D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[pemerton]

Man, the '90s were a good time for belief in consensual reality in RPGs, between Planescape and Mage: the Ascension.

I don't know much about Mage, but did it involve consensual evaluative reality? That is the aspect of Planescape that is the subject of controversy in this thread.

To me, it seems to have its origin in a reflexive hostility to meta-game devices and to just letting players play what they think counts, and so the sort of stuff that would be handled at the meta-level in a game like DitV or Burning Wheel is instead made part of the fiction and the setting itself.

Like, instead of a player saying, "My PC wants vengeance, and won't stop even if it means a few innocents have to suffer", s/he has to say, "My PC thinks that vengeance is good, and wants to persuade everyone else of the same thing so that when vengeance is delivered I won't end up being labelled evil."

Personally, I don't get it. It's a type of reification of a mechanic - alignment - which, if you want a sophisticated game that puts pressure on values and commitments, I think you're just better off without.

 

[pemerton]

I suppose you could just eject alignment entirely, but, then, once you do that, the Great Wheel stops making a lot of sense. Why three separate (and apparently hostile) good planes? Why not many or just one? After all, there are a multitude of beliefs on what constitutes "good", so, without the alignment framework, the Great Wheel comes off its axel.

To be fair though Pem, there's also no reason not to.

I agreed with your first post! Without alignment, the Great Wheel comes of its axle.

 

[pemerton]

You realize this doesn't address my point at all... You claimed law and chaos in AD&D were only defined as means towards good and evil... which is wrong. They are defined independently of good and evil

You're misdescribing what I said, and also what Gygax says.

As quoted by you upthread (post 882) I said that "law and chaos were presented as different means to the ends of good (or different ways of disregarding good, for evil characters)". My statement was incomplete, but the epxansion is obvious - law and chaos are also ways of disregarding good for LN, CN and True Neutral characters.

And although Gygax described law and chaos as means that are independent of good and evil, he didn't describe them as values that are independent of good and evil. A person who is LG, for instance, isn't committed to two distinct value sets - Law, and Goodness. Rather, as described by Gygax, s/he believes that a certain sort of social order is both a necessary means to, and in part a constituent element of, human wellbeing.

Yes in REGULAR AD&D/D&D 3.x etc. they might be... of course one would have to heavily weigh all of their actions so a simplistic judgement like the one you present here (based on one characteristic isn't necessarily accurate) also could you clarify as to whether you are speaking to the Planescape setting or to the base alignments/cosmology/rules as found in default AD&D/D&D you seem to jump back and forth between them but they are not the same thing... and it's making this discussion with you hard to follow and parse.

You are the one who described the motives of S&S characters as the pursuit of something that they want! If you now think that that is overly-simplistic, well I guess you can take that up with yourself!

As to whther I am speaking to the Planescape or the AD&D conception of alignment, I'm talking about the conceptin of evil as set out in the AD&D rulebooks and the 3E ones - of having no regard for the welfare of others, and even being ready to kill or debase them to get what one wants.

And at least as presented in the Planewalker's Handbook, Planescape seems to conform to the same usage. For instance, p 14 of PWHB refers to the Abyss et al as "the dark planes" and "the Lower Planes". The Abyss is described (on the same page) as "the seat of utimate chaos tainted by the darkest evil". Etc.

certain incarnations of the Eternal Champion have certainly transformed the cosmos into their concept of what would be "good" (specifically Elric)

That's not in disupte. My point is that they don't try to persuade everyone to label that outcome as "good". They are concerned with changing the world, not changing people's convitions about the world.

If you look at REH's Conan, you will see the same thing: he sets out to be a king, to do what he thinks is good for a king to do, and on that basis to win the respect of his subjects. He doesn't set out to enact a change in moral belief. The target of his action is social reality, not inner convictions!

Citation please... I am genuinely curious about where this is stated... I always thought the default was that humans were the most numerous race across the multiverse, but I readily admit I could be wrong.

