Morality in your D&D - b&w or gray?

[Zappo]

Thanks for the "mostly" qualifier. "Mostly" shades of gray, that's how my campaigns work.

The vast majority of common mortals, including villains and heroes, rulers and anarchists, fall into some sort of shade of gray.

However, there are many creatures who tend to be rather extremely aligned. Undead, outsiders, dragons, even exceptional mortals, may be more extreme in their good, evil, law or chaos than most people would find realistic.

Finally, there are several creatures (typically powerful outsiders) who tend to be extremely aligned one way or another. Some of them can be so extremized that sane mortals can't quite understand their mindset - acting their alignment even against their own interest. This is beyond black & white and entering unknown regions of the spectrum.

 

[Wombat]

I tend to prefer the greys.

My current campaign has a lot to do with moral ambiguity. As I told the players, one of the major themes of this campaign is Choices. You are how you act. Sometimes there are no easy choices and sometimes you will cheese people off who you otherwise like because of a single choice; equally, you may attract the positive attentions of folks you don't like due to the same choice.

My favourite characters (literary) are ambiguous folks; even in fantasy novels, I am drawn to the "grey" characters, like Gollum or Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. Our game is going pretty darn well that way, as characters sometimes now double-guess themselves and try to figure out what the fallout from a given action might be. Leads to some really interesting roleplaying.

 

[BigRedRod]

D&D is designed to be black&white, which is a shame as it is difficult and/or boring to play a game with no middle grounds

 

[Truth Seeker]

D&D is designed to be black&white, which is a shame as it is difficult and/or boring to play a game with no middle grounds

I will say was...since the template are just guidelines. The question of where gray comes in or not, is left up to the maturity and experience of the Players and DM.

On that...that is where the premise will either shine, or go black...based on the individuals involved.

 

[painandgreed]

I voted for mostly b&w because there is an objective good and evil. there are still shades of gray because there's neutral and very few things peg out the good/evil meter on one side or another.

 

[Halivar]

In my gaming group, it's black and white. We really don't even allow for neutrality.

Question is all about how you define neutrality. If it's an absence of caring one whit for whether or not your actions help or harm others, than I would dare to say you are a bad person. Satanic? No. But definitely bad. If your idea of neutrality is a good, healthy mix of helping and hurting people, then I would also say that you are bad. Very bad.

Take your average CN rogue, maybe one you've RP'd. Now ask yourself: do I want this man to have a position of any importance in my life? Am I safe around this individual? Is the world better or worse off for him being in it? (If you said yes to all these questions, I would conjecture that your character ought to be CG.)

Now, are there degrees of bad? Sure. There's just bad, or "neutral": our little, delightfully roguish and debonair cutpurse, who merely purloins copper pieces from passing travelers (who are walking around finding means of feeding their starving families), and then there's "evil": Grognark the Wretched Bastard, the 666 hit-dice ruler of the 9,999th layer of the Abyss, who enjoys unspeakable acts of sadism and excess. So yeah, there's a gradient. But they both register on my detect evil spell.

EDIT: Just wanted to put in my $0.02 about "gray" characters. Someone mentioned Gollum. I don't really think he's very gray at all. Yeah, he had the capacity for good. Yeah, he could have been turned to the "light." Fact is, though, he's a cold-blooded murderer. Cold-blooded murderers, in my book, are evil. Eva Braun thought Adolf was a caring and warm guy, if rather prudish; nevertheless, the man was (I think we can agree) unspeakabley Evil.

 

[Samuel Leming]

I voted mostly gray, but I've run games using both styles.

IME if your players are really into the roleplaying it's best to go the "shades of gray" route or they feel constrained.

Sam

 

[frankthedm]

Mostly B&W is what i prefer. I also like using knowlege [religeon] for guidance on sticky situations. A succesfull check gives a relevant passage.

"That which is Evil before first breath, deserves only the mercy of death"
-scripture from a LG deity from a campaign world where "Good" condones or accepts killing creatures that are born innatly evil.

 

[Jolly Giant]

Mostly grey in my setting; which makes playing a paladin rather difficult sometimes, but our group enjoys that! In my homebrew, paladins are ridiculed as often as they are admired for their extremist views.

On the outer planes things are mostly B&W, but definitely not among the mortals. (I hated the way certain creatures were listed with "Alignement: Always X" in the 3.0 MM and were very happy to see it changed into "Usually X" in 3.5. "Always X" is ok for fiends and celestials, but other than that I prefer "Usually X"; even for dragons. )

 

[CronoDekar]

A little from column A, a little from column B. I certainly like campaigns with moral ambiguity, but sometimes I just want to smite the half-fiend lich that kills babies and puppies. As long as it's a good DM I don't mind either way, really.