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

[John Morrow]

And in a world where things *are* black and white and murder - at least in the PHB and BoVD - is concretely listed as Evil, it simply begs the question it seems to me. Or, to phrase it as a logical proof: "Murder is Evil. (PHB, BoVD) Murder is the crime of intentionally killing a person. (Cambridge Dictionary Online (because I'm not up to paying for the OED online)) Therefore a Paladin intentionally killing a person (whether or not the person is Evil or not is undefined) is an Evil act."

As I've pointed out elsewhere, the PHB/SRD uses the word "innocent" in several places, though not consistently. It says:

"Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit."

After two paragraphs that describe Good and Evil without that qualifier (after it has been established), it continues:

"People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships."

In other words, the type of hurting, oppressing, and killing that the PHB/SRD are talking about involve killing the innocent. That is, walking up to somebody that is minding their own business and not doing any harm to anybody else and beating them up, stealing their goods, enslaving them, or killing them. It's not talking about killing in self defense, it's not talking about capital punishment for mass murder, it's not talking about slaying an Evil dragon that's burned a village to a crisp. It's talking about hurting, oppressing, and killing nice people who haven't done anything to warrant such a response. And since Neutral people simply have "compunctions against killing the innocent" rather than any absolute prohibition against it, I'd argue that what really differentiates a person who is Evil from a person who is Neutral is the absence of any compunction to hurt, oppress, or kill the innocent and, likely, a compulsion to do so in many cases.

In fact, the alignment description goes on to say, "Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral, rather than good or evil. Even deadly vipers and tigers that eat people are neutral because they lack the capacity for morally right or wrong behavior." If killing were Evil regardless of the moral context of the killing, as some people have been claiming, then every murderous animal would be Evil, not Neutral.

As for the BoED and BoVD definitions, I've looked them over and I think they miss the boat in several key ways. In fact, I think D&D has a mixed mind about alignment in such a way that it simply confuses the matter. On the one hand, it wants to deal with absolutes and make alignment a part of a person's nature while on the other hand, it wants to make alignment a matter of moral choice and qualifies the alignment of many monsters suggesting that they might actually be of any alignment. I think that's more the product of the current disdain over the idea that a sentient creature might be born Good or Evil and have no choice about it than any attempt to create a coherent moral system. On the one hand, D&D embraces the archaic concept of the Evil species of monsters while on the other hand, it embraces the more current idea of free moral choice.

I'm not sure I would apply such rigorous simplistic logic in reality... but if you want to apply simplistic black and white morality in your fantasy game this is the way it seems the logic plays itself out.

You are making a straw man argument. Creating an absurdly simple definition of Good and Evil and then pointing out how it doesn't work doesn't prove that black and white morality will always play out badly. It simply proves that absurdly simple definitions of Good and Evil don't work out very well. Solution? Don't use absurdly simple definitions of Good and Evil as the basis of your black and white morality.

 

[MetalBard]

If black is evil, then grey is the lesser evil

I like my games to have a mix of both, since the game essentially has mechanics for good and evil. It's just that smiting evil has to be pretty justified. The merchant on the street may be Neutral Evil, but since he's not hatching any evil schemes and just providing for his family in some unsavory means (questionable business practices, that sort of thing), a paladin's smite evil ability would work, but he wouldn't be doing anything very worthwhile or beneficial in his patron deity's eyes.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

Ok. Let me repeat something that i have said on many threads of late, but will rephrase:

In my opinion, Killing does not equal murder. Killing is not always wrong. Perhaps the alignment section defines killing as evil, perhaps its just unclear. But it becomes very obvious that the game, as intended to be played, involves a lot of killing, and that paladins are allowed to do so, for the right reasons. thus, killing cannot be evil in all cases, or paladins would be impossible. Killing as an inherently evil act is a relatively modern notion...and paladins, as written, are not really modern individuals.

And yes, in some of my fantasy, I want things to be clear cut, because they so rarely are in real life. real life is often grey, and conflicted, and bittersweet. Is it wrong to occasionally take out your real world anger in a neutral setting, without fear of censure? To feel righteous, which is a deeply rare and occasionally dangerous feeling in the real world?

Pacifism is not the only good. I will not even allow that it is always good in and of itself.

The problem with pacifism is it gets you killed by people (or Evil things) that aren't pacifists.