I've always taken this to be understood. It's the rationale for the Blood War, isn't it - a reason why the infinitely large numbers of fiends (especially the demons of the many layers of the Abyss) haven't just conquered the rest of the world.

 

[pemerton]

The only thing you have to accept to understand this is that most believing beings (many fiends included!) have the belief that fiends are evil.

<snip>

"Call it evil if you like, I just think it's fun!", says the vrock in the middle of tearing apart an Outlands village. "Evil? I suppose so! Ah, well," says the hydroloth as she strokes the head of her mind-slave. "Yes. Evil. There is no other path to strength," says the erinyes as she takes aim with her bow.

That situation isn't permanent. If the PC's decide they want to change it, they might find the arguments of the fiends subtly changing. The amnizu lays down her whip, and raises an eyebrow. "Compassion? Friend, if life is suffering, then all compassion does is prolong that suffering, deceiving people, making them feel that life really isn't so bad. No. Better they know the truth, yes? Better they know the harsh reality than that they imagine that life can be anything but this torment. I torture people, yes, and I feel good about that, because I am reminding people of what the truth of life is. It is you delusional do-gooders who are truly the cruel, here."

<snip>

It's not inherently less desirable to be called evil in PS than to be called good, so I don't see any reason why most of the uncountable numbers of fiends would have a real problem with that label.

<snip>

There's no reason for most them to deny the label of "evil," and thus have spells and planes know that label.

I find all this a bit hard to follow.

If it makes no difference being labelled good or evil, then why would anyone set about trying to change the reference of those labels?

I also don't understand your fiend examples. For instance, I don't see why the argument run by your amnizu isn't already available to her.

Also, her argument uses the words "compassion" and "cruel". These are evaluative words, too, but they seem to be being used as if they had a fixed meaning. Are they not subject to the "rule of belief"?

I'm not here to debate Plato and Nietzsche. All I can say is that PS presents a setting in which personal belief makes truth, and reality is contingent on what other people believe to be reality.

<snip>

Planescape is for someone who wants to run D&D without cartoon morality, and it uses alignment to do this by showing how alignment isn't an objective truth, but rather a subjective belief.

Upthread (post 477) I said that "My serious reason for disliking Planescape is the one I posted upthread - its appeal seems to me primarily be to those who want the experience of play to be revelations of the cleverness or quirkiness of Planescape. To me, it's emphasis seems to be overwhelmingly on exploration as the goal of play - exploring the alignment system, enjoying the urban squalor of Sigil, being amusd by wacky portal keys, etc."

Nothing in the intervening 500-odd posts has really affected this reason. For instance, the whole emphasis on "belief entails truth" shifts the emphasis from making hard choices in play, and living with them and their consequences, to making choices easy rather than hard by making it true, by fiat, that the choice really was right. This is the wish-fulfillment issue that was raised upthread.

There is also this emphasis on exploring the alignment system - as if what matters more than doing the right thing is who has the right to use the (purely gameplay) labels of "good", "evil", "lawful" and "chaotic".

You may not want to debate Plato and Nietzsche, but to me the serious attempts over the past two-and-half thousand years to make sense of moral conviction and moral disagreement are highly relevant to any RPG that wants to make moral disagreement a focus of play. By setting up a framework that depends on labels that have no meaning outside of AD&D play, rather than trying to grapple with what I regard as the real issues (eg if value really is nothing but conviction, than how is there any form of politics other than mere assertions of power? - this is the fundamental question for contemporary post-Nietzscheans, and one that I think Simon Blackburn and his followers unduly neglect), Planescape shifts a focus from the things I care about in play to exploration of setting elements.

Nothing in your posts about "good/evil is subjective", and your seemingly casual use of "arbitrary" to describe convictions about what is right and what is wrong, is persuading me otherwise. Which also feeds back into what I described, upthread, as one of my petty concerns. The factions, as "philosophers with clubs", strike me as incredibly cartoony - they live in a world that they know to be nothing but a reflection of belief, including in its value dimensions, and yet they devote all this effort to promulgating particular values. Why?

