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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1211777" data-attributes="member: 812">D&D posits a shallow idea of good and evil, where evil is actually Evil and can be pointed out in a trivial, non-ambiguous fashion. Making the world better consists of finding things that are Evil and destroying them.Now, making aspects of life shallow can be a powerful way to think or talk about life, since it lets you explore certain ideas in greater depth or from a new viewpoint.It does, however, remove the potential for moral quandaries from the game. If Evil is Evil and can be safely destroyed without concern for salvation, then there are no moral quandaries, except perhaps from time to time in choosing which Evil to take out first. Evil? Destroy. Not Evil? Protect.So of course, any interpretation of the "dominating kids" story that is based on D&D morality gets to helpfully avoid any sort of moral quandary. The issue boils down to: [code]if (kids == Evil) {  for each kid in kids {  Destroy (kid);}}else { Protect (kids);}[/code]It's mechanical, devoid of quandariness, and, to me at least, dull.Lots of people seem to be intent on doing a bunch of hand-waving to prove how simple an issue this is and how the paladin should have had no compunctions about chopping the little blighters in half.My problem with this approach is that it takes all the FUN out of it. It's more exciting if it's a moral conundrum. It's more thrilling if the paladin doesn't know what to do, and, raging against the heartless fiend that made this necessary, weeping all the time, cuts down the children whose eyes only at the last minute shine with the innocence that was so long ago taken from them. Then, surrounded by bodies, swears never to rest until the demonic forces responsible are found and destroyed so that they can never again perpetrate such horrors.Purple prose aside (I can never resist -- curse you, fiends of darkness!), this to me is a much more FUN story. Much more fun than "Detect Evil. Evil? Destroy."Not saying it's BETTER, mind you. Just saying I find it more fun.As long as it's backed up with the requisite amount of killing things and taking their stuff, of course.</blockquote>

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