D&D General I really LOVE Stomping Goblins

[Vaalingrade]

Solution: We make the largest goblin society one that considers humans evil and seeks to exterminate them on sight.

However, it does lead to the question: what do you do with an evil psychopath if there is no treatment or prison available?

Complain to the DM for trying to contrive a situation to force my PC to kill?

Other people have stated that if someone surrenders you must bring them to justice?

That is how prisoners of war work, yes.

What if you are unable to do so and releasing them is going to lead to more deaths? What if the justice system doesn't work or doesn't care. Maybe that psychopath has political connections or the authorities don't care because they only torture and kill commoners.

You paint a skull on your chest and become something worse than all the people you're 'justicing' to death combined.

Later, you become a Frankenstein.

It's nice to have the moral high ground in what we hope is a reasonably fair and civilized society, but sometimes there simply is no good option. There are only bad options and worse.

Which is why you complain to the DM.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Good grief. I'm saying that the reality is that some people are born with a callous disregard of others. That our sense of right and wrong for most people is something we're inherently born with. Our genes affect our attitudes and moral compass more than people care to admit.

And you called them evil for that in a context where inherent evil is being used as an excuse for extermination. Please recognize this.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

However, it does lead to the question: what do you do with an evil psychopath if there is no treatment or prison available? Other people have stated that if someone surrenders you must bring them to justice? What if you are unable to do so and releasing them is going to lead to more deaths? What if the justice system doesn't work or doesn't care. Maybe that psychopath has political connections or the authorities don't care because they only torture and kill commoners.

Not to go into all the other issues people are bringing up, but the ideas that we have today (w/r/t a professional police force and a long-term prison system) are very novel in overall human history.

In the past, many societies would have a distinction between small crimes (like misdemeanors) and big crimes (like felonies). And small crimes would usually be punishable by some sort of fine, or public shaming, or other corrective measure that would allow the offender to quickly rejoin society. On the other hand, all felonies would be punished by death or exile.

The reason for the dichotomy was pretty straight-forward; either you could be part of the community, or you couldn't. There wasn't the room, money, and time to lock up people indefinitely.

Moreover, it was exceedingly common for criminals to simply be killed "on the spot" with no repercussions.

A lot of fantasy RPGs have some version of this idea- that adventurers are helping bring "law" to otherwise lawless areas. It's ... well, there's some kernel of truth to it, but it's a simplified and fantastical version ... of course, just like westerns as a genre present a fantasy version of what "the west" really was.

 

[Umbran]

Whenever I hear the argument that sentient beings can't be hard-wired to evil I think about this article in The Atlantic. Basically it's a story about people that are born psycopaths.

Hold on there a second. Pairing a poorly-defined word like "sentience" with a rather better defined word (psychopathy/sociopathy), is a recipe for misunderstanding. By some definitions, the psychopathy/sociopathy you describe can be seen as a disorder/disability that limits areas of sentience.

As in, it may not be that they are "born evil", but that they are born without, or do not develop, the cognitive ability to create a full "Theory of Mind", and have instead more a "Theory of Self" that is not matched with a "Theory of Other".

And that space, folks, becomes a really dangerous one to inhabit, as we then get "No True Sentient" instead of "No True Scotsman".

 

[Scribe]

However, I can acknowledge that some people are far, far more likely to commit acts of violence because of a difference in brain structure.

Whoa whoa different brain structures? Different types of being's have a different biology and different attributes?

Would never fly.

 

[Weiley31]

So the mission is clear: kill that little girl?

If the situation was reversed, the Little Girl wouldn't hesitate one bit.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If the situation was reversed, the Little Girl wouldn't hesitate one bit.

New Epic Monster:

A Little Girl

 

[Sacrosanct]

Thinking on it, I wonder if its not simply making things (the discussion, the act, the concepts) simply worse?

Why even bother with a justification? It will never, EVER satisfy those who find it 'without nuance' it will never pass any kind of scrutiny as evidenced by the countless threads, and on the other end, you have people who dont care anyway and just want to kick in a door and roll some dice.

Why even bother?

These conversations always end up the same. Folks demanding justification why anyone would want to have a creature as inherently evil in a game. But really, that's irrelevant. Whether or not an intelligent creature in real life is inherently whatever is moot, because it's a game. Lots of folks don't want humanoids being inherently "x". I don't like that way. It's why I argue against default alignments for intelligent mundane humanoids and support the changes WotC has been doing.

But there is no justification needed for someone who wants all goblins to be inherently evil just they many video games we all enjoy. For all we know, someone might be "I have a whole lot of real serious crud going on in real life, I just want a quick escapism where there are clear good guys and clear bad guys."

And that's OK.

 

[Scribe]

These conversations always end up the same. Folks demanding justification why anyone would want to have a creature as inherently evil in a game. But really, that's irrelevant. Whether or not an intelligent creature in real life is inherently whatever is moot, because it's a game. Lots of folks don't want humanoids being inherently "x". I don't like that way. It's why I argue against default alignments for intelligent mundane humanoids and support the changes WotC has been doing.

But there is no justification needed for someone who wants all goblins to be inherently evil just they many video games we all enjoy. For all we know, someone might be "I have a whole lot of real serious crud going on in real life, I just want a quick escapism where there are clear good guys and clear bad guys."

And that's OK.

Absolutely!

Some days, you just want to come home, turn on Doom, and start shooting.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

2.) Anything that has qualia.

No. That would be 'sentient'.