Paladins and Good Aligned Folk In War - Are Orc Children Slain?

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, in my game the killing of orcs is more tied to ideology than to good/evil. Mankind is a newcomer to the continent that orcs call home, but view it as their manifest destiny that they will conquer the entire continent. (Yes, humans are the aggressors...) Some of the paladins will join in the slaughter with grim determination - fueled by masacres that the orcs have perpetrated on encroaching human settlements. Others - primarilly the Order of The Sword - believe that orcs have souls, and so this is an opportunity to spread the faith to these benighted creatures. For this the Order of the Sword will be turned out of the central monotheistic religion to which they belong. (Sound familiar?) They will eventually be accepted back in, and the Primiarch will, after quite some time, issue an apologia. (Whoops! Sorry, you were right - orcs are people too...)

The Auld Grump

 

[MummyKitty]

Very interesting discussion. What occurs to me is that evil is not the act itself, it's the reason and motivation for doing it. The act of killing something is not evil; if you kill something in self-defense, I don't think you'd be considered evil. If you kill orc children for fun and amusement, that would probably be considered evil. But if you see them as a future threat to your society, killing them could be considered self defense.

 

[Turjan]

I see this first and foremost as a game. That's why I usually avoid situations that pose very tricky moral questions. This means that I construct principally two situations:

1. If I present a full enemy society, like a functioning orc cave complex, that doesn't only contain combatants but also elderly, children and other noncombatants, those will most probably surrender. A proper capitulation is something PCs can easily deal with. At least my players can .

2. The situation is such that a human town is regularly raided and destroyed by a neighbouring orc tribe, and every human who did not manage to flee the town gets eaten. This happens roughly every 10 to 15 years. In this case, I don't have any objections when the PCs use the famous words of the papal legate Arnaud: “Kill them all, for [God] knows His own”, where "[God]" represents your campaign specific deity.

I don't use any crying orc babies found on orc women that have been killed in the fight. Situations like that turn the D&D game in some kind of charity management game. It's not called "Orphanage Tycoon" for a reason .

 

[Aus_Snow]

I don't use any crying orc babies found on orc women that have been killed in the fight. Situations like that turn the D&D game in some kind of charity management game.

I don't think it needs to, personally. More on that in a moment.

It's not called "Orphanage Tycoon" for a reason

True. However, it's also not called 'Magic the Gathering' or say, 'Warhammer 40k'. . . or even 'MtG the RPG'. Or, for that matter, 'Psychopath: The Glorification'.


I seem to recall that even D&D Corebook #2 offers a number of 'options' (suggestions) for style of play, some of which are highly combative, others of which are less so.

By saying that, I am not attempting to claim the superiority of any one style of play, by the way. Not only would that inevitably produce unpleasant consequences, but I also just don't believe there to be a generally better or worse style in the first place.

For dealing with certain issues during play though, certain styles are correspondingly more or less suitable, including some that are not listed in the forementioned DMG 'shortlist'.


And besides, what's to stop a party of good-aligned adventurers from beating bloody everything except the helpless and/or redeemable? Best o' both worlds, surely.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I run a grittier campaign were sometimes the best thing you can do for those who would otherwise die from hunger or predation is a quick sword thrust that sends them to their gods. I don't believe it is realistic or even believable to hold the lands attacked by orc hordes responsible for the raising of orc infants. But if killing them is off limits, is it "good" to let them starve to death, get devoured by wandering beasts or freeze in the unforgiving winter if no one is around to take them in?

Ironically, at least for the ancients, when it came to their own children, the answer was often "yes." The preferred method of infanticide in ancient Greece and Rome (as well as one of them in modern China) appears to have been leaving infants on a hill or under a bridge to starve to death, be devoured by beasts, or freeze in the unforgiving winter. The times that you read about babies being put to the sword or dashed to death on the rocks, it's usually a conquering people dealing with their defeated enemies.

While these aren't pleasant facts and it would be stretching the definition of "good" to encompass them, it does suggest that a gritty, historically minded campaign could well believe that it is worse to kill orc babies directly than to leave them in the ruins of their village and amid the stinking corpses of their parents to starve to death.

 

[Turjan]

By saying that, I am not attempting to claim the superiority of any one style of play, by the way. Not only would that inevitably produce unpleasant consequences, but I also just don't believe there to be a generally better or worse style in the first place.

