Limits of morality in the game?

[moritheil]

The D&D alignment system is an impediment to good role-playing in these matters. When any sort of moral or ethical quandary is entirely a matter of casting Detect Evil or chatting up one's god, it seems to me that everyone on the planet would have an encyclopaedic list of what is evil and what is good.

People having a moral quandary, like not knowing whether or not to kill evil humanoid babies, would be as rare as people who don't believe in magic.

Yeah. I once posted that the DnD alignment system was more like "red team" and "blue team" than "good and evil." But for now, it's pretty much what we've got. I frequently see it houseruled, and if it impedes your RP, you probably ought to houserule it.

And, totally OT, love the avatar moritheil! Muetar! (I had to check my map. I thought it was gonna be in Shucassam, because I misremembered the colors.)

 

[moritheil]

Let me expand. I once played an evil wizard who was, by nearly any standards, the most moral member of his party -- he didn't expect pay to do his duty, and he believed in protection of the helpless (LE) even though he thought victimizing the strong was perfectly acceptable. IOW, while he might murder the Lord Mayor, he wouldn't cheat the Lord Mayor, or even accept recompense for helping the Lord Mayor if he believed it was his civic duty. Yet there was no question that he was evil -- he proved it all the time.

It sounds like he was the most ethical member of his party.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Two notes:

1) In the RAW there is no mechanism at all for a Paladin, Cleric or other divine caster to be denied the use of some or all of his class features (including spellcasting) short of being stripped of the class entirely. So, denying the use of the spells for a day is a House Rule, and so the assumption that no spells == loss of status was not unjustified.

2) I wouldn't be walking just because the Paladin lost his status (or his spells, whatever). I would be walking because I wouldn't be comfortable playing in a game where the murder of children (of whatever not-interently-Evil race) is considered Good, or even non-Evil. I have absolutely no problem with such things being a facet of the game, and have absolutely no problem in playing in an Evil campaign, or allowing Evil PCs (in the appropriate context). I have a major problem with things that are Evil being labelled 'Good', and vice versa.

QFT for the goblin/human part, I guess, although in any and every case IRL I would agree with you that killing the child is wrong and immoral, regardless of who its parents are, when it comes to real life.

Really, this was just an attempt to darken the world and add some shades of grey. If you were one of my players, I would have explained this to you beforehand, and if you'd expressed discomfort, I would have just dropped the requirement, since it wasn't that important to me. Either that, or we could have come up with a compromise-your paladin is part of a branch of the church that believes this is evil. Historically and even today, real-world religions have deep faultlines and disagreements on doctrine, and I see no reason why fantasy religions should have them either. Just look at the disagreements between Catholics and Protestants, or between Sunnis and Sh'ites in Islam-in both cases, they've been going on for centuries, even though both quarrelling branches of the faith share a belief in God/Allah.

Of course, that doesn't keep NPC dwarves and their religions from harboring such feelings, which of course could make for good RPing between us. Again, as with the restrictions on women and demihumans, PCs would be more than welcome to go against the grain and have dissenting opinions on what to do with humanoid noncombatants.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It sounds like he was the most ethical member of his party.

Perhaps. But his behavior was definitely based on a personal belief as to what constituted "right" and "wrong" (or "good" and "evil", if you prefer). They simply didn't match the D&D definitions.


RC

 

[mmadsen]

Is it moral to kill a straw man simply because it's convenient?

One of the interesting elements of a fantasy game is that many things that are true in the real world are not necessarily true in a fantasy game, and thus many of the moral teachings we've had drilled into us might no longer hold. For instance, in a fantasy world, a race of intelligent beings isn't necessarily just like us but with cosmetic differences; it can be correct to view all members of a race, like orcs or goblins, as brutish and violent, because they are.