The "Good Society" in Fantasy Gaming

[Corathon]

And that's my problem. Dwarves and elves may have nice wonderful societies internally but should a few starving humans show up on their borders, they'd lucky to be greeted with just threats. There are many "neutral" human cities that may have a higher crime rate but accept elves and dwarves and half-orcs as part of their society.

Kender and Golarion's gnomes seem to be good examples of CG races; I can't think of any great examples of LG races.

This hasn't really been true in my experience. Elves and dwarves certainly guard their borders, but not with a "shoot first and ask questions later" attitude (except toward orcs and the like). A D&D world is a dangerous world after all.
Also, some human societies are very welcoming of demi-humans, others not, IMC.

 

[haakon1]

""Should the civilizations of man, elves, dwarves, and other such allied peoples be civilized and should they represent those ideals and principles generally considered to be 'good'"?"

If I'm running Tolkienesque High Fantasy then the protagonists' side is Good, and the enemy is Evil. If I'm running Swords & Sorcery then the protagonists' culture may be pretty Bad, but any enemy culture is still probably more Evil.

My campaigns (and it's all my version of Greyhawk) are somewhere between the Tolkienesque vision and a Wilderlands of High Fantasy sort of setting.

The main human country that matters in my campaign -- Bissel -- is mostly Lawful Good in its upper leadership, but men are men, and some of the nobles are self-serving or incompetent. Among the commoners, there are lots of good people (Pelor, St. Cuthbert, and Rao are the most popular deities), lots of neutral people (Obad-Hai and the "Old Way" are also popular), and a fair number of evil folks too -- ranging from bandits and thieves to evil cultists. There are no serfs or slaves, but the rich are much richer than the poor, and it's by no means a democracy. It does have "rule of law" though.

Bissel is at war with another human country, Ket, whose leadership is Evil. Their common people run the gamit, but the Evil of Ket is about it's alliance (an open secret) with Iuz, an Empire run by an evil demigod, and their use of humanoid mercenaries as regular and werewolves and bandits for infiltation/terrorism. Social classes and rule of law are similar to Bissel.

Another human society one party will gate to soon is Cauldron, from the Shackled City Adventure Path. In my version, Cauldron is like the Old South. The rulers are plantation owners, and the wealth of the city is built on slave labor. We'll see how the party reacts to that, but it's still better than the alternatives from the Monsters, with the two strongest factions in the region being cultists who want to destroy the city in a volcano and start Hell-on-Oerth and true ghouls who want to kill, reanimate, and enslave EVERYONE.

So how are the humanoids different from humans, elves, and dwarves?

Elves are almost always Good (except the Drow, who are almost always Evil), but many are isolationists. Dwarves are generally Good, but many are greedy. Halflings are generally good, but some steal.

Among the humanoids, orcs are usually bloodthirsty savages, some of them bred for war by Sauron (who exists offscreen in the distant West) and Iuz. But one group of PC's recently met a group of neutral orcs, who worship and Cave Mother, are led by females, and just want to be left alone (the PC's cut a deal with them).

This same group earlier befriended Meepo the Kobold and helped him become ruler of the Sunless Citadel, with a mutual leave each other alone pact between the Kobolds and local humans. Whereas most kobolds are just evil trapsters and ambushes.

Many goblinoids belong to a secret society (the Red Hand) that's building an army to invade and destroy the human lands, to pillage everything and eat the survivors, just because "they're @@@@s like that". But one part of PC's met a goblin king in the Caves of Chaos who, while LE, was tired of fighting the humans and made a deal for peace in exchange for a cow a week -- essentially, these goblins are on a reservation.

Other humanoids and monsters like Dark Ones, Illithids, Duergar, True Ghouls, Drow, all have their own agendas, which generally involves killing other races and looting them, or surviving against others who try to do the same to them.

So is human society good? Some of it is, some of it isn't, a lot of it is neutral. But mostly, it's just a whole lot better than Monster society. You might not like everthing about the human society, but you'd be dead in the Monster one.

 

[S'mon]

...the Evil of Ket is about it's alliance (an open secret) with Iuz, an Empire run by an evil demigod, and their use of humanoid mercenaries as regular and werewolves and bandits for infiltation/terrorism.

Hey, they're just doing the jobs Ketites won't do!

 

[Kobold Boots]

So here's my take. Good and Evil are descriptors and in any campaign world or background setting there are going to be exemplars of anything that's described.

Additionally anything that's described is going to have to take into account the perspectives of those doing the describing.

Good is fundamentally defined as anything that furthers the general well being of more than one person. This is an ethical norm across the majority of religions and cultures but is interpreted differently between cultures when what is good for one religion or culture is not good for another.

Evil is fundamentally defined as anything that is the polar opposite of the above definition and again, what is evil for one religion or culture is not for another.

