Doug McCrae
Legend
It's what the word means.Sundragon2012 said:
dictionary.com said:
The D&D Great Wheel of the Planes and Moral Ethical Relativism
- Thread starter Sundragon2012
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If they were all equally valid they wouldn't be "Good" and "Evil", they'd be "Good" and "Differently Perspectived Good". They have an ultimate Truth: Orcus is and will always be Chaotic Evil. He's never going to be living on Mt. Celestia.Sundragon2012 said:
D&D defines it terms. Evil is Evil. Good is Good. They are ontological forces that exist. This is the basis of absolutist morality. This is exactly what the Great Wheel is. How do you warp this into being relativist?
Sundragon2012 said:
Ah, we get to the root assumption that's making you think the Great Wheel is relativistic.
The chaotic evil soul does NOT want to be in the Abyss. The chaotic evil soul still wants to be in Heaven. The chaotic evil soul is, in fact, being driven slowly mad by being in the Abyss. Even demons would rather not be in the Abyss.
Do you understand this? A chaotic evil soul goes to the abyss and is tormented for eternity. Torment is not comfortable. Torment is punishment. Eternal, infinite, punishment. The chaotic evil soul would do anything to avoid this punishment, but it's too late now to repent. Even becoming a demon or a demon lord does not allow the chaotic evil soul to avoid its punishment; the torture just takes different forms, usually in the form of other demons.
In a D&D afterlife, you get what your actions and alignment say you deserve, not what your soul is comfortable with. This is the mistake you're making. Chaotic evil souls are tortured and tormented in the Abyss. Lawful Neutral souls experience the eternal tedium of Nirvana/Mechanus. Chaotic Neutral souls drift aimlessly through the eternal chaos of Limbo.
Where a soul goes in a D&D afterlife is not up to it. It doesn't get to make choices anymore. It's made all its choices already, at least partly ignorant of the full consequences of each and every decision. That soul's ultimate destination may, or may not, be 'comfortable'. It may, or may not, be where it wants to be, but it is going where it deserves to be... Whether to the rewards and comfort of heaven or the torments and punishments of hell.
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Sundragon2012
First Post
This is written in response to those who claim that the Great Wheel has determined that evil is wrong because either it is called evil and not good, or because demons live in the "lower" planes as opposed to the upper planes, and that somehow because Orcus doesn't live on Mount Celestia he is baaadd and wrong.
These above arguments are very thin.
They are called good and evil on the Great Wheel, not as judgements, but as descriptors. There is no cosmic arbiter of morality on the Great Wheel who determines whose perspective is right or wrong therefore there can be NO objective judgment that would call evil "wrong" and good "right." We have no other meaningful terms for these positions thus they are called good and evil.
Orcus and other lower planar entities live on planes that are comfortable to their natural inclinations. They may not enjoy alot of their existance on the lower planes but for them the horrors therein are as close to paradise as they will come. For them the paradise of Elysium or Celestia would be hellish because the entirety of those realities is at odds with their fundamental natures.
A non-sentient cosmos without some transcendant arbiter CANNOT judge anything therefore to a non-conscious universe, all moral and ethical perspectives are equal. The entire D&D Great Wheel no more judges moral positions that does a brick or a tree. Individual planes may have some semi-sentient nature, but the Great Wheel as a whole has no moral preferences. Only the occupants of the planes really concern themselves with moral questions and as I said before, because there is nothing higher than Nerull, Orcus, Tyr, Pelor, Asmodeus and others of their ilk to determine who is morally correct it remains that the Great Wheel must see these as equal because to do otherwise would be to assume it has an underlying consciousness and this is NOWHERE to be found in canon.
Sundragon
These above arguments are very thin.
They are called good and evil on the Great Wheel, not as judgements, but as descriptors. There is no cosmic arbiter of morality on the Great Wheel who determines whose perspective is right or wrong therefore there can be NO objective judgment that would call evil "wrong" and good "right." We have no other meaningful terms for these positions thus they are called good and evil.
