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Killing In The Name Of Advancement
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7743362" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I've always thought Call of Cthulhu's advancement system was one of the most elegant systems in gaming because it simulates so many intuitive ideas about how people get better at doing something.</p><p></p><p>In terms of the tension between being heroic and killing things, I often find that at some level this idea can be taken too far the other way as well. A famous example would be Batman's relationship with the Joker, where the fact that Batman refuses to take the life of a psychotic murderer results repeatedly in the death and suffering of hundreds or thousands of people. A moral system adopted to explain a comic book code doesn't work very well when the tropes of the setting change, but at no point does the story deeply address the philosophy of pacifism and the challenges that adopting pacifism has for remaining moral. Occasionally the story lines might address the challenge departing from pacifism raises for the hero, but it almost never makes an honest assessment of the reverse. Thus, we have on one extreme an otherwise very well done and in my opinion perhaps even thoughtful story in the 'Harry Potter' series, having some horrible fridge logic to it if you bother to ask the question of whether the young Harry Potter was right to object to the plans of his elders Remus Lupin and Sirius Black to kill the traitor Peter Pettigrew. I think that there is a reasonable objection to be made that Harry's naïve idealism didn't obtain the best possible outcome, and that perhaps Peter Pettigrew deserved to die and it would have been better for everyone to realize that. On the other end of the quality spectrum, one of the dumbest stories I have ever read, 'The Knife of Never Letting Go', had among its innumerably stupidities that the erstwhile protagonist (a thoroughly loathsome individual) refuses to kill even when doing so was necessary for self-defense of both himself and others (and yet later engages in an act of cold blooded murder). </p><p></p><p>There has long been a complex dialogue between the pacifist and honorable warrior over the best way to love and what is most required for a moral life. Yet so much of that complexity in popular culture gets lost behind simplistic comic book tropes that I think were adopted mainly because it wasn't felt this complexity was appropriate for a children's medium. The truth is it's not an wholly unreasonable position to suggest that at times the hero kills, however much we may not want to deal with that in a show for children like, 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' and always produce an out for our protagonist like some sort of 'Get out of Moral Dilemma Free' card.</p><p></p><p>In a world that is entirely human-centric, it's reasonable to make the dilemma between killing and refraining from killing central to the story.</p><p></p><p>But in a world containing physical demons and their inhuman minions, monsters and enemies of all mankind and even all life, where those things can be killed, it doesn't strike me as much of a conversation worth having with respect to those demons and creatures of anti-life. Call of Cthulhu doesn't really expect any sane investigator to have any question in their mind regarding whether destroying mythos creatures is fundamentally good. Nor can we really expect the world of D&D to make this front and center with respect to all the inhuman and inherently evil hordes that oppose all that is good and true and living. The presence of the truly monstrous is intended to simplify the discussion. That isn't to say that you can't have complex storylines about violence by bending and subverting the tropes from time to time, but there isn't really anything wrong with not subverting tropes about dragons. The writer of Beowulf doesn't much care about the motives of the monster, nor does a writer inherently excel the writer of Beowulf by trying to subvert him and make the monster have some complex motive based on legitimate and sympathetic grievances. Cheering for the monster doesn't in and of itself mean you're operating on a more moral plane. It could just mean you are also a monster.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm all for in some way having trauma effect characters, but I'm not sure I agree with your last statement. I think one of the reasons you see so much violence in the world is that at some level humans enjoy it. And while the violence of the violent does I think impact their personality, I don't think it is always or even usually traumatic to them in the usual sense of the word. Sure, they may be lobotomizing their own sense of empathy and you can argue that is self-harm, but I don't think they often miss it. Those that are by cultural training not inclined to do so must suffer for the violence and harm that they do, but valuing life is not something I think humans inherently do - all attempts to rationalize that we actually do based on very bad and biased data about humans at war aside.</p><p></p><p>UPDATE: I realize that I haven't in fact addressed the most serious complaint that can be raised against a system that awards XP primarily for killing foes. I guess I'll have to write the second part of this reply at a later point.