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

[pemerton]

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.

I don't understand what "good" and "evil" mean here. Upthread you described them as labels that express arbitrary codes.

If they're arbitrary, why would someone care about them?

Not everyone is content with the prevailing belief that evil is a valid life choice.

Where does this belief prevail? Who regards evil as a valid life choice? Given that, as was discussed upthread, the majority of the multiverse - including perhaps the majority of fiends - labels evil fiends as evil rather than good, it seems that the prevailing view is that evil is not a valid life choice, and rather than it is evil.

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.

But any RPG anywhere, anytime can have a character who thinks that vengeance is a universal principle. The real world contains such people, just as it contains people who think that the need for vengeance is personal to them, and it also contains people who think that vengeance is wrong. And all sorts of other attitudes about vengeance besides.

I'm not getting a sense of what permission it is that Planescape grants that otherwise is lacking.

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.

This is another bit that puzzles me. The PC's story starts out as a principled quest for vengeance, but then becomes a quest to change other people's minds. I don't get that transition.

But in any event, if I wanted to change NPCs' minds I could do that too, without using Planescape.

It also reactivates the question - if "justice" is arbitrary, why is it better to have many people regard what one did as just, than few? What does this show, other than that one was able to change minds?

I also don't follow the word "objectively", given that in your previous posts you have said that "good", "evil" etc in Planescape are subjective and arbitrary.

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.

I don't really understand this other than as a manifestation of a type of megalomania, perhaps also tinged with a denial of reality. It seems to be taking something that makes sense - "I want the world to have less evil in it, and more goodness" - and transmute it into something that makes less sense - "And I want to do this not by changing the world, but by changing other people's beliefs about the world."

I don't see the rational motivation.

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.

<snip>

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!

That depends.

I think a scene in which someone tries to persuade someone that torture, which that person has hitherto regarded as morally impermissible, is in fact permissible, might be interesting. (Or tasteless. Or distressing. It would depend a bit on context. You seem oddly cavalier about this, given your very strongly moralised response upthread to my post about the theme of slavery in 4e.) But this sort of argument takes it for granted that what is good is something independent of human whim, and is an object of cognition - the argument consists in pointing the interlocutor to features of torture, and aspects of goodness, which relate in ways that the interlocutor has hitherto failed to notice.

But I don't see how this connects to "belief determines what's good".

It furthermore presumes that your definition of the right thing is not challenged

Following on from what I wrote immediately above, what I am missing is the nature of the challenge.

If the challenge takes the form of other people running moral arguments, then the whole idea of "good is dictated by belief" seems to have been abandoned. We're back into the common-sense world of evaluative arguments made by pointing to features of conduct, and features of value, which connect in ways that someone has failed to notice or has mistakenly denied.

But if the nature of the challenge is that the PC's opponent go out into the world trying to change minds, then the challenge isn't a moral chalenge at all. It's a procedural challenge - can I stop them rendering my conduct evil, before I get to do it. (I'm still not really sure what that would matter, but that's a reiteration of a point that I've already set out above.)

This second interpretation of the challenge at hand fits with my broader conception of Planescape, as having the function of transforming moral challenges into procedural challenges, so as to blunt the metagame, "real life" dimensions of ingame situations and turn them into more classical D&D "can the PCs overcome the obstacles" situations.

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.

Your counterexamples seem to take as a premise that all these choices will raise issues of weakness of will - ie a clash between acknowledged duty and the dictates of self-interest. Weakness of will is an interesting phenomenon, but I think is not the only moral challenge, perhaps not even the most important one. I also think weakness of will is a very frail chassis on which to build chalenges in an RPG, because in an RPG the player's self-interest is not at stake.

Maybe you meant your counter-examples to instead raise issues of conflicts of vaue: between sacrifice to Moloch and duty to child; between obedience to one's superior and a duty not to kill oneself. But upthread, and in the post to which I'm replying, you've argued (or, at least, have seemed to me to argue) that conflicts of value are trivial to resolve and raise no interesting issues. That's a view that I happen to think is radically mistaken, but given that you seem to be advocating it, I assume that that is not what you intend by your counterexamples.

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.

This is incredibly simplistic. I don't see how it relates to either real world moral debate and uncertainty, nor to the way that serious fiction engages with such matters.