Orcus and other lower planar entities live on planes that are comfortable to their natural inclinations. They may not enjoy alot of their existance on the lower planes but for them the horrors therein are as close to paradise as they will come. For them the paradise of Elysium or Celestia would be hellish because the entirety of those realities is at odds with their fundamental natures.
A non-sentient cosmos without some transcendant arbiter CANNOT judge anything therefore to a non-conscious universe, all moral and ethical perspectives are equal. The entire D&D Great Wheel no more judges moral positions that does a brick or a tree. Individual planes may have some semi-sentient nature, but the Great Wheel as a whole has no moral preferences. Only the occupants of the planes really concern themselves with moral questions and as I said before, because there is nothing higher than Nerull, Orcus, Tyr, Pelor, Asmodeus and others of their ilk to determine who is morally correct it remains that the Great Wheel must see these as equal because to do otherwise would be to assume it has an underlying consciousness and this is NOWHERE to be found in canon.
Sundragon
Of course it's nowhere to be found in canon, and it never will be explicitly stated.
You, personally, want a referee above the Great Wheel that you can point to and say "This guy says x is good and y is evil." What we've been trying to tell you is that this isn't necessary.
X is Good because the D&D assumption is that there is an intrinsic, inherent quality called Good that is objective and true no matter where you stand on the Great Wheel or where you stand on the Prime Material.
Y is Evil because of the same reason; that there is an intrinsic, inherent quality called Evil that is objective and true no matter what.
Remember that. The founding principle of The Great Wheel is that all moral and ethical positions are absolute and objective.
If an evil cleric casts "Detect Evil" on his holy symbol, he will find it radiates Evil. If he casts "Detect Good" on his holy symbol, he will find it doesn't radiate Good.
In D&D, Good and Evil are absolute. It is as real a property of the D&D universe as Gravity or Magic.
You, personally, want a referee above the Great Wheel that you can point to and say "This guy says x is good and y is evil." What we've been trying to tell you is that this isn't necessary.
X is Good because the D&D assumption is that there is an intrinsic, inherent quality called Good that is objective and true no matter where you stand on the Great Wheel or where you stand on the Prime Material.
Y is Evil because of the same reason; that there is an intrinsic, inherent quality called Evil that is objective and true no matter what.
Remember that. The founding principle of The Great Wheel is that all moral and ethical positions are absolute and objective.
If an evil cleric casts "Detect Evil" on his holy symbol, he will find it radiates Evil. If he casts "Detect Good" on his holy symbol, he will find it doesn't radiate Good.
In D&D, Good and Evil are absolute. It is as real a property of the D&D universe as Gravity or Magic.
Sundragon2012
First Post
Tarek said:
I'm sorry but that is not expressed in canon to my knowledge. I like the idea, but because I am referring to the official Great Wheel and its assumptions, I beg to differ with you. Your interpretation, though interesting, presumes that a chaotic evil soul is getting what it derserves as opposed to going where it must due to its natural state. Your interpretation borders on claiming that the chaotic evil soul is getting punished and this is certainly not found anywhere in canon regarding the nature of souls. Individual souls may be tormented by demons, but the very fact they a chaotic evil soul is drawn into the abyss cannot be presumed to be a punishment.
I wold understand this IF it were supported by canon, but it is not. I would like to reference good ol' Orcus as an example. Orcus is one hateful, powerful demonic SOB but he was once as mortal as you and I. He was an evil soul of some wicked bastage who has ascended to nearly divine levels of power. This process is repeated throughout the abyss over and over again as mortal souls become demons who then become demon princes. Orcus is the big kahuna on the plane he rules. He is not being tormented. I would argue that the hate, rage, fury, cruelty, malevolence he feels is his ambrosia.
Incorrect, the alignment of a mortal permanently alters the nature of his or her soul aligning it to one of the planes of the Great Wheel. There is no punishment suggested in any source despite the fact that souls are tortured on arrival. If good folks are rewarded and evil are punished then what of the ambivalent neutrals who end up on Mechanus or the Outlands?
