Good, Evil, or Gray

[Desdichado]

Alas, even physically mature players happen to have juvenile mindset...

Aye, some do. Then again, some mentally mature players happen to be quite physically juvenile. Maybe I'm luckier than I think to have really good players in my group...

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

But it's always HIS definition of good/evil that gets promoted, isn't it?
(Is it?)
I've been in a campaign whereing moral quandries were thrown in. ANd often my definition of behaviors is different than his. Many behaviors he defines as good I call neutral, some I call evil. Many bahaviors he defines as evil I call neutral, some I call good.

I find it particularly amuzing when a good restricted character (cleric, paladin) behaves in a way my character finds evil... or, metagamilngly, I personally find evil. And yet the GM rules that this was really the only "good" option available.

Of course, that's a major reason I never play any alignment restricted characters in his campaign. Usually pure neutral... occasionally neutral good, because I see the character as good, and as long as the character's not alignment restricted it doesn't matter really.

1) Law is an aspect of chaos, by definition.
2) Both good and evil exist within the demesne of neutral.

I have a question for you, is it really your dm's idea of what is good or evil for that restricted character? If that is the case then I have to say it shows a lack of ability in the dm. On the other hand, if it is the restricted character's idea of good and evil then that is completely different.

Gray areas are very interesting because they bring forward *personal belief.* I used to use this example a lot with my players to get them thinking about how they believe one thing but the character could very well believe something else and both be right.

A lawful-good paladin is leading an army against the horde of demons which plan on killing everything before their path. He knows that a small town of mainly women and children are 5 miles away from his army and about to be overrun by the demons. He also knows that the demon horde's commander is leaving himself open at this very moment and it may be the only chance his army has of ending the entire threat once and for all. Give me your personal thoughts on this situation, which should he do? Now give me explanations of why he could justify either path. Now tell me if this same paladin, no matter which way he chooses, is able to remain a paladin after his choice?

It was very interesting. I even had one person reply that the paladin would choose to kill the general (which is the choice most of them made, btw, since he was lawful-good) but that by ignoring the small town he becomes Lawful-evil, and that he would still be a paladin because he did what his god expected of him and carried out his *duty* to the fullest of his ability.... which would mean you had a lawful-evil paladin.

I am not saying I agree with that, but it was very interesting and made me really think. That reminds me, I need to give that question to my present group.

just my two cents

 

[D+1]

Are good and evil cultures clearly defined in your campaign or is there a lot of gray?

There are all three - clearly defined good and evil, as well as some cultures that are in between. But the axis of good-neutral-evil as alignment goes is not a relative scale but a firmly fixed one - for individuals as well as cultures.

As a player do you like clearly defined cultural alignments? A player in my campaign took me to task because he felt there was too much overlap.

Yeah, I prefer the clearly defined categories and fixed scale because that is how alignment is SUPPOSED to work. If there is a lot of "overlap" then you're not dealing with alignment the way it's intended.

That's not necessarily a bad thing but you're asking for a stated preference so...

To the Bastiyaani people this behavior is evil; to Jola it is just being manly.

To D&D it's irrelevant what those people want to BELIEVE is evil. For the purposes of the game good and evil is quite clearly defined. That doesn't prevent two good-aligned peoples from nonetheless tearing each other apart because of clashing cultural mores and beliefs.

 

[D+1]

Of course, this is generally using late 20th Century moral principles and declaring them absolute, when things were much different during the actual time periods most fantasy worlds claim to take as their model. But that's what most people who play these games want. I just find it tedious after awhile.

Actually, it's using the 21st Century moral principles as absolutes that's the PROBLEM. You SHOULD use the much older moral codes and philosophy as the absolutes because that is what alignment uses. Fixed perspectives, not relative When you try to coordinate that directly to 21st Century thinking it melts down.

