you begin suggesting the black and white moral schema in the game is applicable in the outside world.

Its the most dangerous kind of power fantasy, in which the identication with a 'mighty' fictional self is coupled with an unerring knowledge of the moral position of others. A fantasy in which heroes always know right from wrong, and are always justified when they let slip the dog of war... Its bad because its so seductive... Discerning right from wrong, helpful action from hurtful, is stripped of all its attendent anxiety, difficulty, and outright terror.

Simple games are fine. Simple worldviews are not...

 

[SemperJase]

My friend, your argument seems specious to me. You slaughtered dozens of intelligent and social humanoids who happened to keep slaves, all (or most) of whom were most likely non-combatants until you invaded their homes! And that's D&D, and it's darn fun escapism, but let's not split hairs.

An interesting moral question. Apparently you believe that beings who kidnap, enslave, and abuse others are not evil, but just defending their home when rescuers come. I don't. The alternative was to doom the slaves to a life of torture because the orcs might misunderstand our motivation for rescuing our countrymen.

Here is where our moral dilemna came. There was a cell holding a variety of creatures as slaves. Some were human, some were orcs (and some other creatures). Now the characters had to decide whether to free the orcs or kill them as evil creatures (as they are portrayed in our campaign).
We decided to free them knowing the risk that these orcs may attack a human settlement later. Threat of a future evil act was not enough to condemn a person (or orc as the case maybe. )

 

[Piratecat]

An interesting moral question. Apparently you believe that beings who kidnap, enslave, and abuse others are not evil, but just defending their home when rescuers come. I don't.

More evil than those who kill them, on the off chance that they may do something evil in the future? I do... at least when I'm playing devil's advocate to make a point.

It's just too easy to turn the moral tables, assuming you have any empathy. The orcs say, "These humans will kill many, invade our homes, slay our elders. We have not hurt them. Our slaves are not of their families. And yet they attack us, unprovoked? They are evil!"

By your logic, the orcs would attack you even if they were good, just to stop the threat of an evil attack sometime in the future.

Hmmm... I've drifted off topic. My apologies.