As I've posted upthread, there are interesting responses to this question - Kierkegaard's philosophy can be seen as a response to a similar question - but to me Planescape doesn't seem to grapple with the issue but rather to squib on it, by shifting the focus from this real issue (of the nature of commitment and motivation in the absence of reasons) to a focus on a non-issue (who gets to wear the "good" ribbon rather than the "evil" ribbon).

choosing between two good things isn't introducing ambiguity about what's good and what's evil, it's just asking what good is more important. So you will have to make some sacrifice. So you are a martyr -- sacrificing something you think as good for something you think is a GREATER good (your choice is: what is the greater good?). That doesn't really match what I'd label as ambiguous morality.

I have no idea, then, what you mean by "ambiguous morality".

Normally, this would be used to describe a situation in which the right choice is uncertain, because - for instance - not all the consequences are knowable, not all the values in play are fully known, the interactions between these things are uncertain, etc.

Here's an example that could easily come up in a work of fiction: deliberate non-defensive killing would normally be murder (and hence wrong), but if I kill this man (a serial killer, let's say) then I can stop a whole lot of other suffering that he would otherwise cause - and furthermore, I know this person hates his life and, ultimately, would rather be dead (but is too cowardly, perhaps proud, to commit suicide).

What is the right choice here? I would normally regard this as morally ambiguous or "shades of grey". It's the sort of scenario that, in an RPG, might come up in a gritty investigator game.

The reason that speaks against killing is the wrongness of murder. The main reason that speaks in favour of killing is the suffering that this man's continuing life would cause to others.

An additional complexity is introduced by his desire to die (in an RPG, especially, certain players might be expected to leverage that to enable him to be killed semi-willingly rather than assassinated, thereby sidestepping the dilemma - but pursuing the path raises its own risks, namely of him escaping or winning in the confrontation, and hence isn't necessarily the best choice).

The notion of martyrdom has no work to do here. The "ambiguity" inheres in the doubt about the correct choice.

If you reach the conclusion that the right thing to do is nevertheless an evil thing (an idea that Machavelli, Weber and Michael Walzer have all explored), then perhaps there is a degree of martyrdom involved (although many commentators on this issue would regard that as an overly self-centred way of describing the situation), but that is not the main issue when we're talking about "moral ambiguity". The main issue is the one of working out that this is the correct conclusion.

(As a side-point: if, in Planescape, good and evil are arbitrary labels, then where is the moral ambiguity? I can see a possible semantic ambiguity, if one is not sure what the balance of opinion is on this particular day, but I don't see any evaluative ambiguity.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

To me, it seems to have its origin in a reflexive hostility to meta-game devices and to just letting players play what they think counts, and so the sort of stuff that would be handled at the meta-level in a game like DitV or Burning Wheel is instead made part of the fiction and the setting itself.

Any time you're going to characterize something as "reflexive hostility," you're not giving it enough credit. It's an overly simplistic dismissal, and it reads very much like "I don't want to bother trying to understand what people like about this, it's just something I can dismiss as something overly emotional."

Like, instead of a player saying, "My PC wants vengeance, and won't stop even if it means a few innocents have to suffer", s/he has to say, "My PC thinks that vengeance is good, and wants to persuade everyone else of the same thing so that when vengeance is delivered I won't end up being labelled evil."

I don't know where you're given the impression that she "has to" make that specific claim. The player can choose whatever belief she wants her PC to believe about those actions. The PC can view it as good, or as evil, or as something restoring the balance, or as an edict of order, or as something she is doing to express her personal desires and nothing else, or whatever. What's important for PS is that, if the player wants to use this as a central character hook, the vengeance isn't just her personal vendetta, but a principle that extends beyond her circumstances, a conviction that defines how she views the multiverse, a belief about how the rest of reality should be. Her vengeance becomes a belief, not just a goal. For such a PC, I'd probably recommend the Mercykillers, who could frame her vengeance in terms of achieving a just world, and thus her personal vendetta of vengeance becomes an expression of how she thinks the world should work: that those who do wrong get punished. The Mercykillers don't speak in terms of good and evil, they speak in terms of just and unjust. Whether the rest of the multiverse dubs it good or evil is not as relevant.

