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

[pemerton]

Suppose that one is playing in an AD&D game, where the GM uses the option of having 1 in 4 ruffians ("fellows of shabby appearance and mean disposition" ) that are encounered in a city or town be orcs, half-orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds etc.

Five percent of daytime and 7% of nighttime encounters are with ruffians, and cheks are to be made every half-hour of game time. So in an urban-based campaign, the PCs might end up encountering quite a number of such fellows.

In that context, I would be surprised if it was treated as the norm to kill every orc encountered. Of course wariness would be in order, and combat with them might well occur - perhaps frequently, depending on how the goals of the ruffians and the PCs relate to one another. But one can't just go through the town cutting down every ruffian encountered!

This is the sort of conideration that leads me to assert that it is not central to the traditions of D&D that orcs are, per se, permissible targets for killing. That depends on the sort of game being played. An urban game of the sort I've just outlined will typically not be a game of "moral certainty" in which orcs are default targets for lethal violence. But such a game isn't any sort of significant departure from the canons of D&D.

 

[Umbran]

In LotR Book III, Saruman also sets out a very permissive theory of authorisation of soldiers to kill

While not strictly fantasy, we can also refer to Shakespeare:

Henry V, Act 4, Scene 1:
Henry: ... Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.

 

[Flamestrike]

It's not like the Orcs take prisoners, for the most part.

Which is due to the Orcs being (baseline) evil. Orcs tend not to take prisoners, because Orcs tend to be evil. Those they do take, tend to get treated very poorly indeed (again - because evil).

Good aligned soldiers would take prisoners, and treat them with mercy, dignity and respect. Even at their own expense. Because 'good'.

I'm struggling to see the difference between your evil combatants (who pillage, kill, take no prisoners etc) and your goodly combatants (who pillage, kill and take no prisoners. etc).

Seriously; it seems like your morally good people are identical to the evil ones; they just wear white instead of black.

 

[Flamestrike]

No. It tells you that the word "murder" is context-dependent, relevant locally, to a given time and place, rather than it being one thing across all game tables.

Look, i'll refrain from using the term murder then, but (without getting too postmodern) surely that exact same critique can be applied to any word?

Literally, it's now impossible (for example) to say that Orcs 'murder, rape and enslave' because within their culture, none of those things are actual crimes within their legal code, and lack any meaningful definition.

Does that mean that Orcs are not murdering, raping and enslaving because within their culture, those things dont exist in their legal codes and thus lack the sort of precise definition you're after here?

 

[Flamestrike]

Nothing in the MM says that.

Volos says that. Expressly. I provided the page number a few posts back.

 

[pemerton]

Which is due to the Orcs being (baseline) evil. Orcs tend not to take prisoners, because Orcs tend to be evil. Those they do take, tend to get treated very poorly indeed (again - because evil).

Good aligned soldiers would take prisoners, and treat them with mercy, dignity and respect. Even at their own expense. Because 'good'.

I'm struggling to see the difference between your evil combatants (who pillage, kill, take no prisoners etc) and your goodly combatants (who pillage, kill and take no prisoners. etc).

Seriously; it seems like your morally good people are identical to the evil ones; they just wear white instead of black.

I've just spent the last couple of hours re-reading bits of LotR.

Here is JRRT's account of the end of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields:

Hard fighting and long labour that had still, for the Southrons were bold men and grim, and fierce in despair; and the Easterlings were strong and war-hardened and asked for no quarter. And so in this place and that, by burned homestead or barn, upon hillock or mound, under wall or on field, still they gathered and rallied and fought until the day wore away.

Then the Sun went at lat behind Mondolluin and filled all the sky with a great burning, so that the hills and the mountains were dyed as with blood; fire glowed in the River, and the grass of the Pelennor lay read in the nightfall. And in that hour the great Battle of the field of Gondor was over; and not one living foe was left within the circle of the Rammas. All were slain save those who fled to die, or to drown in the red foam of the River. Few ever came eastward to Morgul or Mordor; and to the land of the Haradrim came only a tale from far off: a rumour of the wrath and terror of Gondor.​

Do orcs seek quarter? Do they surrender and submit to "benevolent quarantine"? If they are known to be treacherous, are those who fight them obliged to offer terms? And that's before we think about the full measure of retirbutive violence that might be justly inflicted upon orcs.

In the context of LotR, what primiarly distinguishes the soldiers of Gondor and Rohan from those of Mordor and its allies is that the former fight with justice on their side while the latter do not. The latter are invadiers and subjugators, and hence doubly liable to be killed (because liable both to defensive and retributive violence) while the former are defenders who fight in the name of the true king. That's not a trivial set of distinctions independent of the question of quarter.