The first question, therefore is what is your base perspective? If your game is told from the perspective of one particular race, in a particular area of the world, with specific needs, then your basis for good and evil is pretty well defined. From there you can postulate what your exemplars are (eating human flesh is pretty bad if your perspective is human and what's eating flesh is proximal to your town) and what your abstractions are.. (the psychic thing that needs suffering also ensures that the fields are ready for crops that feed the town.. so planned suffering is a necessary thing).

Best way to answer the good/evil questions in any campaign is to start with a small area of land (couple or four towns and the surrounding 30 square miles). Determine who the major inhabitants are and their races.. then determine how their cultures developed taking into account the hardships they endured. More than anything else, those hardships determine the steps they needed to take to survive and what is considered good (things that abated hardships) and evil (things that nearly killed people)

The most accessible liturgical example happens to be the 10 commandments, but any study into cultural relativity will eventually end up showing that killing things and taking important items without permission are generally the only absolute evils within any given culture. Everything else can be justified in the right context.

Once the above exercise is done, you then have the basis for good and evil in that area of the world. Any additional areas can be slightly askew, wholly askew, or right in line with what you've already done depending on how much conflict you want to generate.

 

[Wiseblood]

My theory, Good races/societies are created by Good deities.

Evil ones by evil deities.

Neutral usually by nature deities or amoral structure of the universe types.

 

[Spatula]

If we look at the history of the game, originally there was no Good or Evil, just Law and Chaos. In some ways that supports your view of the game as being about Civilization vs Anarchy, but without any self-serving labels. I don't recall what alignments were considered "typical" for the different PC races back then. This arrangement was probably more in line with the S&S branch of fantasy than the Tolkien branch.

AD&D added Good & Evil to create the familiar 3x3 alignment grid. I do recall at that time that the PC races were all considered different variations of "good". Dwarves were LG, elves were CG, etc. This setup is pretty Tolkien-esque, I feel.

Now all that being said, I ask you, in your opinion: "Should the civilizations of man, elves, dwarves, and other such allied peoples be civilized and should they represent those ideals and principles generally considered to be 'good'"?

Where does a human barbarian from AD&D fit into this?

I don't think that humans, elves, etc. necessarily need to be "civilized." I also don't think that "civilized" societies are necessarily "good."

Furthermore, I think that a "good" society (as defined by D&D - i.e. no slavery, justice for all, etc.) is a huge anachronism in any kind of medieval or Renaissance psuedo-European setting. So my answer would be no and no.

And what exactly should be the "Good Society" in D&D and fantasy role play/adventure games? How should it operate and what should it represent?

The "Good Society" is the one that you belong to, most of the time.

 

[Barastrondo]

I've got no problems with both "good" societies and more morally nuanced societies coexisting, even in the same D&D world. It depends on what the individual game's about.

Probably the best argument for the "good" society for those of us who enjoy them in some of our games is not necessarily defending the status quo, but improving it -- making things better for the people who are basically decent at heart, driving out corruption, and generally putting your stamp on the world in a positive way. Here I look less to Tolkien (though his stuff is relevant) and more to the overall drive of Arthur in T.H. White. It's a noble dream to provide an example, and when you add in the "slay evils" aspect of it, it's eminently gameable.

On the other hand, I have a lot of use for amoral settings where a society is complicated and largely driven by self-interest; those further a certain roguish sort of play that's also entertaining. They also don't require players with a "slay evil" mindset to give up on that; Renaissance Italy doesn't have to be a good-aligned society for you to still set some adventures around killing off Borgias.

Probably my only requirement is that there not be a basis of "good" or "evil" based on character appearance alone. Sure, I like to use orcs and elves in a D&D game; they're easily understandable and relatable for my players, quick communication. But I want elves to be as morally complicated as humans, with their "good" societies and their amoral societies and their wicked, corrup, Melnibonean-ish societies, and I don't want players to be able to tell which elf is from which by their skin color. Similarly, I don't want orcs to be uniformly kill-on-sight permissible based on circumstance of birth; there are more outrageously supernatural threats available for that. It's more interesting to me to create a clearly cruel and rapacious culture, and have that be the focal point of opposition. The Ossenlander orcs are potential trouble, but they pale next to the murderous theocrats of Zagash, and so on.

Variety for me, please. I like a D&D philosophy that can embrace all of this stuff, even in the same world, and make it work.

 

[S'mon]

Furthermore, I think that a "good" society (as defined by D&D - i.e. no slavery, justice for all, etc.) is a huge anachronism in any kind of medieval or Renaissance psuedo-European setting. So my answer would be no and no.

No slavery and justice for all were ideals in every medieval society I can think of, and 'no slavery' was a fact in many of them. I'm not sure these ideals are any more fully realised in a typical D&D society than in a typical medieval society.

I'd say the big difference was that the medieval societies were highly religious, and that was seen as the bedrock of morality, whereas the 'Good' D&D society will typically have a rather fuzzy post-Enlightenment secular-ish morality, being a product of modernity.