 

[LizardWizard]

A lawful-good paladin is leading an army against the horde of demons which plan on killing everything before their path. He knows that a small town of mainly women and children are 5 miles away from his army and about to be overrun by the demons. He also knows that the demon horde's commander is leaving himself open at this very moment and it may be the only chance his army has of ending the entire threat once and for all. Give me your personal thoughts on this situation, which should he do? Now give me explanations of why he could justify either path. Now tell me if this same paladin, no matter which way he chooses, is able to remain a paladin after his choice?

As nearly all examples concerned with alignment (and paladins in general), this one suffers some serious logical errors.
First, a town made up of women and children? That's rather strange, because a community cannot function properly unless it has a large percentage of robust, hard-working adult men . Even if they fled, that's even more strange, because women and children have always been the first to be evacuated. Third, it is altogether weird that the town's dwellers did not attempt to flee 5 miles to the safety of the paladin's army if they knew about the imminent demon attack.
Then, it is nigh impossible that sacking a small town (and a "small town" in D&D terms is a community of 901-2000 citizens) would place the fiendish general in a vulnerable position. It would be really foolish of him to low down his guard at the moment; a commander that managed to make a name for himself in the Abyss should be too cautious and intelligent to do this.
Overall, this example reminds of the worst kind of parascientific speculation, sometimes known as "calculating an ellipsoid-shaped horse's speed in vacuum", or scholastic paradoxes such as "can the Lord create a mountain that he is unable to move?"

 

[Sejs]

A lawful-good paladin is leading an army against the horde of demons which plan on killing everything before their path. He knows that a small town of mainly women and children are 5 miles away from his army and about to be overrun by the demons. He also knows that the demon horde's commander is leaving himself open at this very moment and it may be the only chance his army has of ending the entire threat once and for all. Give me your personal thoughts on this situation, which should he do? Now give me explanations of why he could justify either path. Now tell me if this same paladin, no matter which way he chooses, is able to remain a paladin after his choice?

It was very interesting. I even had one person reply that the paladin would choose to kill the general (which is the choice most of them made, btw, since he was lawful-good) but that by ignoring the small town he becomes Lawful-evil, and that he would still be a paladin because he did what his god expected of him and carried out his *duty* to the fullest of his ability.... which would mean you had a lawful-evil paladin.

Flawed reasoning. A lawful evil person isn't a lawful good, or a lawful neutral person who does an evil act, let alone one who has to choose between the rock and the hard place. In the example, BOTH are viable choices and BOTH would have the paladin remain lawful good and a paladin.

It's very important to remember that an evil alignment denotes a consistant and overriding self-interest. An evil person is out for themselves, first, last, and all the way in between. Ignoring the town to strike at the general isn't evil because you're doing it to end the threat of the demon army and thus preserve the welfare of all those innocents that would be affected by the war. Ignoring the general to defend the town isn't evil because you're doing it to preserve the welfare of those innocents that are in immediate danger, and you can reason that you'll have another shot at the general later. But either decision is being made with good intent, rather than "I can do X to benefit me in Y way". Purposefully letting the town be sacked and the innocents slaughtered just because you know that it'll give you the leverage you need to get the armies of Generica to join the war on your side - THAT would be an evil act. Evil is essentially the philosophy of Grab What You Can And To Hell With The Other Guy.


Anyway, personally I'd take out the general. Evac the town if possible, but if not.. *shrug*. Greatest good for the greatest number. The loss is regretable, but... omlettes and eggs, ya know.

 

[Celtavian]

re

The "Good vs. Evil vs. Grey" really comes down to whether or not you have an omniscent being who is ultimately good and who judges what is good or evil without error. Without that, then everything is grey.

If you have in your campaign a force or deity that has some connection with the beings of your world who has placed within them some universal idea of good and evil, then yes, their can be evil cultures. Basically, groups of people who have been corrupted or haven't learned the universal concept of good.

If you have no central force of deity, then good and evil can be relative. Otherwise, no, the force or deity has already decided what is good and evil, humans must interpret through whatever spiritual connection exists between them and the force or deity what is good or evil.