In The Quiet American - * SPOILERS FOLLOW* - Fowler learns that Pyle is negotiating with a "third force" - neither French nor Vietnamese nationalist - to try to resolve the colonial war without the Communists taking control. The third force is a renegade general. Pyle provides the general with explosives, which he then uses to blow up a public square. Fowler and Pyle are present when the explosion happens, and Fowler is horrified both by the killings, and also by Pyle's woefully inadequate response (he complains about the blood on his shoes). Fowler therefore sends a message to the Communists, telling them when and where they can catch Pyle unawares, and Pyle is duly assassinated. And as a consequence of Pyle's death, Phuong, who had left Fowler for Pyle, returns to Fowler.

To say that choosing between friendship (staying loyal to Fowler) and justice + public welfare (betraying Fowler and thereby trying to mitigate the future harm he might cause) is an easy choice, because both values are good, strikes me as ludicrous. In the abstract, both are values. In this concrete situation, what is the right choice? Is Fowler an evil man - someone who betrayed his friend to the Communists just so he could get his girlfriend back? - or is Fowler a hero, who did a hard thing (betraying his friend) in order to secure a greater good (preventing more carnage)?

I don't know if you actually read the post that I linked to - here is the link again. In this episode of play, three PCs were interrogating a prisoner, and in order to extract information tricked her into thinking that a fourth PC - the fighter/cleric of Moradin - would intercede on her behalf with the local ruler to stop her being executed. Unfortunately for this plan, the fighter/cleric then arrived on the scene before the other PCs had been able to finish their interrogation and summarily execute the prisoner. Which gave the prisoner the opportunity to say that a promise had been made, in his name, to intercede on her behalf. The other PCs couldn't really deny this, because they could hardly say that they had manipulated the prisoner in a fashion that the fighter/cleric wouldn't approve of!

The player of the fighter/cleric, therefore, in playing his PC, had to choose between honouring the promise made on his behalf by his manipulative, less-than-fully-honouable comrades - thereby granting the prisoner clemency he believed she did not deserve - or alternatively betraying the promise and letting her be executed. He chose the first option. But does this make him a good peson - someone who kept his word, despite the temptation to betray it and exact the justice that he desired? Or does it make him an evil person, who allowed someone who deserved death to escape her just deserts simply out of a moral vanity, an unwillingness to allow a stain on his personal honour?

(For clarity - I'm not suggesting that my game, either in this case let alone in general, has the depth of Graham Greene. The comparison to Greene is simply for the purpose of elucidating one typical structure of moral dilemma in fiction.)

"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.

I don't see how this is any different to what I described.All you have done, in your example, is to move from a conflict of abstract values to a conflict of actual, concrete, elements of the situation. Two values are in conflict, but the choice of which one to pursue is uncertain because of the consequences that would ensue. That is inherent in many moral dilemmas, though it is not exhaustive of moral dilemmas. For instance, both in The Quiet American and in the situation I described, there are also questins around purity of motive (is Fowler motivated by altruism, or a desire to have Phuong return to him? is the fighter/cleric motivated by a genuine sense of honour, or mere moral vanity?)

If you'd read the post to which I linked, you would have seen these concrete elements in the situation that I was talking about. The idea that whichever choice the player made "I am the Good Guy" is, frankly, ridiculous. It doesn't remotely capture the stakes or actua experience of play.

 

[pemerton]

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.

But it wouldn't be a wheel.

Once you get rid of alignment, for instance, there is no reason to have Asgard adjacent to Olympus and Limbo. It's heroic morality actually means that it has more in common with the Happy Hunting Grounds than with Limbo.

Arcardia and the Twin Paradises also seem to me to have more in common (including their pastoral themes) than either does with the Seven Heavens.

Hence my comment upthread, that once you drop alignment the Great Wheel has no logic to it. It's organisation becomes arbitrary, and there is really nothing to choose between it and the Astral Sea.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] - thanks for actual play examples, which I find make discussion easier than abstract statements about what might be done with a setting.

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.

That all sounds like fun. Perhaps there's something I'm missing, but it seems to have a different character from the presentation of the setting that I'm discussing with [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION].

For instance, as you describe it these questions about the nature of sensation, its relationship to being, etc were treated as questions with real answers, in relation to which it mattered what attitude a person might take. It doesn't seem to have been presented as something that is true simply in virtue of people believing it to be so.

there were two heresies.

<snip>

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.

This seems to combine something that is not itself be a moral view - a view about the nature of perception and what experiences enhance the capacity to perceive - with a view about the value of perception, ie that it is a good thing to push the boundaries of percpetion, and experience more.

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.

How did this interact with the alignment system?

