Isn't Success in D&D Dependent Upon Murder?

[Zhaleskra]

<snap>
You wouldn't kill Hans Gruber? Never?<snap>

Good Moaning.

I couldn't halp but overwhore you, end I have bad nose. There is no Hans Gruber, thar is only Hans Geering an Lutant Hubert Gruber.

 

[Felix]

There is no Hans Gruber.

Not anymore.

"Boy I hope that isn't a hostage."

 

[AnonymousOne]

Well one of the things most cultures do during war is find ways to dehumanize the enemy to make it seem like it's ok to kill them. Well D&D goes even one step further and makes the enemies literally not human.

What if you are operating within a campaign, like our module that a friend and I are building, which relies primarily on human political forces as the driving forces in the world rather than a cabal of wicked mindflayers? What happens when your PC realizes that the revolutionary whom he just split in half with his great sword, that is attempting to overthrow the noble and good, though oft maligned, ruler has a child and wife? Things get more sticky the more the PCs have to interact with and fight Humans. Personally the easiest way out is Lawful Neutral (dedication to an ideal, with no preference as to the means aside from what is easiest and most beneficial to the party).

 

[Felix]

What happens when your PC realizes that the revolutionary whom he just split in half with his great sword, that is attempting to overthrow the noble and good, though oft maligned, ruler has a child and wife? ... Personally the easiest way out is Lawful Neutral (dedication to an ideal, with no preference as to the means aside from what is easiest and most beneficial to the party).

Every alignment can justify their actions. The justification relies on the revolutionary being responsible for the choice he made to try to overthrow the government.

/Lawful Neutral

The revolutionary put himself outside the protection of the law, and the executors of the law provided him his consequences. His poor judgement now burdens his family with the weight of having lost a father to government agents acting within their remit and the state with a fatherless family who blames it for the death of the father/husband, though it only acted in response to his unlawful and violent choices.

/Lawful Evil

The hell with him; he threatened the bureaucracy with violence and force and was paid in kind. The wife and kids are lucky we don't visit the sins of the father upon the family. Yet.

/Lawful Good

To protect those citizens who depend upon the government and the society it defends from all enemies, foreign and domestic, the deceased was killed in an engagement when lethal force was employed to combat lethal force. The welfare of his widow and children will be looked into.

/Chaotic Neutral

He attacked me; I killed him. If he hadn't have attacked, he'd have a better chance of still living right now. What?

Et Cetera

----

If every individual is responsible for their own actions, as your exemplar partisan, then any attempt to shift inordinate blame to the authority who killed him is an attempt to wrest from the individual the responsibility for their own actions. And if some individuals are not responsible for what they do, then why should anyone be? Why should governments be?

 

[hong]

It's only murder if you kill the wrong people. Alignment is there to help make sure you kill the right people.

 

[delericho]

That's ridiculous.

The upshot of this line of thinking is that the individual is incapable of judging right from wrong; morality is subjugated to the state.

See, now I'm curious what a jury is made up of, if not individuals.

Every free thinking and moral individual should utterly reject that line of thought. That way lies fascism.

Advocating that the accused has the absolute right to a fair and impartial trial, as opposed to summary 'justice' is hardly a step towards fascism. I would suggest that the opposite is true.

To refuse to make moral judgments is moral cowardice.

Make all the moral judgements you want. But our society cannot sanction the individual to impose his view of justice on the rest of us. We cannot allow the policeman to gun down the suspect he 'knows' is guilty under anything but extreme circumstances... because all too often what he 'knows' is incomplete or downright wrong.

Even with all the checks and balances in place, our courts get things wrong all too often. How then can a policeman, in the heat of a difficult situation and working with incomplete and possibly inaccurate information, hope to do better?

And if we cannot sanction our policemen to take this action, then who?

But anything more is well into politics, so I'll stop there.

Ahh, the deviousness of moral relativism: We'll avoid the discussion of actual right and wrong, by taking the discussion off the table entirely. Because, to even discuss it is to risk offending someone, and that would truly be a crime.

I'm not a moral relativist, and I have no problems with discussing this issue. However, there is a "no politics" rule here, and this is heavily political ground. (How so? Well, at present our societies are holding certain individuals indefinately without trial. So, the question of the right of the accused to a trial is most definately political.) So, no, I don't want to discuss it further. If that is devious of me, then so be it.

Also: "Every moral individual should utterly reject that line of thought.", "fascism", "moral cowardice", "deviousness"? It's a good thing I don't offend easily.

 

[Hussar]

It's only murder if you kill the wrong people. Alignment is there to help make sure you kill the right people.

QFT

I gotta admit, I like how the World's Largest Dungeon dealt with the issue of orc babies and the like - completely ignored it and chucked it out the window as being very, very unfun. Best idea in the whole friggin' module.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Advocating that the accused has the absolute right to a fair and impartial trial, as opposed to summary 'justice' is hardly a step towards fascism. I would suggest that the opposite is true.

Let me quote you again:

Killing out of revenge is Evil. And true justice is rarely delivered by those emotionally invested in a situation. That's why it's imperative that even the most monstrous of criminals receive a fair and impartial trial.

Allow me to more fully explain the ridiculousness of this extreme position:

A father who comes across a child molester or rapist in the act with his daughter or wife would be EVIL to kill the "monstrous criminal."

Good luck getting that to play with everyman. That position is weak, it is cowardly, and it is wrong, and the average man instinctively knows it on a visceral level.

Make all the moral judgements you want. But our society cannot sanction the individual to impose his view of justice on the rest of us.

But we certainly can allow the individual to impose his view of justice on monstrous criminals.

And, in fact, in cases where the monstrosity and criminality is not in doubt, society fully sanctions the individual. The "vigilante" will undoubtedly face the justice system, and his fate is dictated solely by whether or not society agrees with the decision he made, the degree of monstrosity, and whether there is any doubt about the criminality.

But, as you know, the vigilante begins his journey through our justice system from a position of presumed innocence, as well.

We cannot allow the policeman to gun down the suspect he 'knows' is guilty under anything but extreme circumstances...

"Monstrous criminal" sounded pretty extreme. Perhaps you would care to revise that characterization?

Even with all the checks and balances in place, our courts get things wrong all too often.

Well, there's a ringing endorsement for giving the monstrous criminal his day in court. Does that serve the greater good?

And if we cannot sanction our policemen to take this action, then who?

The defense of your life and liberty is your right and your responsibility alone.

 

[Particle_Man]

Chess is dependant upon killing. Whether a particular chess game is "a just war" or not is left open.

 

[Particle_Man]

The defense of your life and liberty is your right and your responsibility alone.

Legally false. If a policeman lets some innocent person die when they could have saved that person, the policeman is in trouble.

Also, most people would agree that the policeman *should* save the lives of innocent people.

So the defense of your life and liberty might be your responsibility, but it is not your responsibility alone.