D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[Shardstone]

Revisiting this concept, I think a great way to create this kind of set-up is just to establish what the consequences are if the faction doesn't exist. Doing so for evil is pretty easy; doing so for good risks falling into cliche (oh no, order is getting too orderly again!).

I think a good consequence for "Good" being too dominant is that people can really only remember their lifetimes and maybe a generation or two back. In other words, past threats get forgotten. It's not that peaceful times make for weak people, it's that peaceful times make it easy to forget what is necessary to maintain peace: strength, wisdom, vigiliance.

Such a situation may not sound too bad, at worst it may be cyclical, but that changes when you think about the scope D&D acts on. If Good gets caught slackin', then there's potential for things like extinction events -- dark gods ending the world, blobs of annihilation, great wyrms destroying civilizations, etc. So total might the destruction be that recovery will never be possible.

To that end, the neutral faction may try to create controlled scenarios in which evil is empowered so as to challenge good, and then switching to helping good overcome that evil. It is a very manipulative and morally grey set-up, and I'm sure you could make valid arguments for this status quo vs this status quo not existing. But this, IMO, is what I think is a great way to go about creating this situation of Muscular Neutrality.

The heroes finally kill the lich, only to realize that the lich was created for them to kill. Does that make the creators of the lich just as bad? Maybe worse? But now the heroes are strong, and they inspired their people, and now new heroes inspired by them will train and go out into the world. So there is a potentially a netgood. This works especially well if you have a character that is a Prophet/Diviner/Oracle in the muscular neutrality side.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Revisiting this concept, I think a great way to create this kind of set-up is just to establish what the consequences are if the faction doesn't exist. Doing so for evil is pretty easy; doing so for good risks falling into cliche (oh no, order is getting too orderly again!).

I think a good consequence for "Good" being too dominant is that people can really only remember their lifetimes and maybe a generation or two back. In other words, past threats get forgotten. It's not that peaceful times make for weak people, it's that peaceful times make it easy to forget what is necessary to maintain peace: strength, wisdom, vigiliance.

Such a situation may not sound too bad, at worst it may be cyclical, but that changes when you think about the scope D&D acts on. If Good gets caught slackin', then there's potential for things like extinction events -- dark gods ending the world, blobs of annihilation, great wyrms destroying civilizations, etc. So total might the destruction be that recovery will never be possible.

To that end, the neutral faction may try to create controlled scenarios in which evil is empowered so as to challenge good, and then switching to helping good overcome that evil. It is a very manipulative and morally grey set-up, and I'm sure you could make valid arguments for this status quo vs this status quo not existing. But this, IMO, is what I think is a great way to go about creating this situation of Muscular Neutrality.

The heroes finally kill the lich, only to realize that the lich was created for them to kill. Does that make the creators of the lich just as bad? Maybe worse? But now the heroes are strong, and they inspired their people, and now new heroes inspired by them will train and go out into the world. So there is a potentially a netgood. This works especially well if you have a character that is a Prophet/Diviner/Oracle in the muscular neutrality side.

This is a good analysis, but as noted before, it more or less hinges on one key problematic assumption:

Good is too stupid to actually pursue Good.

"Muscular" Neutrals are the real Good faction by these lights, and the "Good" faction is made up of idiots, blowhards, and "weak" people. Only the mentally/morally strong "Muscular" Neutrals are capable of making the difficult, but factually necessary, choices to allow Good to truly thrive.

More or less, it's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, except that instead of every citizen of Omelas being "in" on the secret depravity beneath the shining edifice, only the special ruling elite--who are capable of understanding that the pursuit of unalloyed Good is actually destructive--are "in the know", with the wider "Good" masses being allowed to accept the fiction that their efforts are sufficient and worthy and, well, actually Good, not merely superficially resembling Good.

I have yet to find a really good approach in this vein that doesn't end up painting the "Muscular" Neutrals as the true heroes of the story--the true, nuanced, wise, effective Good--with the so-called "Good" faction as at best useful idiots, and at worst, dogmatic crusaders who would destroy everything worthwhile and noble in their unthinking crusade.

Personally, I think a more effective approach is to distance the "Muscular" Neutrals from such high-minded interests. That will, most likely, make them seem Pretty Damn Dickish. I don't think there's really a way around that. That's sort of the point. The "Muscular" Neutrals need to come across as selfish, ruthless, and dispassionate, but not so badly as to be truly Evil; but they also need to come across as sincere, contributing, and concerned, but not so severely that they usurp Good's position to become the real, true, wise Good.