Spells that rehabilitate criminals...so, Geasing them to do only good? Taking away their free will? I don't see that as better than killing them, sorry.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

caveat: In my current campaign, Detect Evil only works on supernatural evil like demons, chromatic dragons, priests of one specific Evil god who isn't part of the main pantheon...and a whole slew of monsters created specifically by the Evil god to be his minions. None of those races created by the primary pantheon (which includes evil gods) detect as evil under any circumstances other than total devotion to the Evil god or possession. Thus the Neutral Evil merchant would never show up on a Paladin's radar, and Smite probably wouldn't work...although it hasn't come up yet.

 

[John Morrow]

In which case the "black and white" of morality really becomes an excuse for otherwise inexcusable behavior.

Yes. And without changing the parameters of the opponents to make it morally OK to kill them, we are often left with either "Power Kill"/"Violence" or a game where the characters are expected to follow the modern rules of police procedures and/or warfare.

Murder is evil. But according to this argument it becomes "good" or at the very least acceptable to commit the murder of the murderer. Does the nature of the one killed really moderate the morality of the act of killing them?

Absolutely. That's why the nature vs. nurture debate is so heated. What offends people are the implications of arguing that things like intelligence, violence, etc. are a matter of nature is fairly substantial.

If, for example (and note that I do not personally believe this is ever the case with human beings of any race or ethnic group), it were shown that a particular ethnic group had a strong genetic predisposition toward being violent, it would have a profound impact on law enforcement and the way people viewed that group. Simply consider how people behave when they wrongly believe those things about a group of people.

Racism and profiling is offensive because we know that ethnic groups don't have inherent traits like that but what if they did? What would change? Racism can be persuasive to many because once you accept the premise that a trait is inherent in a group (generally an "All X are Y" premise), the conclusions are often quite reasonable. In fact, that's exactly why the nature side of the "nature vs. nurture" debate has not only become associated with racism but why those who oppose racism are so adamantly opposed to any argument that any behavior is inborn.

As I pointed out to a friend while discussing some setting ideas, if a race in the setting is inherently unstable and violent no matter how trained or educated they become, than racism against them would have a certain logical justification. Why? Because saying, "All X are unstable and violent," wouldn't simply be a vicious stereotype designed to cause descrimination. It would be true. And if it was true, it would be perfectly reasonable to act accordingly.

If all Ogres ate human flesh like a drug addict takes drugs, would you want one as a next door neighbor? Would you ever trust that your family wouldn't wind up on their dinner table? How about a ghoul, who is also arguably sentient? So what do you do with them if we don't kill them? Put them on a reservation with a big fence around it? Who is going to watch them? Who is going to pay for it? Think about the trouble society is having dealing with criminals who are unlikely to be reformed (predators). Even if you have no particular malice toward a convicted serial rapist, do you want one living next door to you when he gets out of jail? And is it rational or irrational to feel that way?

Or then are you no better than the ones you so quickly slay?

Not at all. When paladins start killing for pleasure and start torturing for fun, we can talk moral equivalency.

In my game, the PCs exterminated an entire goblin lair, including the women and children. They did so because my setting's goblins are inherently Evil and cannot be reformed and they posed a threat to nearby settlements. Did they enjoy it. Not at all. Rather than cheering as the last goblin fell, they all just kinda sat there silently and haven't really talked about it since. It wasn't really fun for the players or their characters. Somehow, I don't think that's how an Evil character would react. Good should not get pleasure out of killing, in my opinion, though it may find pleasure in defeating Evil.

And why is it in D&D that the answer is always to slay the evil? In the real world rehabilitation is a questionable and, if possible, difficult task - but in a world where magic exists spells could easily be designed to rehabilitate criminals and make them into productive members of society. So why is it that the supposed epitome's of good so often stain their white cloaks with the lifeblood of their of their opponents rather than serving to help them overcome their evil?

You are assuming that Evil can be rehabilitated. In a world where alignments can be detected, that's not necessarily so and that changes everything, leading down that slippery slope to Power Kill and Violence. In fact, I'd go so far as to agree with you that if the Evil can be reformed, then Good should try to reform it whenever possible. And that is exactly why much of the Evil in my game's world cannot be reformed, because the unreliable and difficult task of rehabilitation isn't a particularly fun one. Just ask a mental health professional about it. I know people who have left the profession due to burn out. Not what most people want for their recreational activities. Also ask a real police officer or real soldier how much fun they have following the rules they are required to follow and what happens if they make a mistake.

And if reforming Evil is made as simple as hitting Evil with a spell, that begs the question of why Evil even exists in the world anymore. Of course if Evil can do the same to Good (Zap! and you are Evil), then we eliminate much of the free moral choice from the setting and create a situation where a failed saving throw will take a Good PC away from a player. Not very useful, in my opinion.