And if such a character's story is a success, whatever her alignment, she will be seen as a person who exercised justice, an exemplar of that ideal that others should strive to achieve, and thus create a world that her vengeance has objectively made more just -- whatever triggered her vengeance will not be something others seek to do, as the belief in justice that permeates the multiverse after the PC's actions are complete creates a more just reality.

If it makes no difference being labelled good or evil, then why would anyone set about trying to change the reference of those labels?

I also don't understand your fiend examples. For instance, I don't see why the argument run by your amnizu isn't already available to her.

Maybe they WANT it to matter! Not everyone is content with the prevailing belief that evil is a valid life choice. Maybe it matters TO THEM. If they believe that no one should label their thirst for vengeance evil, they can change the definition of evil. Maybe they've got an issue with the current context where pure hedonism is evil and restraint is good and they don't agree with that, they'd want to flip it, because that's what they believe to be true. Just because good and evil are both valid choices according to the planes at large doesn't mean that the PC shares this philosophy necessarily. Though given the conflicts presented in the actual PS material, most of the setting is largely concerned with other debates. But, hell, I'm sure there's Mercykillers out there who believe that the principle of Forgiveness that Good creatures (as the planes currently know them) exhibit should cosign them to Hell instead, and that's fine, they can believe that, and get the multiverse to believe it, too, and thus re-define what Good means (it no longer includes forgiveness, after this PC gets her way!).

The arguments are available to anyone, PS just presents a starting-state in the setting where that amnizu's arguments about torture being the truth of existence aren't prevalent. Given that it starts from a D&D baseline, that shouldn't be too shocking -- PS wants its baseline to be broadly recognizable to D&D players, where devils are lawful evil. So PS presents a setting consistent with that, and also presents a setting in which that is something the PC's can change if they want. Why they would want to...*shrug*. Up to those PC's, really. Our Mercykiller might believe that torture, as a element of punishment, fits Justice, and further defines Justice as Good, and so might find that amnizu to be an ally for her cause! OR she might believe that torture is something that is never justified, and so perpetrators are always further from the Justice she defines as Good, and so might want to slay/convert that amnizu. One thing's for sure: it would be an interesting scene to play through!

For instance, the whole emphasis on "belief entails truth" shifts the emphasis from making hard choices in play, and living with them and their consequences, to making choices easy rather than hard by making it true, by fiat, that the choice really was right.

So by that definition, it is an easy choice to, say, offer your child up as a sacrifice to Moloch because you believe it is right to do so. Or to obey a suicidal command from your superior because you believe that this something that is right. Your definition takes for granted the concept that doing the right thing -- the thing you believe in -- is the same as doing the easy thing.

It furthermore presumes that your definition of the right thing is not challenged -- that people are not telling you that you don't need to offer up your child or obey those suicidal commands, that there aren't competing viewpoints one might embrace. That there are no such things as antagonists with competing beliefs.

I don't think I need to point out the gaping error there any further.

The factions, as "philosophers with clubs", strike me as incredibly cartoony - they live in a world that they know to be nothing but a reflection of belief, including in its value dimensions, and yet they devote all this effort to promulgating particular values. Why?

They want to define the possibility space of belief, to have the multiverse actually work according to their understanding of how it does or should work, to have no dissent or competing beliefs that threaten their own. They want power over the hearts and minds of everyone in creation, to have people believe in their faction's ideals the way people believe at the outset of play that torture is evil and that gods exist and that there is a plane of Bytopia. The PC's are the ones that accomplish some major part of this.

I have no idea, then, what you mean by "ambiguous morality".