So, for example. Maybe Good is really Good, and Evil is really Evil. But when great heroes clash with great villains, this creates some form of energy or material which is incredibly useful. It's not mandatory. We're not talking "this creates a medicine that cures all diseases" or the like. It's just really nice to have. Maybe it's a secret, maybe it's known but most people don't know where it comes from. They just know that it's useful.

The "Muscular" Neutrals then become self-interested jerks...but ones that benefit from, and thus wish to preserve, most of the things Good produces. Good creates places that are legitimately nice to live in, and which are likely to respect the Neutrals' rights and property etc. Evil may be occasionally useful as a tool, but it's much too spicy to ever rely on. Good is reliable in a way Evil isn't. That doesn't mean Good can't turn against these Neutrals, they totally can, especially if Good learns how the "Muscular" Neutral is manipulating things to create more empowered (but defeatable) Evils in order to collect more of the resource that those clashes generate.

Under this notion, the smartest Good folks, who have figured out the "Muscular" Neutrals, have a difficult choice to make: undermine forces that are clearly willing to work against Good when it suits them, but who mostly do in fact help Good because Good > Evil for most of their interests...or oppose them even though that guarantees pushing the "Muscular" Neutrals toward Evil as their only remaining option for alliance, thereby directly strengthening Evil rather than merely indirectly doing so. (That's how you do real moral dilemmas, folks!) For the average everyday person, "Muscular" Neutrality probably doesn't even appear on their radar and neither the properly Good nor the "Muscular" Neutrals would want this sort of information to get out to the general public anyway.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Slavery can be voluntary.

No, it cannot, unless one is using the term purely metaphorically--in which case, it isn't actually slavery. Actual, real slavery--which is what you literally referred to it as before, up to and including saying things like "oh so I guess Good is in favor of slavery now?"--is explicitly something involuntary, enforced through threats of violence or realized violence.

"the practice or institution of holding people as chattel involuntarily and under threat of violence"
"the state of a person who is held in forced servitude"
"Slavery, bondage, servitude refer to involuntary subjection to another or others. Slavery emphasizes the idea of complete ownership and control by an owner or master: to be sold into slavery."

Slavery is involuntary. Expecting certain kinds of labor before one is willing to provide certain kinds of credit--be it purely pecuniary credit, or the intangible credit of reputation--is simply the nature of exchange. If another person refuses to credit you with the reputation of being the best of neighbors because they do not believe your behavior has merited such credit, that is not, in any way, a reflection of that person somehow "enslaving" you to their will.

The fact that you want something specific from them--being credited with a particular kind of reputation--in no way whatsoever impinges upon them to grant it to you. Per any form of libertarian philosophy I can find (which is pretty obviously what you're applying here, whether you intend it or not), at least libertarian philosophy that actually takes its premises seriously, you would be the one in the wrong for demanding that others give you a reputation they did not freely and willingly assign to you themselves. All association must be voluntary. If you are not willing to partner with others in the way those others expect, that just means you don't get any benefits arising from associating with them. They don't owe you anything, not least a reputation as the best of neighbors.

 

[Shardstone]

This is a good analysis, but as noted before, it more or less hinges on one key problematic assumption:

Good is too stupid to actually pursue Good.

"Muscular" Neutrals are the real Good faction by these lights, and the "Good" faction is made up of idiots, blowhards, and "weak" people. Only the mentally/morally strong "Muscular" Neutrals are capable of making the difficult, but factually necessary, choices to allow Good to truly thrive.

More or less, it's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, except that instead of every citizen of Omelas being "in" on the secret depravity beneath the shining edifice, only the special ruling elite--who are capable of understanding that the pursuit of unalloyed Good is actually destructive--are "in the know", with the wider "Good" masses being allowed to accept the fiction that their efforts are sufficient and worthy and, well, actually Good, not merely superficially resembling Good.

I have yet to find a really good approach in this vein that doesn't end up painting the "Muscular" Neutrals as the true heroes of the story--the true, nuanced, wise, effective Good--with the so-called "Good" faction as at best useful idiots, and at worst, dogmatic crusaders who would destroy everything worthwhile and noble in their unthinking crusade.

Personally, I think a more effective approach is to distance the "Muscular" Neutrals from such high-minded interests. That will, most likely, make them seem Pretty Damn Dickish. I don't think there's really a way around that. That's sort of the point. The "Muscular" Neutrals need to come across as selfish, ruthless, and dispassionate, but not so badly as to be truly Evil; but they also need to come across as sincere, contributing, and concerned, but not so severely that they usurp Good's position to become the real, true, wise Good.