So why do you like the "black and white" variety of morality? Because you don't want to have to deal with the greys of reality or to make an excuse to get to slay foes rather than having to keep them alive and deal with them once they're alive (and maybe missing out on all the good loot you could steal from their corpse)?

Absolutely. People role-play as an escape from reality. That means that they'd like to leave parts of reality that aren't fun behind when they role-play.

There is also a big viceral element to all of this. As I mentioned elewhere, there has been research into the parts of the brain that come into play during moral decision making. One of the reasons why game theory fails to predict human behavior is because it doesn't take into account that fairness and revenge and pretty integral parts of the human psyche. When we see a situation that morally offends us, we feel disgust. That disgust can prevent us from doing something but it can also trigger a fairly strong desire for retribution or revenge, which gets illutrated in several game theory experiments that even can be demonstrated in monkeys.

What thing that an inherent Evilness does is disengage the empathy part of our psyche that complicate the morality of a situation and give us pause about using violence in the real world. This allows us to freely engage in the sorts of violent responses to problems that often vicerally feel good without the moral backlash. Yes, this is pretty much the same part of the psyche that racists tap into as well as sociopaths. Does this mean that role-players want to be racists or are sociopaths? Not at all. No more than the fact that a rock star taps into the same part of the human psyche that cult leaders tap into mean that rock stars want to be cult leaders.

Indeed, I'd argue that the fact that role-playing games do need to explicitly make their villains into fantasy monsters and other beings so Evil that they cannot be reformed is a sign of the opposite. If role-players were really racist or sociopaths, companies could save a lot of time and simply let them go to down slaughtering humans that simply belong to a different ethnic group. That they need their bad guys to be a step removed from humanity and Good by making them monsters of horrible Evil suggests that they aren't and they know it.

I do, however, think that some people are so sensitive to racism and cross-cultural bigotry (admittedly, with substantial justification) that they react badly to something that does look very much like racism. But just as attacking an innocent person is different than attack back in self-defense, genocidal violence against a supernaturally Evil foe is different than hatred of another real-world ethnic or racial group. Most role-players understand that changing that parameter changes what's acceptable for their characters to do and that if that parameter weren't changed, that what they were doing would be a great wrong.

It's similar to what happens with paintball. Paintball makes shooting someone non-lethal and that makes all the difference. Just because a person enjoys paintball does not mean that they are going to pick up a real gun and stalk real people to kill them, even if paintball is tapping into the same "thrill of hunting a human" that a serial killer might experience. And so long as the players can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, I don't think it's a problem.

In fact, that's pretty much what an article on the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons said in one of the earliest issues of Discover Magazine in the early 1980s. So long as the player can differentiate killing a monster in the game and slapping their brother in real life, they're fine.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

John...you are so cool. And you have more patience than I do.

 

[Jenka]

Here's another bit for the discussion. The PC's all "good" encounter the foul minions of the Rat Queen and slaughter or drive them off. Stopping the rounds of Kidnappings and Human sacrifice. The problem is the Rat Queen is the consort of the King of Plagues and the human sacrifices are souls sent as messengers to the queen to convince her to keep the King of Plagues happy. The souls stop arriving. The King of Plagues gets unhappy and thus Cholera and Typhus which had been eliminated from the country return killing thousands. Is this grey, or starkly black and white? Who were the “Evil” people here? It could be agued the PC's were.

When Gods are real and you have a pile of them how do you bend things to be so clear? While the game has clearly defined good and evil lawful and chaotic. It certainly leaves room for Good to be just as terrible as Evil. Lawful Good characters are frequently portrayed as righteous. Convinced of their purity and morality they smite those who don’t believe as they do. They can be intolerant and vicious but are still Lawful Good. Benedictine Monks during the Inquisition honestly believed that they were saving peoples souls that the pain and torture they inflicted was necessary, lawful, and good. It had to be done else the devil would hopelessly corrupt the sinners and deny them the peace and grace of heaven. Even Sauron in the Lord of the Rings had been “good” once.

History is rife with examples of gods that must be appeased in one way or another. And with people who firmly believed that if they didn’t perform the sacrifices they were endangering their community. Even if you say “These people are evil because they do X” X is only “evil” from your vantage point

Don't forget point of reference when you are talking about Morality. Just because some one is incurably evil doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable members of the community.

