D&D 5E Next session a character might die. Am I being a jerk?

[Todd Roybark]

I would say this instead:
“One other simple answer to all of this. What role do monsters, including orcs, fill in the fiction of YOUR game.”

A good game, is a good game, regardless if you are playing a 1e style..Goblinoids (including Orcs) are irredeemably evil, or an Eberron style, all humanoids are equal game.

I don’t care about Oerth Orcs, in a Eberron game, from a practical stand point.

 

[pemerton]

The Conan stories are largely amoral, (some might argue immoral, )

I think the Conan stories are actually quite moral. In Phoenix on the Sword an ancient prophet/saint bestows a blessing to let the rightful king defeat an acnient evil threat to the land. In Tower of the Elephant Conan starts out with the goal of stealing jewels but ends up liberating a slave from an evil oppressor. In The Scarlet Citadel he gets his freedom in part as a result of someone trying to get vengeance on him (karma!) and then by freeing Pelias gets the means he needs to return to Aquilonia.

It's different from JRRT, but it's not amoral.

Your foeman, is your foeman in these stories due to opposition of the protagonist’s goals, not due to some cosmic, inherent blemish of evil.

I think this is an important and highly-overlooked category in D&D. I started a thread about it a few years ago. Here is the gist of it:

I find this a curious thing. I expect cultists to be evil, and naturally evil overlords are evil. But it is strange that these adventures seem to feel the need to present what are essentially politial conflicts - who is going to control some important asset whose heritage (and the entitlements to which that gives rise) is contested? - are framed, simply via the alignment labelling of NPCs, as moral conflicts.

It also rules out what would otherwise be quite cool possibilities: one of the NPC samurai, say, challenging a PC samurai or kensai to a duel to see who gets to fulfil his/her duty; or the attacking viking NPCs joking cheerfully (rather than cynically or brutally) about which of the combatants is going to dispatch the other to the halls of the dead.

I think the original DMG talked about the possibility of two LG countries going to war because they can't find a way to reconcile their apparently conflicting interests. Whether or not that makes sense, it seems odd that these modules don't even seem interested in thinking about ways that NPCs might find themselves at odds with the PCs (out of duty, out of passion, etc) even though they are not evil.

 

[Todd Roybark]

In Queen of the Black Coast, Conan joins the Pirate Queen, whom is, indisputably, slaughtering whole villages for booty, just slaughtered the entire crew of the Argus, the vessel that rescued him from an unnamed city, under, I might add, the threat of Conan, saying:
“By Crom, man, if you don’t get under way, I’ll drench this galley in the blood of its crew!”

Why was Conan fleeing? Conan had just killed the Chief Magistrate, and probably the whole courtroom, to avoid testifying against a friend.

Ohh, why does Conan join with the rapacious Pirate Queen, that just murdered his rescuers?....because she was quite Sexy.

Conan, does what he wants, regardless of the outcome. Amoral at best, immoral at worst.

@pemerton, feel free to start a separate thread on this topic. I think it would be fun, but this thread is probably not the correct venue, by Crom!

 

[pemerton]

@Todd Roybark, I'll agree that Conan's personality and thematic surrounding are not constant from story to story.

 

[billd91]

How is my analysis of my own personal reasons for leaving 2nd Edition ‘dubious’.
Are you, @bild91 claiming I am not self aware?

Are you claiming that 5e D&D should only support One Style of Gaming?
I’m not now, nor have ever, said that. Neither has Oofta, from what I have read from his posts.

Are you claiming that the philosophy of The Balance, as described in MToF, does not cast Devils, Illithids, and Gith races as necessary and sometimes countervailing forces?.

If you find that all to be ‘dubious’, I am curious as in how?

Wow, are you filled with assumptions...

I can’t speak to why you stopped playing AD&D and don’t really care. But you are the one asserting that non-relative morality is an existential threat for D&D and that it will cause it to lose the bloom off the rose. Yet more than 40 years from first publication, with good, evil, law, and chaos still in the game, it’s blooming like gangbusters. So I’m pretty sure your existential threat analysis is not merely dubious (I was trying to soften the argument), it’s just plain wrong.