Just as I said, that it is not clear if an action is good or evil. To kill a man who wants to die and who you believe deserves to die, or not and not be a murder, is to choose between two things largely regarded as morally good: either I am not a murderer (which is a virtuous thing!), or I kill someone who deserves it and is asking for it (another virtuous thing!). I cannot have them both, but both are virtuous things, so either choice I make, I am the Good Guy. "Shades of grey" means, to me, that the choices are between two things where it is not clear if any of them are really virtuous at all. I don't kill him, so I'm not a murder, BUT he also kills a bunch of neighborhood children and I could have prevented that, and now I need to deal with explaining to the grieving parents why I made the choice I did and do I lose faith in "thou shall not kill," or do I stick to that belief in the face of the grief it is causing? Can I really be said to be a virtuous person? Or I kill him, BUT, he was some sort of cult leader and now his cult members are going around spreading terror in the streets, and I could have prevented that, and maybe there was some other way, and now I need to deal with all those poor people with the horrible burns and the orphaned children who have seen horrible things and do I lose faith in my convictions to kill those who deserve it, or do I stick to the belief, seeing the consequences of my actions on the haggard faces of the refugees from my town?

The aesthetic this trucks in isn't interested so much in my decision to kill him or not, but rather my decision to keep my convictions or not in the face of the disaster they're causing. The conflict isn't about my initial choice, it's about living with the consequences of that choice, choosing it again day after day. The question isn't "Which of these two lovely women do I marry?" but rather "Now that I am married, and we are fighting, do I stay that way? Why or why not? What is the cost of that?" (Wasn't it Kirkegaard who said something along the lines of "If you get married, you will regret it. If you don't get married, you will regret it."?) "Shades of grey" means that, murder or not, I can never really make the claim to being the Good Guy -- I made bad things happen. Maybe it was worth it?

PS isn't quite so brutal but the aesthetic is similar. That is, the interesting bit isn't to choose between two things that are desirable but in conflict, the interesting bit is in the personal struggle to live according to one's convictions, and exploring the conflicts that happen as a result of that. The choice isn't "Am I a Signer or a Sensate?", at least after character creation, it's "Can I continue to be a Signer in a world that makes that choice difficult?" Can I live with the consequences of my actions? Can I accept what negative things my belief means? Can I persuade people that they're worth believing over the competition? It's not the decision you make once, but the decisions you make every day, in your own heart.

 

[Quickleaf]

As I've posted upthread, there are interesting responses to this question - Kierkegaard's philosophy can be seen as a response to a similar question - but to me Planescape doesn't seem to grapple with the issue but rather to squib on it, by shifting the focus from this real issue (of the nature of commitment and motivation in the absence of reasons) to a focus on a non-issue (who gets to wear the "good" ribbon rather than the "evil" ribbon)...

The factions, as "philosophers with clubs", strike me as incredibly cartoony - they live in a world that they know to be nothing but a reflection of belief, including in its value dimensions, and yet they devote all this effort to promulgating particular values. Why?

First off, thank you guys for steering the conversation back to the planes, the Multiverse, and Planescape Alignment debates just don't do anything for me.

Anyhow, I thought I might field these issues you've raised with my own experiences DMing Planescape. Your second paragraph strikes me as what a member of the Bleak Cabal faction might say, but (at least as Planescape played at my table) not at all objectively true of our play experience with factions... I've never been good at theorycraft, so the best I can say is that in my games, the idea that the Outer Planes are a reflection of the belief was easy for someone to say, but a far harder thing to shape in reality. Very rarely were the Outer Planes about wish fulfillment, and when they were, you can bet my players learned to be suspicious!

Also, I never found the factions "cartoony", pointless, or simplistic. Here are some examples to clarify what I mean...