I personally prefer the idea of universal good and evil. That does not mean that intelligent creatures won't allow bias, pride, or other such emotions to get in the way of acting good or evil, but a person merely interpreting an act as good or evil does not make it so. Good and evil supercede human interpretation in my campaigns. I don't mind player debate on whether an act is good or evil, but ultimately I as DM make the final decision.

Luckily, I don't have players who like evil or have skewed, relative interpretations of good and evil. We are all pretty much in agreement on what is good and evil, makes arbitration very easy.

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

As nearly all examples concerned with alignment (and paladins in general), this one suffers some serious logical errors.
First, a town made up of women and children? That's rather strange, because a community cannot function properly unless it has a large percentage of robust, hard-working adult men . Even if they fled, that's even more strange, because women and children have always been the first to be evacuated. Third, it is altogether weird that the town's dwellers did not attempt to flee 5 miles to the safety of the paladin's army if they knew about the imminent demon attack.
Then, it is nigh impossible that sacking a small town (and a "small town" in D&D terms is a community of 901-2000 citizens) would place the fiendish general in a vulnerable position. It would be really foolish of him to low down his guard at the moment; a commander that managed to make a name for himself in the Abyss should be too cautious and intelligent to do this.
Overall, this example reminds of the worst kind of parascientific speculation, sometimes known as "calculating an ellipsoid-shaped horse's speed in vacuum", or scholastic paradoxes such as "can the Lord create a mountain that he is unable to move?"

Actually you miss the entire point of logical paradoxes and the like, such as the very one you cite about the mountain and god. The point is not that they make sense or not, the point is to get your mind working and thinking through different avenues. If you do not like that and think it is pedantic or trivial, or logically invalid then ok, but actually they have good logical basis. The example I gave is an edited version of a real logical puzzle used in eastern philosophy. The point is not to pick it apart as "unrealistic" but instead to let your mind work within the paradigm. I hate to tell you this but society is not logical. Another good example used in eastern philosophy, this time by Lao Tzu, is about the mule in the road. I won't bore you with it because I understand your dislike for them. There are many ways to answer the question if you ignore the parameters it sets. The idea is to work within the parameters and answer the question. The question is not a real life problem, it is an exercise in thinking. Those are two completely different things.

For the record, your comment on the town of women and children is actually lax in a number of ways. Look at the historical accounts of small villages during the crusades. Many towns were left with only women, children and the elderly, as all the able bodied men (and male boys of 13 or older) were conscripted ito the war effort. They did not flee to another town because someone still had to tend the crops and the livestock, life goes on. In addition, I never said the demon wararch was attacking the town, in fact I specifically worded it so that they were two completely different things, hence the question fo which to do. Also five miles seems to be a laughable distance to you. It is not nearly so laughable if say the town is five miles away, 3 of those miles is behind enemy lines, the time of year is winter and the town's animals have all been used as food (a very real situation in places like russia, china and 12th century japan, just replacing the demon army with human one). Also, gaining prestige in demonic courts is not always a matter of intelligence, where many of the chaotic-evil demons (note i did not say devils) are of low intelligence and mainly blundering warmongers. Also, how do we know that the demonic general was not just being ordered to do it on the whim of his superior, or he was expected to lose so that he was no longer a threat to anyone?