Of course it's possible to dispute the permissibility of retributive violence, and also to insist on a stricter threshold for defensive violence. But D&D tends to default to standard fantasy tropes which include a high degree of permissiveness in both respects.

 

[Coroc]

She hasn't shown up again - we've move online and she hasn't joined in. New player, first character - wanting to be edgy or something. Ended up being ineffective and a distraction.

As I posted above, the necro has evil now as part of her alignment if on my table, but the real culprit is the pally imo. He should be the one the revenant has to target first and also he should become fallen as soon as the revenant strikes.

Only resolution I see is for the pally to get atonement.

 

[GreyLord]

People have different styles of play. This can be flavored by how they were originally introduced or how they wish to play the game. For example, in the 1e AD&D manual it says

Orcs are cruel and hate living things in general, but they particularly hate elves and will always attack them in preference to other creatures. They take slaves for work, food, and entertainment (torture, etc) but not elves whom they kill immediately.

For many, they would play the orcs just like that but with the emphasis that Orcs hate every living thing and thus are a plague upon anything that isn't an orc.

The goblin entry is not better, but does not make them hate all living things, just a step better where it states

They hate gnomes and dwarves and will attack them in preference to any other creature. All goblins are slave takers and fond of torture.

It sort of states ALL of them in that inclusion. Many groups played goblins and orcs in this manner, irredeemable creatures.

Many still play this way. That doesn't mean EVERYONE plays that way. In fact, if anything I think the various discussion shows that some groups play it very differently with some having it where simply killing creatures can be an evil act in and of itself.

There are many different interpretations and ways of playing the game. What may be irredeemable orcs that kill all things in a Mystara Campaign may be completely different than where orcs might be good and have characteristics of a good individual in the occasional find with a Icewind Dale game.

People have different types of games they want to play and monsters may be defined differently in how they are, their substance, and what they are composed of in different games and campaigns. Even games based on the core rulebooks can have very different interpretations from each other.

Take the AD&D descriptions from above. While many groups interpreted it as irredeemable characteristics that meant these monsters were to be slain on sight, others may have taken it to mean that these traits were not the ONLY traits and incorporated other cultural ideas and essences into theses monsters in their adventures. Perhaps the goblins loved torture and slavery, but there was a tribe that loved to torture and enslave evil creatures more than good, or any other variables.

It really falls upon the group to determine what type of game they wish to play at the beginning and ensure all participants know the expectations of the game. I don't see a problem with any of the various different styles of gaming, from the type where all monsters are to be slain (if they even can be slain) to where all things must be negotiated and talked to in order to find where on the spectrum of good an evil they lie on as long as all the group is in agreement and understand what the gaming expectations of the table (or in this current time of pandemic, their online gaming buddies) are.


Edit: I also do not think it has to be an either/or type situation. It does not have to be one end of the spectrum or the other. There are endless variations between the two. As long as the ENTIRE group understands and agrees upon the interpretations, I think any type of game in this manner is okay. The only time it is NOT okay is when the DM is trying to force them to play one way and the players understand it to be another and the DM plays dirty tricks on them due to these misunderstandings (causing Paladins to fall unexpectedly, causing AD&D assassins to suddenly become good, causing Clerics and Druids to lose their spells and powers due to actions that players thought were acceptable but a DM decided to say they weren't to the surprise of the players...etc...etc...etc). If the group agrees and understand to play one way or the other, it should be an acceptable way to play.

 

[Coroc]

....
"Genocide" and "murder" are words with moral and emotional weight to them. They do not have meaning totally separate from the moral framework of the culture in which they are used. In one culture an act may be murder, and in another that same act can be justifiable homicide, or self-defense.
....

Still in most civilized societies those concepts do exist IRL and pretty much independent of other cultural or religious parameters. And also the local law most often does not care if you are familiar with it, or if you are an outsider (aka Orc) for whom it is not a crime at all, or even the ethos to live out.
So it is pretty legitimate to talk of Orcs murdering/genociding other races, whereas a retributional military campaign would be legalized by natural law of a group/nation to defend itself versus an ongoing threat.
No one would call an all out war (including the orc women and children to deal with the danger once and for all), murder per se, from their point of view, no matter if the orcs would see it differently.
Noncombatants have always been victims of wars, no matter if intended or not

 

[Fenris-77]

I appreciate what you're doing. I'm attempting to respectfully disagree. I think that, as the game is presented, the metaphysical element supervenes entirely on the behavioural and dispositional elements that I'm talking about.

So Detect Evil or Know Alignment cast on an orc is (I assert) no different from the same cast on a Brigand (cf Bandit) or Pirate (cf Buccaneer) or random NPC who came up evil on the random alignment chart.