The Sensate faction (and a schism within that faction) played a big role in my game. The core faction tenet, as I presented it, was a sort of mystical materialism, that we should experience as much as we can because if we don't experience it, then it literally doesn't exist for us. This raised all kinds of questions that we explored in play, like "If the multiverse doesn't exist beyond what can be sensed, then what about extra-sensory perceptions, empathy, or sixth sense? Are those a valid way of sensing? What about synesthesia or hallucinations? Does blindness or other sensory handicap make one less able to experience the totality of the multiverse?" We had some really fun gaming sessions where the PCs explored the boundaries of sensation and self, met different faction philosophers, and got some cool belief powers like forming a sensory link with another person or temporarily taking on a blind man's blindness.

I mentioned a schism within the Sensates. Basically, there was the core faction which under the PCs' infouence had a slightly mystical view of reality, and then there were two heresies. The first was essentially Epicureanism which rejects the superstitions of the core faction, argued pain was the ultimate evil, and advocated for pursuit of wise pleasures. The second was, for lack of a better term, a pleasure-pain mystery cult which tried to push the boundaries of what people could be perceive thru rites of passage involving extreme pain or excessive pleasure. Obviously, the two heresies did NOT get along. Navigating the politics and philosophical questions became a big part of our game, especially when we had both main PCs as members of the Sensates.

None of that was explicitly in the boxed set, but the boxed set and Factol's Manifesto both inspired me with those ideas, which then were fleshed out thru play. Anyhow, hope my experience sheds some light on the potential of the setting

 

[avin]

And the origin given for Yugoloths blatently contradicts Planescape canon; whereas in Planescape Yugoloths are said to be the creations of the mysterious Baernaloths, the MM says that a covey of Night Hags created them, possibly at the behest of Asmodeus

I just read this today. Man, somebody at Wotc really hates Yugoloths... Ultroloths again are weaker than Pit Fiends and Balors... pushing Asmodeus smells like 4E lore...

 

[TarionzCousin]

The Sensate faction (and a schism within that faction) played a big role in my game.

In my Planescape campaigns and mini-campaigns, the Sensates were always the most popular with the PC's. They occasionally played Godsmen, Ciphers, or Indeps, but usually over half were Sensates.

 

[Elderbrain]

I just read this today. Man, somebody at Wotc really hates Yugoloths... Ultroloths again are weaker than Pit Fiends and Balors... pushing Asmodeus smells like 4E lore...

- Probably James Wyatt, he likes to mess with creature origins/appearances. Did it in 4e a lot (i.e Dryad). He's probably to blame for the new origin story for Harpies, too... glad WOTC transfered him to M:TG... He killed the Great Wheel in 4e, too (and bragged about it), but thankfully didn't get to in 5e. No offense, probably a nice guy, but I don't want him working on D&D if he's gonna do stuff like that. (LOL, in the 4e preview book "Worlds and Monsters" his stated reason for changing the cosmology was "Down with needless symmetry!" - whereupon he proceed to introduce a series of elementals "Archons" who all looked alike except one was made of fire, one of mud, one of water, etc... THIS is "avoiding needless symmetry"?!?)

 

[Remathilis]

I suppose you could just eject alignment entirely, but, then, once you do that, the Great Wheel stops making a lot of sense. Why three separate (and apparently hostile) good planes? Why not many or just one? After all, there are a multitude of beliefs on what constitutes "good", so, without the alignment framework, the Great Wheel comes off its axel. But, within the alignment framework, the premise of subjective alignment doesn't make any sense to me. Not within the context of D&D alignment anyway.

Why are there multiple species of dragons with different outlooks on life? Why not just have one species and call it "Dragon"?

Why are there multiple species of goblinoids with different outlooks on life? Why not just have one species and call it "Goblin"?

Why are there multiple kingdoms full of humans with different outlooks on life? Why not have all humans live in the same kingdom?

Perhaps because there is more to the planes than even alignment. Sure, they are defined in the abstract by their alignment tendencies, but saying that the only difference between Heaven and Asgard is Law/Chaos is short-sighted bordering on willfully ignorant. The Great Wheel CAN survive sans alignment; it just requires more words to explain the differences in outlook.