The point is that you can find holes or justification for anything you wish. As for it being parascientific I think you need to relook at the definition and maybe change words. Parascientific means 'going beyond science' by definition. I am not sure how that is supposed to imply what you obviously intended. As for it being a paradox, it is; intentionally so. Paradoxes are well respected as provoking thought and are used in most disciplines of philosophy but also in logic, math, physics, and even medicine. Denouncing something because it is a paradox seems to close to what some people say about 'theory.' One of my college math teacher's favorite 'thinking problem' was what do you get when you subtract zero from zero? It has an answer, yes, but it is meant to get you thinking about *possibilities.*

I hope I did not come across as catty, it was not meant to be, I am just sleepy and found that it seemed to me that you took something you did not like and threw it out solely because you did not like it. You can dislike it if you wish, and I respect that, but at least just say "I do not like your question" instead of trying to say it is unintelligent, which is what it sounded as though you were saying. If that was not your intention then I apologize. I am enjoying this thread greatly because people like Basilisk are taking it seriously and putting thought into it. I hope you continue to post with things that engender conversation and thought instead of just dismiss someone else's theories (as you have noticed, I have not. I may not agree with basilisk, but I respect his stand and meet him half way, as I tried to do with you by saying it is your choice to not like my idea and you are welcome to that position.)

Have a wonderful night, I'm off to bed
Kal

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

Flawed reasoning. A lawful evil person isn't a lawful good, or a lawful neutral person who does an evil act, let alone one who has to choose between the rock and the hard place. In the example, BOTH are viable choices and BOTH would have the paladin remain lawful good and a paladin.

It's very important to remember that an evil alignment denotes a consistant and overriding self-interest. An evil person is out for themselves, first, last, and all the way in between. Ignoring the town to strike at the general isn't evil because you're doing it to end the threat of the demon army and thus preserve the welfare of all those innocents that would be affected by the war. Ignoring the general to defend the town isn't evil because you're doing it to preserve the welfare of those innocents that are in immediate danger, and you can reason that you'll have another shot at the general later. But either decision is being made with good intent, rather than "I can do X to benefit me in Y way". Purposefully letting the town be sacked and the innocents slaughtered just because you know that it'll give you the leverage you need to get the armies of Generica to join the war on your side - THAT would be an evil act. Evil is essentially the philosophy of Grab What You Can And To Hell With The Other Guy.


Anyway, personally I'd take out the general. Evac the town if possible, but if not.. *shrug*. Greatest good for the greatest number. The loss is regretable, but... omlettes and eggs, ya know.

I agree completely with you, lol.

You did exactly what was needed, you picked out problems you saw with it, answered it, spent time thinking about it and came up with a good answer with good foundations. What you just did is what I give it to my players for. Thank you. However, it is possible to argue the exact opposite position with this question and be able to back it up, which is why it tells me a lot about my players and helps me write adventures for them. If all of my players give similar answers with similar logic I know that they will have an easier time with logic puzzles as riddles. If they all give different answers and back their answers up either very poorly or just completely at odds with each other then I know that puzzles should rely on other things in addition to straight logic.

As I said, I don't agree with the player's answer myself and could easily find things wrong with it, but I did find it intelligent and that he made interesting (if falacious) points. I will say that another reason I was impressed was that this was one of those players that always played the "dumb fighter' and tended to forget everything told to him, we all got to believe he was not terribly bright, but this showed me, at least, that he was bright, maybe not a logical problem solver, but a creative thinker nonetheless. I always looked and treated him differently after that and we found that once we started trying to engender good thinking he actually because very tactical and began playing things like sorcerers and bards and rogues, and actually used his brain more than brawn. Also know that this was in high school, when very few of us had any logic courses (I had spent time in college specifically for logic courses due to a high act score and another guy was a comp programmer, but the other 4 were just typical oklahoma guys who drank more than thought.)

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

A few remarks will make an admittedly incomplete response but it's what I've got time for:

Actually I disagree, dnd has a very hard line definition of law and chaos and stay pretty true to it. They define it in the phb and keep pretty close to it. Devils are truly lawful in that they always keep their word, not the spirit of the deal but their exact words. Demons are chaotic because they tend to betray, backstab, and lie as if by second nature. One never knows what to expect with them, whereas, with training, one can deal with devils pretty successfully.

