D&D General Some thoughts on Moral Philosophies in D&D

[DemoMonkey]

More on the original topic...

I think the default (not "allowable", just "default") moral philosophy of the game has actually changed between editions. Not just due to differing demographics of the players, but due to different assumptions/biases by the designers.

0E was more Consequentialist than anything
1E leaned more into Deontological
2E dialed that back a little and leaned more Utilitarian
3E veered hard back into Deontological
4E didn't really have a position on the matter, by design
5Es position seems to be "Whatever you want but NOT-Deontological"

Fortunately no one will argue angrily with any of these assessments.

 

[Steampunkette]

Noobs.
I pull the lever twice.


While such thought experiments are interesting, especially when you throw in absolut alignments from D&D and similar games most players do not want to have hard ethical discussions when gaming. So they are in the end not all that useful.

... that's... both why we're not having it during a D&D game and also flatly untrue...

Being able to recognize a player character's moral philosophical structure can be SUPER USEFUL in recognizing how they're going to act or react in a given situation. I'm not saying you need to sit down at a table and break out all the Philosophy Textbooks you've still got in your personal library to quiz and interrogate your players mid-game...

Just saying that if you know what you're looking for, and pay attention, you can get together a good idea of a character's moral imperatives to help direct the flow of the game better.

Pop open the PHB and look at the backgrounds. Their "Ideals" to help players shape their characters are mostly Virtues. The Criminal background has Honor, Freedom, Charity, Greed, People, and Redemption. 4/6 are Virtue Ethics.

Pretty much all of them are for most backgrounds.

The Philosophy is already there. It's why I say D&D makes for a strong morality play.

More on the original topic...

I think the default (not "allowable", just "default") moral philosophy of the game has actually changed between editions. Not just due to differing demographics of the players, but due to different assumptions/biases by the designers.

0E was more Consequentialist than anything
1E leaned more into Deontological
2E dialed that back a little and leaned more Utilitarian
3E veered hard back into Deontological
4E didn't really have a position in the matter, by design
5Es position seems to be "Whatever you want but NOT-Deontological"

Fortunately no one will argue angrily with any of these assessments.

That is a really interesting viewpoint and I like it a lot!

Though with the aforementioned Virtues tied to backgrounds, I think we might actually be leaning into a Virtue Ethics period for D&D. One where morality is visibly less formalized into strict rules, but very clearly still present.

 

[Flamestrike]

However.

Deontology, like most philosophies taken to absolutes, becomes clearly false when it runs into Rogues, Bards, and other heroic figures who do not follow Kant's moral imperative that under deontology an evil action is always an evil action. A Good Rogue will happily lie to a soldier's face in order to ensure the safety of a friend, or one whose cause the Rogue identifies with.

Which presumes that lying is an act of evil.

Which is isnt.

A better example might be the killing of things (in self defence), which Good PCs do all the time.

 

[Steampunkette]

Which presumes that lying is an act of evil.

Which is isnt.

A better example might be the killing of things (in self defence), which Good PCs do all the time.

That's why I specifically and explicitly in the first sentence noted "Absolutes". As in "Absolutism".

Like Kant. Who I referenced in the -second- sentence.

It was a commentary toward Deontological Moral Absolutism. A specific direction of Deontology.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

While such thought experiments are interesting, especially when you throw in absolut alignments from D&D and similar games most players do not want to have hard ethical discussions when gaming. So they are in the end not all that useful.

I don't think most people want to have long, detailed discussions about philosophy while playing. There is a time and place for that; and that time and place is college, probably while consuming marijuana and beer in a drum circle.

That said, D&D and other TTRPGs can offer a great instance of revealed preferences. In other words, people often say that they might act a certain way, but (perhaps either "in character" or as a thinly-veiled version of themselves) you can see how people would handle situations that would not normally occur in real life.

Arguably, you can discount some of it, given that the stakes are not real, people might be roleplaying, and people might be reacting to in-game incentives rather than thinking through the issue. But even so, it is often interesting to see how people treat certain problems within the TTRPG context.

 

[Remathilis]

Man, this gets me thinking about Planescape factions (aka Baby's First Philosophy) and how it was the first setting that intentionally shined a light on WHY PCs do what they do, not just what. Sometimes, the best moments came down to watching the Sensate, Signer, Cypher, and Taker all argue about how the loot should be divided...

 

[Steampunkette]

The Virtue Ethics comments made me consider 5e D&D... and then look through the six "Basic Rules" Backgrounds.

Acolyte, Criminal, Folk Hero, Noble, Sage, and Soldier.

All but one of the Acolyte's Ideals is a Virtue. And even the one that isn't (Power) would be better written as Ambition, which is a Virtue.
The Criminal that cares about only Greed isn't tied to a Virtue, but even the "People" one tied up in close friends touches on Companionship.
The Folk Hero gets a single flatly evil one in "Might". But the rest are Virtues.
The Noble has four Virtues, a badly mangled idiom, and Noblisse Oblige. The latter two being Deontology rather than Virtues.
Sage? No Limits could be reframed as "Freedom" for a Virtue, but only Power is openly evil.
Soldiers have got Might as Evil, like the Folk Hero, but the rest? Virtues.

... I really -do- think it's a matter of making Virtue Ethics a hidden core of D&D's moral philosophy going forward rather than a directly presented deontology.

And now I can't help but wonder if it's a move to placate the masses who complain about philosophy being a part of the game without taking out such a strong aspect of narrative..?

Man, this gets me thinking about Planescape factions (aka Baby's First Philosophy) and how it was the first setting that intentionally shined a light on WHY PCs do what they do, not just what. Sometimes, the best moments came down to watching the Sensate, Signer, Cypher, and Taker all argue about how the loot should be divided...

+1

For a lot of us who started D&D early in life it created a baseline understanding of morality above and beyond our parents' deontological imperatives. "Don't do that!" "Why?" "Because it's bad!" "Why?" "Because I said so!"

Well before I learned anything about the basis of morality morality in school or church I learned it from D&D.

 

[Alzrius]

Let's put it in comic format (edited to add the second half):

 

[Steampunkette]

Let's put it in comic format:

I -love- Existential Comics. Read them every Monday.

And you're right. Foucalt would ABSOLUTELY be -that- Moral Relativist.

Though without Sartre screaming "RADICAL FREEDOM!" it just doesn't feel right...

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The question is where one character's soul should go to when this died, to a celestial plane, or the hell, or a penance time before entering the Heaven.