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7743362, member: 4937"] I've always thought Call of Cthulhu's advancement system was one of the most elegant systems in gaming because it simulates so many intuitive ideas about how people get better at doing something. In terms of the tension between being heroic and killing things, I often find that at some level this idea can be taken too far the other way as well. A famous example would be Batman's relationship with the Joker, where the fact that Batman refuses to take the life of a psychotic murderer results repeatedly in the death and suffering of hundreds or thousands of people. A moral system adopted to explain a comic book code doesn't work very well when the tropes of the setting change, but at no point does the story deeply address the philosophy of pacifism and the challenges that adopting pacifism has for remaining moral. Occasionally the story lines might address the challenge departing from pacifism raises for the hero, but it almost never makes an honest assessment of the reverse. Thus, we have on one extreme an otherwise very well done and in my opinion perhaps even thoughtful story in the 'Harry Potter' series, having some horrible fridge logic to it if you bother to ask the question of whether the young Harry Potter was right to object to the plans of his elders Remus Lupin and Sirius Black to kill the traitor Peter Pettigrew. I think that there is a reasonable objection to be made that Harry's naïve idealism didn't obtain the best possible outcome, and that perhaps Peter Pettigrew deserved to die and it would have been better for everyone to realize that. On the other end of the quality spectrum, one of the dumbest stories I have ever read, 'The Knife of Never Letting Go', had among its innumerably stupidities that the erstwhile protagonist (a thoroughly loathsome individual) refuses to kill even when doing so was necessary for self-defense of both himself and others (and yet later engages in an act of cold blooded murder). There has long been a complex dialogue between the pacifist and honorable warrior over the best way to love and what is most required for a moral life. Yet so much of that complexity in popular culture gets lost behind simplistic comic book tropes that I think were adopted mainly because it wasn't felt this complexity was appropriate for a children's medium. The truth is it's not an wholly unreasonable position to suggest that at times the hero kills, however much we may not want to deal with that in a show for children like, 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' and always produce an out for our protagonist like some sort of 'Get out of Moral Dilemma Free' card. In a world that is entirely human-centric, it's reasonable to make the dilemma between killing and refraining from killing central to the story. But in a world containing physical demons and their inhuman minions, monsters and enemies of all mankind and even all life, where those things can be killed, it doesn't strike me as much of a conversation worth having with respect to those demons and creatures of anti-life. Call of Cthulhu doesn't really expect any sane investigator to have any question in their mind regarding whether destroying mythos creatures is fundamentally good. Nor can we really expect the world of D&D to make this front and center with respect to all the inhuman and inherently evil hordes that oppose all that is good and true and living. The presence of the truly monstrous is intended to simplify the discussion. That isn't to say that you can't have complex storylines about violence by bending and subverting the tropes from time to time, but there isn't really anything wrong with not subverting tropes about dragons. The writer of Beowulf doesn't much care about the motives of the monster, nor does a writer inherently excel the writer of Beowulf by trying to subvert him and make the monster have some complex motive based on legitimate and sympathetic grievances. Cheering for the monster doesn't in and of itself mean you're operating on a more moral plane. It could just mean you are also a monster. I'm all for in some way having trauma effect characters, but I'm not sure I agree with your last statement. I think one of the reasons you see so much violence in the world is that at some level humans enjoy it. And while the violence of the violent does I think impact their personality, I don't think it is always or even usually traumatic to them in the usual sense of the word. Sure, they may be lobotomizing their own sense of empathy and you can argue that is self-harm, but I don't think they often miss it. Those that are by cultural training not inclined to do so must suffer for the violence and harm that they do, but valuing life is not something I think humans inherently do - all attempts to rationalize that we actually do based on very bad and biased data about humans at war aside. UPDATE: I realize that I haven't in fact addressed the most serious complaint that can be raised against a system that awards XP primarily for killing foes. I guess I'll have to write the second part of this reply at a later point. [/QUOTE]
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