So, for example. Maybe Good is really Good, and Evil is really Evil. But when great heroes clash with great villains, this creates some form of energy or material which is incredibly useful. It's not mandatory. We're not talking "this creates a medicine that cures all diseases" or the like. It's just really nice to have. Maybe it's a secret, maybe it's known but most people don't know where it comes from. They just know that it's useful.

The "Muscular" Neutrals then become self-interested jerks...but ones that benefit from, and thus wish to preserve, most of the things Good produces. Good creates places that are legitimately nice to live in, and which are likely to respect the Neutrals' rights and property etc. Evil may be occasionally useful as a tool, but it's much too spicy to ever rely on. Good is reliable in a way Evil isn't. That doesn't mean Good can't turn against these Neutrals, they totally can, especially if Good learns how the "Muscular" Neutral is manipulating things to create more empowered (but defeatable) Evils in order to collect more of the resource that those clashes generate.

Under this notion, the smartest Good folks, who have figured out the "Muscular" Neutrals, have a difficult choice to make: undermine forces that are clearly willing to work against Good when it suits them, but who mostly do in fact help Good because Good > Evil for most of their interests...or oppose them even though that guarantees pushing the "Muscular" Neutrals toward Evil as their only remaining option for alliance, thereby directly strengthening Evil rather than merely indirectly doing so. (That's how you do real moral dilemmas, folks!) For the average everyday person, "Muscular" Neutrality probably doesn't even appear on their radar and neither the properly Good nor the "Muscular" Neutrals would want this sort of information to get out to the general public anyway.

I think I like the idea of a conflict where the Muscular Neutrals pop up and are doing all this, but Good isn't actually stupid, the Muscular Neutrals just think they are or will become so over time. This paints the Muscular Neutrals as manipulative and conniving at worst and stripping you of agency and overly controlling at best. It makes the whole thing murky, which IMO is the point of a Muscular Neutral faction.

Your approach is also pretty good, it'd be fun to paly out in a story.

 

[Distracted DM]

Moorcock's Law, Chaos, and The Balance could sort of weigh in here- in that "The Balance" was an active force, and the eternal champion served it.

The thing is, The Balance was, when it acted, almost always acting on the side of Law... Because while uttermost law would be bad, Law wouldn't usually be actively plotting to completely throw the universe into... Chaos. Basically, Chaos was always screwing stuff up, while Law would most be on the defensive.

While Law =/= Good and Chaos=/= Evil, one can draw comparisons here.

I think there's a 3e description of alignment somewhere saying that Neutral folks would prefer Good neighbors over Evil because Good neighbors were less likely to screw with them.

I like the idea of muscular neutrality though, at least as a dramatic concept, the kind of thing that would make an interesting faction/cause etc. It seems like a very strange way of thinking and it seems like the kind of thing someone would have to devote their life to if they're an active participant in it- sort of cultist-ish. Could be an interesting anti-villain.

 

[Steampunkette]

Put simply: Neutral characters are, inevitably, morally indifferent. It's how neutrality works. They allow evil to thrive and hold power because they just don't really care. Sure, they'd prefer if the people in their life were good, but don't want to put forth the effort to make it so.

Muscular Neutrals, on the other hand, have got to be wrong to the point of being self-blinding.

Anything else relies on either the defeat of evil resulting in a fail-state for the universe, or "Good" to secretly be worse than "Evil" which is nonsensical at best.

For Muscular Neutrals to "Work" they have to be so disconnected from human experience as to not understand that the differences between good and evil aren't just as irrelevant to the fate of the world as apples and oranges having different flavors. They've got to be so blitheringly maladapted as to think there's no meaningful difference between suffering and joy because "Both of them are feelings and feelings are valid".

They've somehow got to believe that everyone has the right to be evil and commit murders and assaults and thefts and atrocities and that stopping them from doing so is only appropriate when it gets "Out of Hand". And if you try to stop them -before- it gets out of hand, Muscular Neutral will stop you from stopping them because your "Goodness" is getting out of hand.

Maybe it's because they're uncaring of the victims and care only about their little slice of things? A circle of "Muscularly Neutral" druids doesn't care if there's a bunch of evil armies coming to destroy the innocent, or armies of good seeking to destroy all the evil. But if -either- group touches -their- trees, they'll kill them all because it's "Upsetting the Balance of Nature" in this single particular forest which is the only thing they care about.

In short: Muscular Neutrality can almost never be "Right". It must be Ignorant, Unfeeling, or Alien.

