Encounter with a good aligned vampire, what do you do?

[Starfox]

In Dragonstar I had cause to collide (somewhat) modern notions of law and ethics with fantasy reality. In general, undead there were illegal, their very existence a crime except in very special circumstances. Practically, they were disenfranchised, considered curses or living embodiments of the crime of turning them into undead. As legal nonentities it was permissible to destroy them. If you had enough life insurance, an agent would be dispatched to do exactly that so that you could be restored to life. Undead did not have the right to control any assets they had when alive.

This is all pragmatic; dragons did not want an empire overrun by undead. Laws are not ethics. And of course there were exceptions, undead that were enfranchised. But if you were an undead entitled to be enfranchised, you still had so survive long enough for the law to recognize you - which might not be easy.

I can see planets or habitats in Dragonstar dominated by undead, with very different laws, but these would be the exception. The Eleti, from Races of the Galaxy, are different in that they have no identifiable previous life - they can be said to be undead what were never alive. But we never had any Eleti in our game.

On a completely different bent, I once played a Brujah cop in Vampire the Masquerade. He would still walk his beat, beating up and sucking the blood of criminals. He considered himself good and lawful, kind of a superhero beat cop.

 

[tomBitonti]

I don't either. I'm saying that any ethical system that imposes a duty on a being not to exist, a priori, is self-defeating.

That does strike at the heart of the issue. From two current religions, one might consider, after death, an issue of bad karma, or a burden of sin. Very much not wanting to stray into real world religions (I'm pretty sure the site very much wants to avoid discussions in that area), I can see characters in a fantasy world having to look to such issues. At least for D&D, there is a definite soul, and the actions of an entity can very much have an impact on what happens to the soul upon death. That is for most D&D cosmologies, although, possibly not for that of the original poster.

Although, that trivializes the issue, to an extent. I always wondered why D&D settings don't eventually center on religion and alignment, what with concrete resurrection and concretely visitable outer planes. A more interesting part of ethical and moral questions lies in areas where concrete proofs are hard to come by (if available at all, in a non-subjective way).

Tom

 

[prosfilaes]

And Darths and Droids weighs in on the issue:
Darths & Droids

 

[jefgorbach]

I suspect the grief the Religious crowd gave TSR/WOTC during the 1980s simply for having demons and devils in the game was more than sufficient incentive for them to avoid openly raising the issue of questionable morality, with confidence any group sufficiently capable of discussing such Mature issues would do so without needing an official Corporate stance on the subject beyond the brief explanations given regarding Alignment and the Great Wheel.

Personally, I would question the vampire's intentions regarding OUR party and having satisfied our personal safeties, would gladly accept her continued companionship as long as our mutual interests remained compatible with the clear understanding that ANY offensive action taken against ourselves would be met in kind.