Sundragon
Klaus
First Post
The Great Wheel is shaped by the beliefs of those therein. The Lower Planes are unpleasant as a reflection of their Evil inhabitants, and they in turn spawned their own Evil natives. OTOH, the Upper Planes are pleasant as a reflection of their Good inhabitants, and they in turn spawned their own Good natives.Sundragon2012 said:
There are "gate towns" in the True Neutral plane (Concordant Opposition/Outlands) that are influenced by the planes they intersect. But if the concentration of a certain alignment is too great, the town will be pulled into the appropriate plane.
You may claim there's no arbiter of right/wrong in the Great Wheel. But there certainly is a multiversal standard of Good, Evil, Order and Chaos, much like the Egyptian concept of Maat (in which the natural state of the Universe is Lawful Good).
Sundragon2012
First Post
Tarek said:
I'm not claiming that the qualities called both good and evil are relative on the Great Wheel, I am Stating empahtically that there is no moral rightness of greater ethical validity to any position on the wheel when there is no objective moral truth beyond a collection of squabbling planes and entities each claiming their position is best.
The relativity comes in when one realizes that one's position on the Great Wheel determines where one stands morally and will determine what you ultimately consider "right" or "wrong" action. The lack of a transcendant moral reality higher than these spokes on a wheel necessitates the reality of morality being a matter of one's perspective on the wheel. This is my meaning in regards to the moral relativism of the Great Wheel.
I stand by my position that according to the Great Wheel all moral positions are equal because the Great Wheel requires all of them equally for its very existance. Remove one and the necessary dynamic balance of the Great Wheel is destroyed therefore the Great Wheel cannot prefer one position to another when all are equally needed for its structure.
Sundragon
And here's another assumption you make...
The Great Wheel is just a way of imagining how the outer planes relate to each other. It is not a physical structure except in the ill-concieved Planescape.
And no, where you stand on the Great Rectangle or Great Icosahedron or whatever you call it does not determine "right" or "wrong" actions. Evil actions are always evil, regardless of whether you are in the Abyss or in the Heavens.
If you take away the Lawful and Chaotic absolutes, then you're left with, what? What are you left with when you reduce the number of absolutes to Good and Evil? The Great Yardstick? Doesn't that mean that Good and Evil then are necessary and therefore morally equivalent, simply because you picture the Outer Planes as being a Yardstick?
You say that the Great Wheel itself doesn't prefer one over the other... and then say that this means that good and evil, right and wrong are now just relative to the individual's beliefs.
You also say that the Great Wheel has a "dynamic balance". No, it doesn't. It simply exists as a way for limited mortal minds to picture the relationships between the infinite planes. If there were no selfish mortals who treat everything and everyone around them as toys for their personal amusement, the Abyss wouldn't exist, and the Great Wheel would still be a valid way of looking at the Outer Planes.
The Great Wheel is just a way of imagining how the outer planes relate to each other. It is not a physical structure except in the ill-concieved Planescape.
And no, where you stand on the Great Rectangle or Great Icosahedron or whatever you call it does not determine "right" or "wrong" actions. Evil actions are always evil, regardless of whether you are in the Abyss or in the Heavens.
If you take away the Lawful and Chaotic absolutes, then you're left with, what? What are you left with when you reduce the number of absolutes to Good and Evil? The Great Yardstick? Doesn't that mean that Good and Evil then are necessary and therefore morally equivalent, simply because you picture the Outer Planes as being a Yardstick?
You say that the Great Wheel itself doesn't prefer one over the other... and then say that this means that good and evil, right and wrong are now just relative to the individual's beliefs.
You also say that the Great Wheel has a "dynamic balance". No, it doesn't. It simply exists as a way for limited mortal minds to picture the relationships between the infinite planes. If there were no selfish mortals who treat everything and everyone around them as toys for their personal amusement, the Abyss wouldn't exist, and the Great Wheel would still be a valid way of looking at the Outer Planes.
I'm not sure I'm willing to grant your point, but if I *were* to grant your point...
... what would we tell stories about? It's requisite that the Great Wheel have a place where Things That Go Bump In The Night live, and that it be big, and bad, and terrifying, so that a small band of 4-6 miscreants can Plane Shift in, grab the McGuffin of Orcus, and Shift out.