I think the core D&D alignment system rules out a thorough-going Epicureanism, because pleasure is treated as a good, but not the sole good. (Eg dignity is a good in its own right.) So, by orthodox D&D standards, your Epicureans are probably neutral - perhaps CN, but the L/C axis can be rather unclear and unhelpful. (There is an Epicurean strand in Buddhism, for instance, but Buddhism tends to default, in D&D, to LN: Nirvana and all that.)

The idea that Epicureans would try to persuade others of the sense of their teaching makes sense to me, but I don't have a sense of how that interacts with the "belief makes reality" aspect. In the real world, Epicureus begins from a situation of (i) believing that he knows what good is, and (ii) belieiving that others are ignorant about that. So he sets out to teach them. Whereas, at least as KM prestents it, in PS the dynamic is (i) Epicureus is wrong to think that wise pleasure is good, because popular opinion has defined "good" in classical D&D terms, and (ii) Epicureus sets out to correct his own error by changing everyone's beliefs. This dynamic is very odd to me, because it seems that either Epicureus starts out spreading what he knows to be error - which is very counter-intuitive - or else it turns out that the label "good" doesn't matter (upthread KM said it is arbitrary), in which case the "belief makes reality" thing seems pretty irrelevant - who cares about the labels - and the situation reverts back to the real-world one, of Epicureus having a conviction that he is trying to spread.

In this latter case, I can see how PS might, via the Sensates, seed that camaign idea, but I don't see it's "belief = reality" part making an especially big contribution to that. It seems to be a campaign about moral argument.

Obviously, the two heresies did NOT get along

I can see that. But it seems to me the nature of their disagreement was not over who gets to enjoy the use of certain arbitrary labels, or even who gets to persuade the most number of people of the truth of their convictions, but rather was over the truth of their convictions in and of themselves: the Epicureans think the pleasure/pain-ers are needlessly cultivating suffering, while the pleasure/pain-ers think that the Epicrueans are slightly priggish opponents of mind-exapanding practices.

That's a dispute that's pretty familiar (in one or another variation) from real life, and that makes sense and could certainly make for a fine game. But it doesn't help me make any more sense of KM's comments about the importance of PS's treatment of the alignment system for opening up the space for a campaign focused on moral disagreement. (Not that I'm sure you meant for it to do so.)

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!

To be honest, I'm not seeing anything at all in your description of your campaign connected to the subectivity or arbitrariness of moral labels. On the contrary, it seems to me to turn on a genuine disagreement, between the various factions within the Sensates, about the nature and value of various sorts of sensory experience.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't understand what "good" and "evil" mean here. Upthread you described them as labels that express arbitrary codes.

If they're arbitrary, why would someone care about them?

People care about lots of arbitrary things. I mean, you're on a 90+ page thread on a D&D message board.

But what might help is seeing it as a thing with a changeable meaning. So "evil" means all the things described in the PHB when a PS campaign opens (as a design consideration, PS wants to base itself in D&D-isms). CE demons are creatures who, in general, act in line with the definition of CE in the PHB. When a know alignment spell pings CE, the characters know broadly what kind of action to expect. When they pick up a Book of Vile Darkness, they don't get harmed. Their souls are drawn to the Abyss, which is made up entirely of creatures who act the way CE is described in the PHB. That's the context the PC enters.

Now, maybe the PC is a tiefling, told all their life that they were "born to be evil." That is, the characters in the setting expect this creature to act in accordance with their definition of evil. But the character, as a matter of belief, debates that label. They say, "No. I'm good. You're evil." They don't know from cosmology, they just know that people called them evil just before they had their ribs kicked in, and that people in the streets seem not to want to kick in the ribs of people the describe as "good." So that tiefling believes themselves to be worthy of that respect, and so is always and everywhere saying, "I'm good. I'm not evil. How I act is good. I know the truth of the multiverse -- I define good and evil. And what I do is good -- it is worthy of respect. And you are worthy of having your ribs kicked in."

Such a tiefling goes on to act precisely how the PHB describes chaotic evil characters to act. When they start out in the campaign, they are labelled Chaotic Evil. A know alignment spell picks them up as such. They act much like the demons in the Abyss act. People say, "that tiefling adventurer is evil!" And the tiefling denies it. They believe themselves to be good. They dispute the spell results ("Everyone thinks I'm evil, but they're wrong. I'm good. It doesn't matter what some spell says."). They try to grab a Book of Exalted Deeds, and get burned, and say, "No. That book is wrong. It should be used by me." The player writes GOOD in big letters on their character sheet.