Jenka "The thoughtfull" Tamar

 

[John Morrow]

Here's another bit for the discussion. The PC's all "good" encounter the foul minions of the Rat Queen and slaughter or drive them off. Stopping the rounds of Kidnappings and Human sacrifice. The problem is the Rat Queen is the consort of the King of Plagues and the human sacrifices are souls sent as messengers to the queen to convince her to keep the King of Plagues happy. The souls stop arriving. The King of Plagues gets unhappy and thus Cholera and Typhus which had been eliminated from the country return killing thousands. Is this grey, or starkly black and white? Who were the Evil people here? It could be agued the PC's were.

Unless the PCs were killing the Rat Queen in order to bring on the plague, I'd argue that they weren't Evil because their objective was not cruel or malicious. Yes, that leaves the door open for the PCs to pave the road to Hell with good intentions but a Good PC would repent and try to correct their mistakes, perhaps by going after the King of Plagues. I don't remember reading that Good has to be perfect. It also isn't held responsible for taking unknown information into account. If the PCs did know about this deal, than the solution is to go after the King of Plagues first and then go after the Rat Queen. Good also also allowed to be patient and intelligent.

Of course I'd also have to wonder why the Rat Queen would be doing something Good by holding off the plauges but that's a whole other issue.

When Gods are real and you have a pile of them how do you bend things to be so clear?

Remember that Evil is Evil. There is no such thing as harmless Evil. If it's harmless, it's because it hasn't figured out how to cause trouble yet but it's certainly working on it.

While the game has clearly defined good and evil lawful and chaotic. It certainly leaves room for Good to be just as terrible as Evil.

No, because Good will never be motivated by cruelty and Good with never completely lose empathy with those who suffer because of what it does.

Lawful Good characters are frequently portrayed as righteous. Convinced of their purity and morality they smite those who dont believe as they do.

Straw man. Good characters smite those who are Evil. Not only can they tell who is Evil by how they behave or what type of creature they are but they can also detect and know for certain.

They can be intolerant and vicious but are still Lawful Good.

They will never be intolerant and vicious in the sense that they would become cruel or indifferent to the suffering of others. That's just not what Good is. That's what Evil is. This is where the moral relativism comes in. Good and Evil aren't simply two identical teams that will do the same thing to each other if given the chance.

Benedictine Monks during the Inquisition honestly believed that they were saving peoples souls that the pain and torture they inflicted was necessary, lawful, and good. It had to be done else the devil would hopelessly corrupt the sinners and deny them the peace and grace of heaven.

You are aware that the Inquisition was not nearly as psychotic as many people portray them to be. They actually did follow procedures and there were very clear limits to what they could or would do to people. Regardless, nobody is claiming that the Inquisition was Good by either modern standards or D&D standards (which has nothing to do with faith in a God or salvation). I would argue that they were Lawful Neutral, at best, and illustrated the danger of putting Law before Good in the D&D sense. The four corner alignments (LG, LE, CG, and CE) serve two masters and are always in danger of ignoring one master to serve the other. That is why the one paladin in my game was given explicit orders that if he has to make a choice between being Good or being Lawful, he is to be Good, even if that means a loss of his paladin abilities.

Even Sauron in the Lord of the Rings had been good once.

That people can change alignment says nothing about the alignments. Alignments are not required to enforce a vice-like grip upon those within that alignment to keep them there. That's what free moral will is all about.

History is rife with examples of gods that must be appeased in one way or another. And with people who firmly believed that if they didnt perform the sacrifices they were endangering their community. Even if you say These people are evil because they do X X is only evil from your vantage point

That's only true if you believe that Good and Evil are culturally defined. That's not true in D&D and I don't believe it's true in the real world. In fact, it pretty much cuts to the heart of the Golden Rule, the D&D alignment system, and sociopathic disorders. If you care about other innocent people, you aren't going to hurt, oppress, or kill them (and this goes back to why Evil D&D monsters need to be redefined into a different class of being). Why? Because most sane people do not want to be hurt, oppressed, or killed, themselves. If your culture revolves around hurting, oppressing, and killing innocent people, your culture is Evil, regardless of how you want to spin it. In fact, I'd argue that most people who commit such Evil do know exactly what they are doing and will react defensively if confronted with their actions and the Golden Rule. In fact, they often have their own internal critics, too.

If you could show that the members of that society hated what they were doing, did it only out of necessity (rather than indifference or enjoyment), and looked for ways to end what they were doing, then I might buy the arguement that they were Good in a D&D or even real world sense.