As I understand it, the two ways that the canon Great Wheel could be made palatable to you is to, one, have some clearly potent individual to whom the fiends-and-their-home were anathema, or two, have the planes on which they lived be more clearly dens of pain, suffering, and torment.
The problem with that is that this is a game; some degree of contradiction is almost inevitable.
Even if I were to agree that the Great Wheel enforced relativism (in the sense that the OP is using it), it would have to enforce relativism in this sense, or else why hadn't the demons lost by the time the adventurers get to adventuring? Why can't they expect paratrooping angels to save them; the ultimate arbiter of goodness to judge on their side?
Now, I don't agree that the design does enforce this sense of relativism. Sure, the deck is pretty evenly stacked, for the gamist reasons above, but that doesn't mean both sides are equally justified, equally nice, equally g/Good.
Even though a CE soul can wind up a demon prince, and nobody's jabbing it with a pitchfork, we can make two arguments. The wimpier interpretation is that it never necessarily lost that which made it human; it has always and only done what it needed to in order to survive. By the time it makes überdemon, the "soul" is gone, replaced with steaming demonflesh. The memories and personality might survive, but it's eight feet tall, covered in tongues, and wants to do unmentionable things to everything good and pure -- and it can't be reasoned with, or converted, or saved (by the core, anyway.) -- it's a demon through and through; its "reward" was annihilation.
Alternatively, the promoted soul never had that basic spark of human decency. In which case, it was always a CE demon-oriented soul; it was a demon on the Prime and a demon in the Abyss. It will never, ever know any sort of heav'nly joy, love, trust, or peace, and we need not inflict a punishment necessarily.
Sometimes, the lack of a reward is enough.
You're looking for more justification, btw, than you can reasonably expect in any manual (IMHO): that this may not be explicitly in the books is unsurprising, as most people would probably let it go with "the bad things live here"
This is a great conversation!
... what would we tell stories about? It's requisite that the Great Wheel have a place where Things That Go Bump In The Night live, and that it be big, and bad, and terrifying, so that a small band of 4-6 miscreants can Plane Shift in, grab the McGuffin of Orcus, and Shift out.
As I understand it, the two ways that the canon Great Wheel could be made palatable to you is to, one, have some clearly potent individual to whom the fiends-and-their-home were anathema, or two, have the planes on which they lived be more clearly dens of pain, suffering, and torment.
The problem with that is that this is a game; some degree of contradiction is almost inevitable.
Even if I were to agree that the Great Wheel enforced relativism (in the sense that the OP is using it), it would have to enforce relativism in this sense, or else why hadn't the demons lost by the time the adventurers get to adventuring? Why can't they expect paratrooping angels to save them; the ultimate arbiter of goodness to judge on their side?
Now, I don't agree that the design does enforce this sense of relativism. Sure, the deck is pretty evenly stacked, for the gamist reasons above, but that doesn't mean both sides are equally justified, equally nice, equally g/Good.
Even though a CE soul can wind up a demon prince, and nobody's jabbing it with a pitchfork, we can make two arguments. The wimpier interpretation is that it never necessarily lost that which made it human; it has always and only done what it needed to in order to survive. By the time it makes überdemon, the "soul" is gone, replaced with steaming demonflesh. The memories and personality might survive, but it's eight feet tall, covered in tongues, and wants to do unmentionable things to everything good and pure -- and it can't be reasoned with, or converted, or saved (by the core, anyway.) -- it's a demon through and through; its "reward" was annihilation.
Alternatively, the promoted soul never had that basic spark of human decency. In which case, it was always a CE demon-oriented soul; it was a demon on the Prime and a demon in the Abyss. It will never, ever know any sort of heav'nly joy, love, trust, or peace, and we need not inflict a punishment necessarily.
Sometimes, the lack of a reward is enough.
You're looking for more justification, btw, than you can reasonably expect in any manual (IMHO): that this may not be explicitly in the books is unsurprising, as most people would probably let it go with "the bad things live here"
This is a great conversation!
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