[sblock=what happens to them?]
That tiefling adventurer faces opposition to their belief in the form of people who believe different things. Adventure hooks might include:

• You become the target of clerics of Saint Cuthbert who hope to destroy you.
• You meet an angel who takes personal offense to you calling them "evil."
• You go to Mount Celestia and the archons there try to throw you out, calling you mad.

....etc.

The PC's belief invites disaster.

But they leave their influence. Because they are a PC, a protagonist, one whose belief shapes the multiverse (because otherwise they'd be an NPC who just basically agrees with the definitions), opinions start to change. The the aftermath of the attempted assassination, one of the clerics of Cuthbert starts do doubt their definition of good and evil. "Maybe that tiefling has kind of a point -- who are we to say that they're evil? Why not call them good?" The angel surrenders in the duel, "Very well. Call me evil, if that is what suits you," and suddenly everyone in Sigil is calling that angel "evil." And it spreads -- maybe there are other angels who are also evil? Maybe all angels are evil? I mean, just 'cuz some spell says something is true doesn't make it so, right? That's what that one guy says, and HE PUNCHED OUT AN ANGEL, so maybe he's worth listening to? The Archons who tried to throw you out...some of the perhaps lower-ranked members start wondering if maybe they are evil, maybe it was wrong of them to throw that PC out of a good place, maybe these things have different meanings. I mean, the tiefling was so sure of itself, so influential, so charismatic, so powerful.

In aggregate, this starts to have an effect on the planes themselves. The DM notes that a group of tieflings in Sigil is calling itself The Good Guys now, and they're getting some respect, and everyone in their neighborhood agrees that when they mug the elderly and bash babies against the walls that this is Good. And now the know alignment spell gets confused. Perhaps the PC gains something like the Anarchist ability to mask their true allegiance, and now even the best divination won't give a result of "evil" when it reads you. Maybe everyone who signs up with The Good Guys has the same ability. This is 2e, so all the followers our tiefling fighter is attracting -- they're all Good Guys, all of them behaving exactly as Chaotic Evil is defined in the PHB, and none of them detecting as Evil. In fact, they don't even get hurt when picking up the Book of Exalted Deeds anymore. Who can say that they are evil?

Next tier kicks in. First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. The tiefling PC's belief is gaining influence, their reputation as "that guy who punched out an angel" is gaining ground. A group of demons -- generals in the Blood War, maybe even a Demon Lord or a dark god -- decides to join the Good Guys. They do it for their own reason: now that none of them are considered Evil, the powers of the celestials that are designed to work precisely against evil cease to function. Detect Evil fails -- they're the Good Guys. Smite Evil fails -- they're the Good Guys. They do it perhaps for selfish reasons, but this selfish pursuit of your own desires is Good now, and they start to believe it as well. There are demons on the slopes of the heaven and in the gardens of Elysium. You are upsetting the multiverse. The powers of Heaven can no longer tolerate this. There are rumors of an alliance with the Rilmani, perhaps. After some time and some adventures that show this at work in the setting (you escort a group of demons into Bytopia, you lead a mission of the Good Guys to the elemental princes of what-was-once-known-as-"evil," you dive into the abyss to recruit another Demon Prince, perhaps a rival of the Demon Prince who offered their help), the Heavens try to end your little charade. They launch a holy war on the streets of Sigil.

But this is Planescape, and belief matters. The PC's belief is that how they act should be defined as Good. As the armies mass in the streets, the multiverse responds, and the weight of belief shifts. The PC gains a further "faction power," and now fully reverses the good/evil axis for members of the Good Guys. Fiends are going around casting smite evil. Angels are casting Blasphemy. The PC uses the Book of Exalted Deeds against an antagonist archangel using the Book of Vile Darkness. And the rilmani are quietly pleased -- as long as there are opposing forces, they generally are.

As the campaign comes to a close, the PC explores the ramifications of this flip, of this world that doesn't look much different except the labels. Perhaps some day the PC, old and wizened, will face off against an aasimar who was told that they were always "evil," and grew up believing that they were Good. Perhaps they even agree with that aasimar. Perhaps they abandon their belief as absurd in the face of it -- what have they really changed? Perhaps they shut down that aasimar fast, knowing the risk. Perhaps they gladly face someone who reminds them so much of themselves. Perhaps they live with the reality that changing these meanings just perpetuated the cycle of violence -- perhaps they're the vindictive type, and are totally OK with that. By the time the character retires, at the height of their influence, the Good Guys given honor and respect (and killing people for the fun of it, all while Good-aligned), the character has changed the ways the planes believe. They have struggled and achieved a change in definition. As the credits roll, the tiefling is perhaps seen giving the Book of Exalted Deeds to a newly Good god of torture and saying, "Re-bind this in human flesh for my amusement."
[/sblock]