Quite so. That is the planescape hell version of law and chaos. However, the stereotypical D&D barbarian is either CG (noble savage) or CN (ordinary savage) or CE (wicked savage). The stereotypical D&D barbarian will talk about honor and the expectations of his tribe and will toss off a few one-liners about the civilized world and how law is simply a trick by dishonest men to make breaking one's word acceptable. The lawful nobles can be expected to betray, lie, backstab, and politic. The chaotic barbarians can be expected to live by their own code of honor--a code that usually involves physical challenges and trial by combat or some such thing. The noble paladin is lawful because he lives by a strict, unyielding personal code of honor that may sometimes conflict with that of the society he finds himself in and yet the noble barbarian is chaotic because he lives by a strict, unyielding personal code of honor that usually conflicts with that of the society he finds himself in.

I could go on with examples but it's probably clearer to point out several of the distinct threads of law vs. chaos in D&D tradition:

Civilization vs. Tribalism
Law vs. Tradition
Tradition vs. Free Spirit
Communal identity focus vs. individual identity focus
Rule of Law vs. Despotism/Judging on a case by case basis
Discipline vs. free spirit
Letter of the law vs. spirit of the law
Truth-telling vs. lying
Property rights vs. theft
Elves (who kill outsiders who enter their forest because of the sovereign law of their ancestor who is still alive) vs. Dwarves (who kill outsiders who try to enter their mines because of the sovereign law of their ancestor who is dead)

The problem with these is that half of the things they've identified as being lawful conflict with the other half and a significant number are generally included under the basic moral principles of most moral philosophers (which makes them as good candidates for good and evil as there are). Truth-telling would be an example of the last case. Kant, Mill, and others made some of their strongest cases about morality on this subject.

For instance, individual identity focus is clearly identified with free spirits and chaos but it is almost exclusively produced in rules, law, and property rights oriented cultures who tend toward individualism rather than collectivism. Chaotic cultures tend to be governed by the traditions of their ancestors rather than positive law yet chaotic people are supposed to defy their families and traditions in order to follow their own path.

Actually what I said was that most religious societies agree on what is fundamentally right and wrong, not nec that they agree on morals. Morals are lot more varried than simply what is right and wrong. Not sure how to explain this position. Two societies might agree that cold blooded murder is wrong, but that is not where morals end. Morals go on to define what cold blooded murder is.

It seems like you're mixing up traditional applications of moral principles in society--which appears to be what you're calling ethics--with morals here. The exact definition of cold blooded murder and the proceedures for dealing with it are usually a matter of law and custom. When there is significant divergence between a peoples' understanding of justice in this matter and the legal/ethical (in your sense) understanding of it, there's usually a lot of outrage. There's not any sense

I could be wrong, and that is why I retrack them as an example, from now on I will just use the old culutre A. and culture B. you learn to use in logic classes.

It's safer to do so but actually less informative. It's very easy to create a culture A and a culture B to match any point you wish to illustrate. But if culture A and culture B don't actually exist, the relevance of the illustration is dubious. For instance, one could concoct a story of a successful, empire building matriarchal culture in order to demonstrate that there was no particular cultural-success value to patriarchy. However, since there actually aren't any such cultures (that I'm aware of--and there certainly aren't any to compare to China, Japan, Greece, Rome, Babylon, the Zulus, the Aztecs, the Iriquois, etc) the culture A/culture B example would be quite misleading to say the least.

Actually this is pretyt much my point, *modern* translations do take this look because we as a society have matured. If you go back and look historically you will still see that they backed up the previous definition with full force. Just because modern translations have toned this down to reflect civilized law does not mitigate the past. The ten commandments, for a very long time, were *very* cut and dried in the christian faith. The jeweish faith has always been a bit softer on some points and harder on others, that is what makes the two faiths different and interesting.

