Does D&D provide a decent moral compass?

[mmadsen]

By their nature, I think roleplaying games can address moral issues more directly than other forms of entertainment -- but they're more likely to teach basic teamwork, math skills, etc. The "moral lessons" in most adolescent D&D games seem...questionable: kill things, take their stuff, kill shopkeepers, keep their stuff, gain power, lord that power over commoners who can't fight back, etc.

 

[Matthias]

RE the subject line -

You only get out of D&D what you put into it.

Like anything else -- a car, a television set, a firearm -- it's merely a tool.

 

[mmadsen]

For these reasons, I would never allow anyone but myself to DM my own small children. I would never allow my children to play an RPG with anyone that I didn't know, and would prefer that they regularly met at my house so I could occassionally keep an eye on how things were developing.

You make D&D sound like a loaded gun, Celebrim. Did you play D&D when you were young? Did you have a bad experience?

I'm inclined to believe that a group of young players with a young DM will play out situations they can understand that are appropriate for their own level of development. Fairy tales are quite violent, and we shouldn't be surprised that kids like beating up the bad guys.

 

[Celebrim]

I started RPing when I was 8. I first held and fired a loaded gun at about the same age.

No, I wouldn't quite say it is a loaded gun but I suppose the analogy could be extended. I expect a kid of eight or nine to be able to handle a loaded gun without blowing his head off with it. But I wouldn't trust him around a bunch of other eight year olds with loaded gun, nor would I let him join a gun club, nor would I let him use a firearm without my supervision, nor would I trust another adult (except for perhaps his granddad or similar relative) to supervise his gun education.

But I don't think I'd quite worry in the same way about what my twelve year old was doing out of sight with an RPG as I would about what he was doing out of sight with a loaded gun.

In my time I've 1st and 2nd hand experience with mixed age groups that were pretty vile. This experience includes groups that really did attempt some of the things Jack Chick thought were ubiqitious to D&D, such as attempt to cast real spells, use books of Witchcraft and/or the Satanic Bible as source books, engage in consumption of drugs, and engage in LARP which resulted in violence or vandalism. Even if we aren't talking about such serious abherent behavior, alot of prototypical early groups could be quite foul mouthed, misogynistic, and grotesquely violent. The topics of the BoVD are nothing new to D&D, and although I haven't read the BoVD, I suspect that they are pretty tame compared to some of the things I've had related to me by people bragging about thier games.

Take a serious look at the art work in early 1st edition sometime. I don't know what the character of the games was in the groups that were producing those products, but discussions with early older players revealed to me that alot of the early groups did have rampant nudity, sexuality, graphic (often sexual) torture, and serious investigation of the occult. To me, its not really a wonder that D&D caused so much contriversy when it first came out.

While I find Jack Chick as laughable and objectionable as the next guy, I don't assume that every gaming group is perfectly harmless. I suspect that we could find some groups here that admit to having some pretty 'vile' material, though I imagine most would insist all thier players are 'mature'.

Have any of you ever read the adaptation of 'ET: The Extraterrestial'? It always struck me that the guy who wrote that had a really good feel for D&D of the time - right down to the drug references. Alot of the guys that were first attracted to D&D were well, weirdos (and there is the pot calling the kettle black), and they had an unusually large influence on the first generation of role players.

So no, I'm not worried so much about my (at this point hypothetical) kid acting out juvenile power fantasies, as I am worried about who his friends are and whether or not he's started hanging out with and being influenced by people who are a whole lot older than he is.

UPDATE: I just reread what I wrote, I have to wonder just what the influence of people like Tracy Hickman was on the development of D&D, and whether or not his responce to the BoVD was largely due to the fact that he felt D&D was headed back to the 'bad old days'.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Serious: The main worry I'd have is that D&D, like television, makes violence too easy as an option. It's like Kung Fu -- this guy is dedicated to peace and harmony and enlightenment and he gets into like five fights an episode? Sure, it's entertaining, but it's not always the best way to deal with the situation.



-Tacky

Bah, that's what's wrong with the world today. some people just need a butt kicking. Or a sword through the gut.(go SF halloween parade)

Overall though I think this is a good point. In D&D, action moives etc. violence is usually the 1st move the good guys make to solve a problem. Violence generally shouldn't be the 1st move a good person makes. Though I do beleive some people take the don't act with violence stance too far, that is much more up for debate, and i'll leave it at that.

 

[Bonedagger]

Moral never comes from the game. It comes from the players. They are the ones making the decisions. The game is lost if not everybody is having fun. The GM therefore don't really have any higher ground in this regard.

I have no doubt however that a roleplaying game (Not just D&D) is a good behaivoristic tool to teach a child a certain moral codex. I just wouldn't call it a game then but a lecture. Not that that can't be fun for a child.

 

[mmadsen]

In my time I've 1st and 2nd hand experience with mixed age groups that were pretty vile.