I understand such a character isn't really struggling with the internal conflict that much (just a bit there at the end) -- something of a condition of me choosing to model the character on how the PHB describes Chaotic Evil, which is not necessarily a character archetype driven to much introspection or compassion. You could perhaps understand a character trying to live up to the standards the PHB calls "good" being a little more sensitive to some of the effects of their planar transformation (such as, if they were to try and re-define torture -- in certain circumstances -- as "good," and would need to negotiate where that line is). But the intent of describing this arc is to illustrate why a character might come to believe a thing, and what happens when they try to act on those beliefs to re-define the multiverse. The example character might, in actual play, make a more satisfying antagonist, come to think, if only because PLAYERS aren't likely to root for a guy who is allowing babies to be crushed at whim.

Where does this belief prevail? Who regards evil as a valid life choice? Given that, as was discussed upthread, the majority of the multiverse - including perhaps the majority of fiends - labels evil fiends as evil rather than good, it seems that the prevailing view is that evil is not a valid life choice, and rather than it is evil.

The label doesn't mean it's not a valid life choice. It just means it matches what the universe currently defines as evil. That's a particular set of traits, but that set isn't necessarily a set that is undesirable or invalid.

I'm not getting a sense of what permission it is that Planescape grants that otherwise is lacking.
...
But in any event, if I wanted to change NPCs' minds I could do that too, without using Planescape.

I'm not arguing that one MUST play PS if one wants this. I make no claims to exclusivity, only suitability. Planescape is made to support the idea of transforming the universe by acting according to one's convictions. Eberron is made to support the idea of magi-tech in a noir-infused post-war world. Greyhawk is made to support dungeon-crawling and military campaigns. You can also do all of those things in other settings. You can jam cthulu into FR if you want. Clearly there ain't much in any game setting -- or even any game system! -- that can get the label of "exclusive." Planescape offers a D&D setting that supports belief-motivated PCs who change the setting in their image. It works like that. It produces enjoyable games like that. I don't know of any other setting in current publication that does exactly that as well as PS does it.

To say that choosing between friendship (staying loyal to Fowler) and justice + public welfare (betraying Fowler and thereby trying to mitigate the future harm he might cause) is an easy choice, because both values are good, strikes me as ludicrous.

Of course, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying I wouldn't define this struggle as "shades of grey." This by no means indicates that the choice is easy, merely that focusing on the decision between two good actions isn't really morally ambiguous. There's no question of virtuous intent. PS, by calling into question the very idea of a virtue (it is only virtuous as long as others dub it so, and others may not dub it so once the protagonist gets done), means that there is never any guarantee of virtuous intent. The focus isn't on trying be a good person, it's on living a life according to your convictions, and dealing with the fallout of that.

 

[pemerton]

PS, by calling into question the very idea of a virtue (it is only virtuous as long as others dub it so, and others may not dub it so once the protagonist gets done), means that there is never any guarantee of virtuous intent.

I can't see how this is anything but wordplay (not by you as a poster, but in the state of affairs that you are trying to convey).

Kierkegaard calls the idea of virtue into question, by pointing out that nearly everyone's conception of virtue overlaps more-or-less with what they learned as a child. That is to say, he gives a reason to think that our intuitions about virtue don't actually track any meaningful moral phenomena; a reason to think that convictions about virtue aren't really any more salient than convictions about whether "no" or "nyet" is the best word to communicate denial.

In a completely different way, Hobbes (and his contemporary followers who publish under the labels of "social choice" or "public choice") calls virtue into question, by attempting to show that all action is ultimately self-interested - that the so-called virtuous are simply pursing their particular form of pleasure in doing good things. (Ie they exhibit a type of "moral vanity".)

There are probably other ways, too, of calling virtue into question, although these two (with their many variants) are the most familiar to me.

But I don't see how virtue is called into question by the fact that, under certain circumstances, others might label different things virtuous. What does it matter, from the point of view of me as a person making a decision, that others might evaluate my action differently? I already knew that, as soon as I noticed that the world is not characterised by moral agreement. You say "there is never any guarantee of virtuous intent". But what you are actually describing is that "there is never any guarantee that others will label your action virtuous". And this is a banal truism, and is a banal truism even in the absence of PS's "belief = truth" metaphysics.