Don't forget point of reference when you are talking about Morality. Just because some one is incurably evil doesnt mean they arent valuable members of the community.

The point of reference for talking about morality in this particular case is the definitions provided in the PHB and SRD. As for being a valuable member of the community, Neutral people will take the pragmatic approach of weighing their value to society just as they'll take a pragmatic approach to a lot of other things. Good, on the other hand and in D&D terms, will not.

 

[Mallus]

In my game, the PCs exterminated an entire goblin lair, including the women and children. They did so because my setting's goblins are inherently Evil and cannot be reformed and they posed a threat to nearby settlements. Did they enjoy it. Not at all. Rather than cheering as the last goblin fell, they all just kinda sat there silently and haven't really talked about it since. It wasn't really fun for the players or their characters. Somehow, I don't think that's how an Evil character would react. Good should not get pleasure out of killing, in my opinion, though it may find pleasure in defeating Evil.

Not to sound overwhelming snarky, but what's your point here? That heroic fantasy is all about playing grim, unenjoyable killers in a brutally Manichean universe? I thought most people wanted to emulate LotR or The Princess Bride??

Seriously, if it seemed like the group didn't enjoy it, do you consider it a successful scenario? I'm all for moral quandries in games, but this doesn't look like one. The was no choice involved, since they knew the goblins where beyond redemption. So they did the "Good" thing by going through the motions and slaughtering them down to the last child...

I'll give you this, its an interesting exercise probing the outer boundries of fun...

 

[John Morrow]

Not to sound overwhelming snarky, but what's your point here? That heroic fantasy is all about playing grim, unenjoyable killers in a brutally Manichean universe? I thought most people wanted to emulate LotR or The Princess Bride??

That is absolutley a fair point.

Not at all, which is why they've only run into one situation where killing the women and children of an enemy was a real option. I wouldn't want to run a whole game like that. In fact, you'll notice that the Orcs in LotR spring from the ground and have no women and children and it simply doesn't come up in The Princess Bride at all. This is being discussed in another threat about how monsters reproduce, by the way.

The BoED/BoVD interpretation of Good and Evil, by the way, says that they should spare the women and children. That's a perfectly valid interpretation of Good, too, and this would certainly be a good reason for a GM to favor that approach. If I have to do it again (or revise my setting), I may switch over to that approach. I'll think it over when this campaign is done.

Basically, Good isn't heartless by nature and asking them to kill relatively harmless women and children goblins is heartless. It sounded good in theory but I role-played the goblins well enough that it was more disturbing than I thought it would be. Perhaps if I hadn't humanized them so much, it would have been easier. But in the big scheme of things, I think I'm happier that it troubled everyone than I would be if it didn't.

Seriously, if it seemed like the group didn't enjoy it, do you consider it a successful scenario? I'm all for moral quandries in games, but this doesn't look like one. The was no choice involved, since they knew the goblins where beyond redemption. So they did the "Good" thing by going through the motions and slaughtering them down to the last child...

Well, they enjoyed it from a role-playing sense (I have a lot of in-character players who play for that sort of role-playing) but not from a "happy-happy-joy-joy" back-slapping and high-fiving sense. FYI, they probably could have walked away if they really wanted to but the goblins did push the point by feebly attacking them. Even then, they could have let them go but it wasn't really a desirable option, since there were so many of them and they grow up quickly.

I'll give you this, its an interesting exercise probing the outer boundries of fun...

It happened once and it would certainly get old if I repeated it every session. The other women and children goblinoids that they've killed since were actively manacing them and threatening so it was a bit different in many ways. Part of what made the goblins so surprising to them was that I played them as thoroughly Evil and without redeeming features.

Once the party had killed all the combatant males, the females were hold up in their living quarters with the children. The females pushed their own children into the PCs in hopes of softening them up a bit (they didn't). After all the children were dead, the largest females shoved the smallest females through and so on until they found the last two hiding in a restroom area and dispatched them as they attacked. I suppose you could argue that since the goblins attacked them, they were fighting in self defense but the goblin children and women were never really that much of a threat to the party.

By the way, yes, I can explain exactly how goblins survive despite being that cruel to their own children. Basically female goblins have children as a way to create minions to help them and their children stick to their mothers because no other mother will trust them or want them. As soon as they grow up enough to survive on their own, they do. The male goblins simply impregnate the females and, in turn, use the children as part of their minions once they grow up enough to fight. They don't have a loving family life and giving them one won't change them. They're nasty that way by nature.