I agree. I hoped to make clear that I see that in a similar way by including two completely different examples of play style in my post. Both are complete opposites in their outcome (negotiation <-> extinction), but are both presented in a way that they don't present huge hurdles of personal engagement for the PCs/players.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I see this first and foremost as a game. That's why I usually avoid situations that pose very tricky moral questions. This means that I construct principally two situations:

1. If I present a full enemy society, like a functioning orc cave complex, that doesn't only contain combatants but also elderly, children and other noncombatants, those will most probably surrender. A proper capitulation is something PCs can easily deal with. At least my players can .

Note that the assumed "full enemy society" assumes that orcs are basically humans with fewer feats and different stat-mods (and different color skin). It's quite conceivable that someone could conceive of a full enemy society that does not present the elderly and where children are not really non-combatants. Herriman the Wise's storyhour, the Happenings of Lucifus Cray, Warlock, features an orc society where, at least elderly orcs unlikely to be able to fend for themselves would not be present and where orc children are unlikely to be strictly non-combatant. Likewise, Nemmerle's storyhour, Out of the Frying Pan featured a trip through an orc cave complex where the children were not presented as non-combatant.

Heck, even real life anthropology offers a few examples of societies without either group. Some groups of inuit, for instance would be without non-combatant elderly if adventurers began attacking them, and the Ik described in Collin Turnbull's the Mountain People had children who would not be non-combatant. Now, it's true that the Ik at the time of the Mountain people could not be described as a functional society, but there are two things to consider:
1. Creatures who are "usually" chaotic evil may have a different definition of functional than we do. (It may be that this different definition accounts for why orcs are often described as primitive and/or bestial).
2. All societies in real life are not functional by that definition. You don't need a functional society in order to loot and pillage. And, anyway, a lot of the most interesting things from a game perspective happen when societies do break down.

(For that matter, the assumption that women were non-combatants in ancient societies needs some revision in the case of sieges as it was fairly common for them to join the men in pitching anything heavy over the walls at their attackers. If I recall my Old Testament/Tanakh correctly, one of the ancient near-eastern leaders was killed when a woman tossed a millstone down on his group of soldiers assaulting the gate of a fortified town).

 

[Turjan]

Note that the assumed "full enemy society" assumes that orcs are basically humans with fewer feats and different stat-mods (and different color skin).

That's correct for my first example. Both my examples were chosen in a way that they actually represented a moral issue with possible implications for the alignment of the PCs. Both examples were additionally chosen in a way that the answer to this moral issue is not too difficult to find.

Enemies who only consist of combatants don't represent a moral issue, and that's why I didn't include any examples of this kind.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Either orcs are naturally evil due to divine mandate and their unbreakable innate character, or they're free willed sentients who have every chance of assimilating into a less evil culture if given the chance. If the first is true then allowing a single orc to survive might be an Evil act. If the second is true then murdering innocent children is absolutely an Evil act. The debate is over which is true.

Are you sure that those are the only two options?
What if all wills aren't equally free? The above dilemma relies upon the notion that orcs and other evil non-humans are either absolutely predetermined or absolutely free and that there is nothing in between. I don't even think that dichotomy applies to humans.

For instance, if you buy the psychology you hear on the news, many child molesters have an attraction to children that I do not share. Though nearly everyone believes that they are responsible for their actions, I don't think it's clear that they could choose to be better people with the same ease that you, I, and the vast majority of people choose not to molest children. For most of us, there is no choice to make. It's not even an option we have to consider. Consider that as an example of how free will might possibly be limited. Now imagine that orcs shared some kind of evil desire at some strength or other. Surely some orcs would still choose to be good. Some child molesters may reform and there would be more orcs than child molesters. (IIRC, the recidivism rate is very very high, but it's not quite 100%). So, which would that world be? One where evil orcs are absolutely predetermined or one where orcs had absolutely free will?

 

[The Druid Merlin]

What it means is that orcs have free will, and that their alignment (unlike angels and demons and devils and whatever) is not ingrained, therefore, it is the result of moral decisions, and therefore, with the proper upbrining, an orc could be just as likely to be as good as a human.

All sentiant creatures in my campaign have free will. Demons aren't Chaotic Evil because they are Demons. Demons are Demons because they are Chaotic Evil. If a balor became Chaotic Good, it would become an extremely ugly Eladrian. Devils aren't Lawful Evil because they are Devils. Devils are Devils because they are Lawful Evil. If an erinyes becomes Lawful Good, she becomes an Archon.