This is why I don't feel that those metaphysics actually add any moral complexity, nor introduce any knew "shades of grey" - unless one was using an alignment system which meant that there was a guarantee that others would label your action virtuous, because the alignment mechanics had removed all moral doubt.

It is this proviso which led me, upthread, to post something to which you objected, namey, that the PS "belief = truth metaphysics seems to me to be "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." If you were already playing a game which made room for moral doubt - either because it didn't invovle GM adjudication and enforcement of alignment, or because it didn't involve alignment at all - then I don't see that any moral complexity is added by saying "As well as deciding what is the right thing to do, you also have the option of changing the world so that everyone has to conced your choice gets to be labelled good."

 

[pemerton]

I'm just saying I wouldn't define this struggle as "shades of grey." This by no means indicates that the choice is easy, merely that focusing on the decision between two good actions isn't really morally ambiguous.

A quick Google search just showed me that I'm not the only person to associate Graham Greene with "shades of grey":

Zadie Smith

Pico Iyer

As I said in my post a few upthread, you are presenting the choice as one between goods by framing it in terms of abstract values (friednship vs compassion, say). But that is equally true of your alleged shades-of-grey example about kiling the murder (the good of not being a murderer, with its inherent wrongness plus all the sufferig that it will lead to, vs the good of preventing harm to the neighbourhood children etc).

It is only when you descend from abstract value to concrete situation that the choice becomes uncertain, because when all the detail is considered it may be that one choice is impermissible (eg because of the wrong the would be involved in achieving an otherwise valauble end). But in the concrete situation there is nothing less difficult or ambiguous about Fowler's choice than the one that you describe.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] - thanks for actual play examples, which I find make discussion easier than abstract statements about what might be done with a setting.

Yes, definitely

That all sounds like fun. Perhaps there's something I'm missing, but it seems to have a different character from the presentation of the setting that I'm discussing with [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION].

For instance, as you describe it these questions about the nature of sensation, its relationship to being, etc were treated as questions with real answers, in relation to which it mattered what attitude a person might take. It doesn't seem to have been presented as something that is true simply in virtue of people believing it to be.

Ah, I see. You are thinking there are 2 paradigms of play: Either Planescape is about absolute truth or it is about subjective truth. My experience was that most of our fun was had in the grey zone between those two paradigms.

For example, at one point the PCs (once both were part of the Sensates) ended up on different sides of an issue. They retrieved a memory-restoring flower to restore the memories of a deva who lost his memory to the River Styx (and his memories had critical information for their quest); however, during the adventure they learned the deva had fallen once and been reformed, and that the missing memories were of events that led to his fall. So, the question was: would returning the deva's memories cause him to fall again?

The mage PC believed some experiences are best left forgotten (she gained the power to use a blessed forgetfulness spell via the Sensate's sensory touch ability). The fighter PC believed that all experiences, no matter how terrible, are meaningful and to be embraced (he gained the power to experience another's most challenging memory thru the sensory touch). They found common ground in establishing a rough hierarchy of sensations according to the harm inflicted on self or other. Empowered by their belief, they worked together when restoring the deva's memory, the fighter easing the pain using his new power and the mage employing judicious use of her new power to re-wipe a small portion of the deva's memory. Their methods were agreeable to each other (and their allies), the end result was getting the info without the deva falling, so it was a resounding success. Was one of the PC's truths proven objectively true over the other? No. Or maybe yes... it depend son how you look at their resolution of the challenge. We're they uncovering absolute (and possibly paradoxical) truth? Or were they shaping truth thru the power of their beliefs? My players certainly saw it as the latter, but it was left vague enough that it could be interpreted as the former...

How did this interact with the alignment system?

I think the core D&D alignment system rules out a thorough-going Epicureanism, because pleasure is treated as a good, but not the sole good. (Eg dignity is a good in its own right.) So, by orthodox D&D standards, your Epicureans are probably neutral - perhaps CN, but the L/C axis can be rather unclear and unhelpful. (There is an Epicurean strand in Buddhism, for instance, but Buddhism tends to default, in D&D, to LN: Nirvana and all that.)

We used alignments as beginner gateways into questions of deeper meaning and more challenging philosophy. IIRC the "Epicurean" Sensate heresy comprised of proponents with a variety of neutral and good alignments. Whereas the "Pain/Pleasure Cult" Sensate heresy had chaotic leanings (in the sense of being concerned with the ecstasies of individual experience, as opposed to communal experience).