I don't think I'm misunderstanding your point here. I'm disagreeing with it. Modern translations of the Bible don't say "you shall not murder" rather than "you shall not kill" because modern society has matured. They say it because it is a more accurate rendition of the original language. Historical christian teaching bears out the understanding carried in modern translations rather than the King James (murder) translation as well, demonstrating that this isn't an after the fact claim but one that was understood all along. An understanding of the probition as against murder rather than killing undergirds traditional Just War theory (which can be contrasted with some anabaptist teachings upon the subject) as well as the historical understanding of the justice of capital punishment (to which Justice Scalia referred a year or so in defending his position against anti-death penalty catholics).

The Ten Commandments aren't easy to follow (in fact, the New Testament claims that it's impossible to follow the law--hence the need for atonement) and are quite cut and dried in many ways. But they're not unsophisticated in the way you're portraying them.

One problem here is using christianity as a broad category which I make the mistake of a lot too (evne in this post). I am sure I did not communicate well in my other post, and when I really get into a debate online that is one of my failures. In real life the back and forth nature of conversation helps one refine a point but on here you just plow ahead for a few paragraphs and most of don't go back over things to read them and take time in editing. Fundamental christianity tend to look at sin and being sin as being sin, much the same way some japanese traditions do.

I'm somewhat dubious about this assertion, seeing as there is a big difference between the turn of the (19th) century fundamentalist movement and modern American evangelicalism (to which I'm guessing you're referring--these days "fundamentalist" just means someone a liberal theologian or journalist doesn't like--which is about the only way it could be used as it often is to lump a pentecostal like Pat Robertson together with the Southern Baptists or Dallas Theological Seminary). And I know that both the pentecostal and the baptist traditions take seriously the idea that, for instance, teachers are judged more severely than ordinary believers. (Sin is all wrong qua sin but some merits more severe punishment than others--unless the sinner repents and is forgiven; just because it's all wrong qua sin doesn't mean it's all the same). However, I am curious about the Japanese traditions you're referring to. I'm interested to hear of analogous concepts in other cultures. (And to find out to what extent they are actually similar).

Whether we think god will forgive this sin easier than that one is up to god to decide and is out of our hands. It really doesn't matter what our fellow man thinks, he is not the arbiter of sin.

Quite right but it still rather tells against the idea that breaking any part of the code is the same as breaking any other part. If God punishes one more severely than the other and people think of one more harshly than the other, it stands to reason that, whether the law judges one more harshly than the other or not, what you are distinguishing as morality does indeed admit degrees of wrongness as well as degrees of commendability (as one might see, for instance in the notion of a saint vs an ordinary good man or the idea of someone doing something "beyond the call of duty.")

This is also demonstrated by the fact that one may often think a law unjust in punishing crimes disproportionately--as in the case of Jean Valjean in Les Mis. Were there no degrees of culpability in morality but that could only the law and cultural practices in which we or he lived, there would be no independent standpoint from which the law could be judged as too harsh.

Law, however, makes what our fellow man thinks *matter* whether it is a jury, a king, a potentate or whomever. If that person thinks there are mitigating circumstance then it is within his right to either hand it up the ladder or, in certain stages, outright lessen penalties. This is what I was trying to get at. Morality is above and beyond humanity, it rests in a power/concept/deity and not in the hands of the people living by it.

If morality is divine or Absolute or natural law and ethics is supposed to be human laws and customs then that's an understandable distinction, but it makes no sense to claim that the application of morality is necessarily more cut and dried or less sophisticated than human law. If the salient difference is the sphere in which the claims are judged and the nature of the judge, then it seems to make more sense to me to say that what sophistication we have in human law is (ideally really but only ostensibly in practice) in an effort to mirror the divine/Absolute/natural law.

Ethics is that line we walk that decides how much we can bend or warp absolute law (usually anyway, there are systems like draconian law and legalism (chinese) which pretty much state that ethics are only valid if they hold as close to the absolute law as they can).

Which seems to blow the morals are unsophisticated and admit no degrees of rightness or wrongness but ethics are sophisticated and admit both degrees and mercy thesis out of the water.