 

[Distracted DM]

Put simply: Neutral characters are, inevitably, morally indifferent. It's how neutrality works. They allow evil to thrive and hold power because they just don't really care. Sure, they'd prefer if the people in their life were good, but don't want to put forth the effort to make it so.

Muscular Neutrals, on the other hand, have got to be wrong to the point of being self-blinding.

Anything else relies on either the defeat of evil resulting in a fail-state for the universe, or "Good" to secretly be worse than "Evil" which is nonsensical at best.

For Muscular Neutrals to "Work" they have to be so disconnected from human experience as to not understand that the differences between good and evil aren't just as irrelevant to the fate of the world as apples and oranges having different flavors. They've got to be so blitheringly maladapted as to think there's no meaningful difference between suffering and joy because "Both of them are feelings and feelings are valid".

They've somehow got to believe that everyone has the right to be evil and commit murders and assaults and thefts and atrocities and that stopping them from doing so is only appropriate when it gets "Out of Hand". And if you try to stop them -before- it gets out of hand, Muscular Neutral will stop you from stopping them because your "Goodness" is getting out of hand.

Maybe it's because they're uncaring of the victims and care only about their little slice of things? A circle of "Muscularly Neutral" druids doesn't care if there's a bunch of evil armies coming to destroy the innocent, or armies of good seeking to destroy all the evil. But if -either- group touches -their- trees, they'll kill them all because it's "Upsetting the Balance of Nature" in this single particular forest which is the only thing they care about.

In short: Muscular Neutrality can almost never be "Right". It must be Ignorant, Unfeeling, or Alien.

Your "in short" is pretty on-point, though I think I'd say misguided instead of ignorant. But "alien" is definitely my top selection.

 

[Hriston]

Slavery can be voluntary.

Hogwash! Try reading a dictionary.

 

[Shardstone]

Moorcock's Law, Chaos, and The Balance could sort of weigh in here- in that "The Balance" was an active force, and the eternal champion served it.

The thing is, The Balance was, when it acted, almost always acting on the side of Law... Because while uttermost law would be bad, Law wouldn't usually be actively plotting to completely throw the universe into... Chaos. Basically, Chaos was always screwing stuff up, while Law would most be on the defensive.

While Law =/= Good and Chaos=/= Evil, one can draw comparisons here.

I think there's a 3e description of alignment somewhere saying that Neutral folks would prefer Good neighbors over Evil because Good neighbors were less likely to screw with them.

I like the idea of muscular neutrality though, at least as a dramatic concept, the kind of thing that would make an interesting faction/cause etc. It seems like a very strange way of thinking and it seems like the kind of thing someone would have to devote their life to if they're an active participant in it- sort of cultist-ish. Could be an interesting anti-villain.

IMO it's a lot easier to make a muscular neutral concept in Law/Chaos as opposed to Good/Evil. Good and Evil are actually very vague concepts that are defined not by objective reality but by informed experience and culture. Law/Chaos, however, are inherent properties to the universe; structure and entropy, stability and change, etc etc.

 

[Shardstone]

Put simply: Neutral characters are, inevitably, morally indifferent. It's how neutrality works. They allow evil to thrive and hold power because they just don't really care. Sure, they'd prefer if the people in their life were good, but don't want to put forth the effort to make it so.

Muscular Neutrals, on the other hand, have got to be wrong to the point of being self-blinding.

Anything else relies on either the defeat of evil resulting in a fail-state for the universe, or "Good" to secretly be worse than "Evil" which is nonsensical at best.

For Muscular Neutrals to "Work" they have to be so disconnected from human experience as to not understand that the differences between good and evil aren't just as irrelevant to the fate of the world as apples and oranges having different flavors. They've got to be so blitheringly maladapted as to think there's no meaningful difference between suffering and joy because "Both of them are feelings and feelings are valid".

They've somehow got to believe that everyone has the right to be evil and commit murders and assaults and thefts and atrocities and that stopping them from doing so is only appropriate when it gets "Out of Hand". And if you try to stop them -before- it gets out of hand, Muscular Neutral will stop you from stopping them because your "Goodness" is getting out of hand.

Maybe it's because they're uncaring of the victims and care only about their little slice of things? A circle of "Muscularly Neutral" druids doesn't care if there's a bunch of evil armies coming to destroy the innocent, or armies of good seeking to destroy all the evil. But if -either- group touches -their- trees, they'll kill them all because it's "Upsetting the Balance of Nature" in this single particular forest which is the only thing they care about.

In short: Muscular Neutrality can almost never be "Right". It must be Ignorant, Unfeeling, or Alien.

I like this!