I agree that mixed age groups can be a problem, because different players are at different maturity levels.

This experience includes groups that really did attempt some of the things Jack Chick thought were ubiqitious to D&D, such as attempt to cast real spells, use books of Witchcraft and/or the Satanic Bible as source books, engage in consumption of drugs, and engage in LARP which resulted in violence or vandalism.

I haven't witnessed anything like that, but I'm not surprised such wackos are out there, trying to cast real spells while on drugs.

Even if we aren't talking about such serious abherent behavior, alot of prototypical early groups could be quite foul mouthed, misogynistic, and grotesquely violent.

I can't imagine a group of eight- or ten-year-olds playing D&D becoming foul-mouthed or misogynistic because of the game. I can easily imagine them becoming desensitized to (abstract) violence though. Without a creative DM, most adventures do devolve into pure combat. I'm not sure it causes any damage though, to play out such power fantasies.

Take a serious look at the art work in early 1st edition sometime.

That's the art I grew up with, and as young kids we nervously paged past any "naughty" images (e.g. the succubus, some of the goddesses in Deities & Demigods). It didn't leave a very strong impression though. Maybe if I'd found the game at age 14...

Have any of you ever read the adaptation of 'ET: The Extraterrestial'? It always struck me that the guy who wrote that had a really good feel for D&D of the time - right down to the drug references.

Should it surprise anyone that a creative hobby in the late 1970s might be associated with drugs?

So no, I'm not worried so much about my (at this point hypothetical) kid acting out juvenile power fantasies, as I am worried about who his friends are and whether or not he's started hanging out with and being influenced by people who are a whole lot older than he is.

Sounds reasonable.

 

[ced1106]

Do you think D&D provides a decent moral compass?

Sure does.

I've been following the D&D adventures, and they're **all** pretty much the "Good Heroes save the day" stuff. It's gotten to the point where we've forgotten what Evil is, and believe Evil is this flashy stuff as presented in the BoVD.

EQ RPG is an example of what D&D could have been, if it allowed evil. Compare the D&D PHB races and classes versus those in EQ RPG. At best, in D&D, you have the half-orc for Evil. No Dark Elves, Ogre, Trolls, or Iksar. My bet is that the Shadowknight (Anti-Paladin) and Assassin pretige classes are only there because of the D&D legacy. Meanwhile, EQ RPG has the Necromancer and Shadow Knight classes.

And, of course, roleplaying, at least with D&D, requires cooperative behavior. In D&D, the classes have been designed so that you **must** work together and have diversity. Compare this to non-rpg games, which promote competitive behavior.

You **can** have immoral behavior in D&D, but, IMO, the dice are loaded. I'm still waiting for Dungeon to publish a "beat up the pregnant hobbits" adventure!


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Buttercup]

Serious: The main worry I'd have is that D&D, like television, makes violence too easy as an option.

This troubles me too. Years ago, the science fiction author Orson Scott Card used to write a column for Omni magizine on computer games. He talked about this very issue, but far more eloquently than I ever could.

Not only is violence too easy, it doesn't have real consequences. Cartoon characters are back for the next episode, and if you get hit with a sword in D&D, the cleric will heal all your damage in an instant. I've wondered if some of the young monsters that shot up their classmates over the past decade even realized that death in RL is very real, and permanent.

Then too, computer games and D&D seem to suggest that it's ok to kill those who are different. Kill the orcs and take their stuff, you know?

Still and all, if a child has parents who are involved, and who provide examples of good behavior, as in Rel's post upthread, I think D&D is probably safe enough. Although the game itself is as free from a moral compass as your kitchen stove, it can easily be tailored to include whatever kinds of ideas and values you want. That's the essence of why it's so cool.

 

[takyris]

Buttercup: That's a good point, regardless of the fact that you were agreeing with me.

At least with a good DM, you can introduce moral ambiguity. I differentiate pretty strongly in my games between "person who has a family and is doing a job" and "creature summoned from other plane of existence". In most cases, the party can easily tell when they're faced with a person, and when they're faced with an alignment with legs. In a jailbreak session (they're CG, trying to break someone out of an LN prison built to hold magic-users), they were going out of their way not to kill people, and got REALLY angry at the person in the party who finally shrugged and started laying fireballs at the guards' feet.

With a computer game, you know immediately whether or not you're supposed to fight the monsters because either:

a) You fight everything in the game except the doctors in lab coats or blue-uniformed security guards, both of whom give you stuff.

or

b) Any monster you're supposed to fight has a red circle under its feet, and any monster you're NOT supposed to fight has a blue circle under its feet.

In both cases, all moral ambiguity, thoughts of seeing things from the perspective of the enemy, and potential attempts to minimize bloodshed are out the window. And in my opinion, you don't want to teach people to NOT see things from other people's perspectives.

-Tacky