A Wand of Enemy Detection may of course give a different answer. But perhaps the same answer for Bandit and Buccaner as for Brigand and Pirate. And in the Dragon article I mentioned, discussing a paladin's response to neutral NPCs, Roger E Moore says

Of course, when confronted by a band of wild bandits or buccaneers (all Neutral) you can’t just punch them in the nose and settle things. Again, the sword might be a reasonable answer​

(The reference to punching in the nose follows from an earlier anecdote about how a paladin in a game Moore was GMing dealt with a dryad who tried to Charm party members.)

There is a difference between the orc and those random humans vis a vis detect evil or know alignment (I submit). In the case of the orc, it would be surprising, perhaps very surprising for the answer to be anything but evil, because the answer is generally going to be evil. So if I were a PC and I wanted to determine, for example, the extent to which I thought I could bargain with an orc in good faith rather than fighting it, or ally with it and have some hopes of not being betrayed, the spell is, almost exclusively, going to tell me what I already know - that the orc is evil, and trust is not a real option barring significant self interest and even then only as far as that goes. However, in the case of the bandit, there is a much more legitimate question involved, as the possible answers are significantly more varied, and more likely to return a result that might mitigate for a non-violent answer, even if we assume that results from the good column are vanishingly unlikely.

I would agree that the behavioral and dispositional elements play a key, if not foundational role in that ethical heuristic. However, I think expectations also play a role - the orc is expected to be evil, while the bandit may or may not be. Barring evidence of behavior there's no way to be sure with the bandit, but one can be far more sure, if not positive, about the orc. Since it is quite possible for the behavioral element to be missing we are left with the dispositional, at least in some cases. Once you factor in genre expectations, and assuming that the setting hasn't already modified the PCs view of orcs, I think the bandit and orc will be viewed differently by a given PC, or more specifically the the expectations of behavior will be different.

To allude back to the distinction between manslaughter, murder and justified killing: different legal systems will draw the boundaries of defensive violence in different places - eg what is legitimate self-defence, what is excessive self-defence (which is, roughly at least, a form of manslaughter) and what is outright murder? Many US jurisidictions are, by my standards, very permissive in this respect but still I think draw these boundaries.

These distinctions I would argue, are only present in the fiction to the extent that they are already present in the players mind. They play a role, but I don't think it's a fictional role, or at least not generally. Obviously it's possible to role play a character with differential views on the importance of these distinctions, but I don't think that is the common case. I also think genre expectations play a role here as well. In many games, and this is supported by a lot of articles on running games, the enemy does not often surrender, and players are thus not often faced with the prospect of what to do with helpless prisoners. I would not be surprised if an unexpected surrender by orcs put a lot of players in a pickle because all of a sudden the issues you raise above come into play. However, I also think that in many games, enough for me to risk calling it common, that players are not asked to make the distinction very often.

Perhaps we should take a moment to set aside murderhobo games as examples for this discussion. Those do exist, but I don't think there's a lot of profit in including them, as I don't think that ethical decision making plays even a minor role in how those games proceed.

Serious theoretical discussions of defensive violence need to consider such factors as proportionality, necessity (eg how "anticipatory" can such violence be?), motivation (eg if I kill my nemesis out of a desire for vengeance, but - as it happens though unknown to me - happen to prevent said nemesis killing another person at that very moment, am I to be condmened as a murderer or to enjoy the justification of defensive violence?), etc. I wouldn't expect most D&D games to get into that sort of detail, but we can reconstruct the implicit theory that is evinced by the way such games actually proceed.

When it comes to killing orcs, most D&D games seem to set a very low threshold for necessity, connected i part to a very permissive conception of anticipatory self-defence and/or justified warfare. That is, the mere presence of orcs is taken to create a threat that warrants the use of violence to elminate them.

I completely agree with the second paragraph, I just disagree at least in part about why that's the case. I would lean more into the dispositional half of you argument and index that to expectations based on alignment. I'm not really sure how we are supposed to view expectations about alignment from expectations about behavior as significantly different either, as the two are essentially the same. We could argue about primacy I suppose, but I don't know that's it's important to separate "orcs usually act in X fashion which I see as evil" from "I expect orcs to act in X fashion because they are evil". The difference becomes importance once you have actual behavior, naturally, but at the level of expectation, which is where many decisions about anticipatory self defense could be made, I'm not sure it's a distinction with importance.

Again, my advice for games that want to strengthen the veneer of moral permissibility without making anything too complicated would be to reinforce this by having the orcs be raiders of the Westfold (and perhaps who do not spare non-combatants, though that might also be unwanted grimness for some tables).

For sure, but I don't think a lot of games would have to reinforce this, as for a lot of games this would be the baseline expectation.