 

[Todd Roybark]

Sigh...I was full of questions, as your point and intent were unclear.

Questions answered, you just seem full of rage.

I forgive you, times are tough.

Yet more than 40 years from first publication, with good, evil, law, and chaos still in the game, it’s blooming like gangbusters.

This is your response?!? Otay, dude..keep on rockin those non-sequiturs. The fact is, that above, you stated I said the opposite of what I actually wrote....must be an Illusionary Script spell targeting your screen.

I might put this on a T-Shirt:

Alignment, still in the game; you can’t detect it, protect against it, it has near zero
mechanical impact, and roleplay-wise has been superseded by Bonds, Flaws, and Ideals.

But you are correct, it is still in the game. Was anyone arguing it shouldn’t be?

Sincerely, bild91, stay safe! I’m using my action, to now Disengage.

 

[Coroc]

Oh, goodness, it is not independent. There's countries all over the world that we can look at and go, "Geeze, they say it is okay to do that?" Our ideas of what are acceptable acts are generally based in those cultural parameters you mention. There is, in fact, nowhere else for those ideas to come from!

Yes, we all have a general idea that killing folks is bad. But the devil is in the details, and there's loads of details.

Ok, ok, of course having some ethic baseline derived from religion or tradition helps. Still also most animals do not kill their own kind (with some notable exceptions, mostly to enforce survival of the own gene pool like lions killing cubs not their own or accidental lethal outcomes of mating rivals fighting over a female).

With humans you have got empathy on top of that, and I think that one is independent of social or religious standards and norms. In fact I would rather say that according standards out of benevolent religions or social norms are just that empathy and social behavior postulated as to be followed, because god likes it or because it is the law.

Such behavior makes sense especially for humans, who are "herd animals". Killing each other weakens the herd. So even from a pure survival standpoint it is favorable to follow this code.

But what I would be far more interested in than this philosophic discussion, is your opinion on the behavior of the paladin in OPs original question. As stated above, I see the necromancer doing his thing, but should be getting the evil alignment if he does not have it already.
But the real bad guy here is the paladin not acting or reacting who should get the visit from the revenant.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Ah.. so your Good aligned churches are just as geocidal as the Evil things they fight.

Whats the difference? One wears white and the other black?

Good aligned deities create good things. Good things want to create and build harmonious societies. Evil aligned deities create evil things. Evil things want to destroy and inflict suffering. This is why the Good deities want to destroy the works of Evil and the Evil deities want to destroy the works of Good. Corellon does not want to reform Gruumsh's children; he wants to rid the world of them.

It really depends on your setting. Sounds like you're so used to your setting have orcs just be really ugly humans who were raised badly that you assume that's how they work in every setting, but it needn't be so.

What if an orc is the sort of creature that, if raised by elven parents since a baby, and taught to care for nature and all living things, will inevitably hear the call of Gruumsh in his soul at puberty, murder his parents, and eat their hearts?

 

[Umbran]

How is my analysis of my own personal reasons for leaving 2nd Edition ‘dubious’.

It isn't your analysis of your reasons that is dubious. Your attachment of those reasons to the longevity of the game is dubious.

That one dude left the game for a particular reason does not mean many others would leave the game for that same reason. You need something more solid to bridge from your anecdotal experience to the experiences of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

 

[Oofta]

I'm reminded of an old joke about a man asking a woman if she'll sleep with him for a million dollars.

Spoiler

She thinks about it and says "Okay."
He then asks her if she'll do it for a dollar.
She get upset, asking him "What kind of woman do you think I am!"
The man replies "We've already determined what kind of woman you are, now we're just negotiating price."

If some sentient creatures can be inherently evil then we're just negotiating when it's going to be okay for sentient creatures to be inherently evil.

The answer to that is going to vary by campaign and personal preference.