I can see that. But it seems to me the nature of their disagreement was not over who gets to enjoy the use of certain arbitrary labels, or even who gets to persuade the most number of people of the truth of their convictions, but rather was over the truth of their convictions in and of themselves: the Epicureans think the pleasure/pain-ers are needlessly cultivating suffering, while the pleasure/pain-ers think that the Epicrueans are slightly priggish opponents of mind-exapanding practices.

A bad analogy might be the technology/Space Race. Truth of their convictions would be proven if, for example, the Pleasure/Pain Cult made some great discovery in awakening psionic sensory abilities, or if "Epicureans" created a more peaceful educated society thru their efforts. Who gets there first or most impressively will see numbers swell and philosophy infiltrate into the core faction's tenets so that when someone says "Sensate" it might become synonymous with "Pain/Pleasure Cult" or "Epicureans" depending on the outcome of the conflict.

That's a dispute that's pretty familiar (in one or another variation) from real life, and that makes sense and could certainly make for a fine game. But it doesn't help me make any more sense of KM's comments about the importance of PS's treatment of the alignment system for opening up the space for a campaign focused on moral disagreement. (Not that I'm sure you meant for it to do so.)

I'll leave the alignment discussion to you guys. It just holds no interest to me.

To be honest, I'm not seeing anything at all in your description of your campaign connected to the subectivity or arbitrariness of moral labels. On the contrary, it seems to me to turn on a genuine disagreement, between the various factions within the Sensates, about the nature and value of various sorts of sensory experience.

While [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] and I share a lot in common in our appreciation and perspectives toward Planescape, subjectivity of moral labels is not something I see as endemic to Planescape. Rather it is a personal touch individual DMs may or may not embrace.

From my perspective, one of the precepts of Planescape (as described in the boxed set) is that planar characters know exactly what the rewards for temperance or betrayal are because they can tour the afterlives while yet alive. That doesn't mean that everyone makes the right choices (e.g. some won't care about the afterlife and some will cling to the maxim "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!"), but the influence of Paradise Lost and Inferno in the setting suggest to me that evil is meant to be punished in the afterlife and good rewarded, and the nature of the punishment or reward should suit the life of the petitioner. That doesn't mean that there aren't grey areas of "good" or "evil" (which make for great roleplaying challenges), but that there is a common sense "I know it when I see it" core to those moral definitions that is good enough for my gaming.

 

[pemerton]

For example, at one point the PCs (once both were part of the Sensates) ended up on different sides of an issue. They retrieved a memory-restoring flower to restore the memories of a deva who lost his memory to the River Styx (and his memories had critical information for their quest); however, during the adventure they learned the deva had fallen once and been reformed, and that the missing memories were of events that led to his fall. So, the question was: would returning the deva's memories cause him to fall again?

The mage PC believed some experiences are best left forgotten (she gained the power to use a blessed forgetfulness spell via the Sensate's sensory touch ability). The fighter PC believed that all experiences, no matter how terrible, are meaningful and to be embraced (he gained the power to experience another's most challenging memory thru the sensory touch). They found common ground in establishing a rough hierarchy of sensations according to the harm inflicted on self or other. Empowered by their belief, they worked together when restoring the deva's memory, the fighter easing the pain using his new power and the mage employing judicious use of her new power to re-wipe a small portion of the deva's memory. Their methods were agreeable to each other (and their allies), the end result was getting the info without the deva falling, so it was a resounding success. Was one of the PC's truths proven objectively true over the other? No. Or maybe yes... it depend son how you look at their resolution of the challenge.

That sounds like good stuff.

The tropes are Planescape-y (a once-fallen deva, the River Styx, a memory-restoring flower, etc) but I'm not seeing anything here about obective vs subjective value as a key element of setting or of play. To me it just looks like good old-fashioned roleplaying: the players had goals and commitments for their PCs, the GM put these into (prima facie) conflict, and the players dealt with that conflict, in this case by coming up with an all-round satisfactory outcome.

Whether the PCs did the right thing or not is not something that the setting and other ingame material gives an answer to - it's a matter of audience judgement, just as for any other fiction.

Were they uncovering absolute (and possibly paradoxical) truth? Or were they shaping truth thru the power of their beliefs? My players certainly saw it as the latter, but it was left vague enough that it could be interpreted as the former...

I don't see the shaping of truth through the power of belief. This could in part because I don't know how the actions were resolved, and hence success achieved.

Eg if, once the players have reached a mutually satisfactory settlement, did the GM just "say yes"? For me, that would be something that takes place at the metagame level - the interesting play material in the situation has been dealt with, so now we narrate the scene closed and move onto the next interesting thing. But maybe the GM "saying yes" is seen as corresponding to some actual even/causal power within the setting?

The faction-derived powers also seem to have been relevant, but that would seem to be belief leading to truth only in an instrumental sense: conviction leads to faction-derived powers, and those powers then allow doing stuff, and so in that instrumental fashion belief shaped truth - but that is really no different from any conviction-derived powers (eg a cleric's spells in standard D&D).

Maybe there's something else that I'm missing here?

Truth of their convictions would be proven if, for example, the Pleasure/Pain Cult made some great discovery in awakening psionic sensory abilities, or if "Epicureans" created a more peaceful educated society thru their efforts.

In real-world moral and political discussions that I'm familiar with, though, that woud prove the objectivity of the claims in question. Eg part of the claims of classical Marxism to being objective science rest in its (putative) capacity to anticipate and effectively manage transformations in social and economic life.

From my perspective, one of the precepts of Planescape (as described in the boxed set) is that planar characters know exactly what the rewards for temperance or betrayal are because they can tour the afterlives while yet alive. That doesn't mean that everyone makes the right choices (e.g. some won't care about the afterlife and some will cling to the maxim "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!"), but the influence of Paradise Lost and Inferno in the setting suggest to me that evil is meant to be punished in the afterlife and good rewarded, and the nature of the punishment or reward should suit the life of the petitioner. That doesn't mean that there aren't grey areas of "good" or "evil" (which make for great roleplaying challenges), but that there is a common sense "I know it when I see it" core to those moral definitions that is good enough for my gaming.

That's certainly consistent with my encounters with Planescape materials.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I can't see how this is anything but wordplay (not by you as a poster, but in the state of affairs that you are trying to convey).

This is dismissive, but language is the playground of thought. Wordplay is idea-play. A change in language changes the way things are. It's Shakespearian -- a simple change in name from Montague means life and death to people. Metaphors and similies are transformative (and in PS, often literal as well). It's mythic -- the events of gods are things written and told and otherwise unknown. It's revolutionary -- if anyone can read the holy texts, everyone gets to offer their opinion on them, and someone nails a list of complaints to the door that sparks ages of bloodshed and warfare. (These are all, btw, part of why PS evokes a more pseudo-Renaissance vibe than a pseudo-medieval vibe). In a setting of "belief made real" word-play may change reality. Certainly that label means something in that example character arc.

This is why I don't feel that those metaphysics actually add any moral complexity, nor introduce any knew "shades of grey" - unless one was using an alignment system which meant that there was a guarantee that others would label your action virtuous, because the alignment mechanics had removed all moral doubt.

The idea is simply that the definitions of these words ("Chaotic Evil", "Neutral Good") are open to interpretation in PS. It takes a D&D system where there is no doubt, and introduces doubt without necessarily abandoning the system. Of course, one may also abandon the system. It is not, however, a prerequisite to enjoyment in the setting for me, and the setting would lose something of its first oomph (in part, as specifically a D&D setting, with all the baggage that comes with being one of those) without it. Others may reasonably disagree, especially, I think, if they've got a lot of experience outside the D&D RPG orthodoxy already, which means that the tweak is less significantly eye-opening to them. In KM circa 1995, it was pretty eye-opening. In KM circa 2014, I can see the setting without it functioning just fine -- but you'd lose the ability to open the eyes any folks who are in the same headspace as KM circa 1995 with the idea that lawful good might mean something very different to one PC or NPC than to another.

Either way, the general thrust of the argument is "PS adds shades of grey to D&D by opening the alignments up to individual character interpretation, rather than having them laid down and inflexible by the setting, so it doesn't NEED to get rid of alignments. Though it could." I don't know that anyone's really disputed that central point, despite all the border shenanigans about what does or does not define a shade of grey. I don't think one can reasonably say that normal D&D is not more black-and-white, or dispute PS certainly does introduce ambiguity when compared to that baseline! And if we're agreed on that, then we're agreed on the substantive points I'm making there.

 

[qstor]

With Pathfinder and a slew of other retro-clones out there, D&D's history and IP are something no one else can claim and use in their products. It's one of D&D biggest strengths and WoTC is capitalizing on it. As they should.

I agree play up to one of its strengths. It will be interesting to see if the do Planescape or at least a 5e version of the Manual of the Planes.

Mike