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

[I'm A Banana]

Why, then, given their vast numbers, have the fiends of the world not succeeded in having the Lower Planes relabelled "good" and the Upper Planes relabelled "evil"?

Arguably, this is what the yugoloths are up to.

More practically, three reasons:

1. Because they don't all agree on what it means to be "evil" or "good." They don't share a belief. ("An ordered society is essential for true evil!" / "No! One must be free to choose evil for oneself!")
2. Because they agree that they are evil, and just see that as a valuable thing. ("If you must call it evil to enjoy oneself, then I suppose I am evil! But what does that matter? What does that change? Yes, I am evil. Your point is...?")
3. Because their "vast hordes" don't outnumber the neutral and good people in the world who dub them "evil." Most people in D&D AFAIK are "neutral," and they get to add to their number all the hosts of the saints and angels who all condemn these actions as evil.

Probably other reasons, too, but those three in aggregate are certainly enough for me to accept the premise of fiends being evil.

I agree with The Shadow that this seems a Nietzschean idea.

I probably differe from The Shadow in thinking that there are interesting, even plausible, elements to the Nietzchean idea (it sees development in a range of other modern philosophers: the existentialists; Foucault; Ayer and Russell; Simon Blackburn; etc). But it needs a lot of work - if value commitments are a mere matter of taste, then killing in pursuit of them seems outrageous - it would be killing others simpy to satisfy one's own desire, which in D&D terms is practically the definition of evil. So everyone woud be, in D&D terms, evil!

Evil only has this definition because that is what people think it is. Change the way people think, and slaughter your way to sainthood!

I don't think that D&D has the conceptual resources to easily articulate and make sense of a more sophisticated and plausible Nietzschean approach. And also, certain D&D character classes - especially paladins, monks and samurai - make no sense in the Nietzschean framework. It's no coincidence that fantasy authors whose outlook is closer to Nietzsche (eg REH, Moorcock) don't have paladins or monks in their fiction (in REH, for instance, there are no D&D-style priests, just more-or-less cynical magicians).

Depends upon what paladins and monks think of themselves, and what the general mass of the multiverse thinks about them, I suppose.

The figher/cleric in that episode found himself in a situation in which he could not realise both honour and justice, and so had to choose. (He chose honour over justice.) That's "shades of grey", but has nothing to do with "good is what you believe it is" - the reason the choice matters, and is hard, is because the character (and the player in playing the character) feels the pull of both values as real and g

I think it's actually quite hard to articulate how the PS idea is shades of grey at all - if good is nothing but what I desire, where's the grey? What's the measure by which the greyness of my desires might be judged?

I suppose we're quibbling over semantics on this point, but the idea of a moral grey area to me is a place where the morality is not clear-cut, where good and evil are not able to be told apart at a glance. That certainly includes a world where good and evil are capable of changing their definitions. If the only choice is between two clearly good things (honor or justice?), it's just a matter of martyrdom -- enduring suffering for a good result.

 

[Imaro]

The claim that each individual ony has the capacity to care so much about a given value set is an extremely doubtful proposition of moral psychology. For instance, I have two children. A work colleague of mine has four children. I doubt very much that she loves each of her children ony half as much as I love each of mine! The idea that human emotional and affective commitment is a finite quantity is a conjecture with little evidence to support it.

Or she could lack the capacity to love and not love any of her children while you love yours equally... I mean there are people who are classified as lacking the ability to love and are labelled with psychopathy, that seems pretty finite... and I'll stop here because I may be treading close to board rules. Again this is a fantasy cosmology not a real-world philosophy simulator.

A further issue, when it comes to L/C and G/E, is that (at least in AD&D) law and chaos were presented as different means to the ends of good (or different ways of disregarding good, for evil characters). And if you are committed to goal X, and believe that action A is the only means to X, then you will be committed to A - and that commitment to A doesn't dilute your commitment to X, it affirms it!

Wait so LN and CN didn't exist in AD&D? If they did then how could chaos and law only be defined in terms of means towards good or evil?

If making sense of 9-point, 2-axis alignment requires abandoning common sense in the philosophy of action and moral psychology, that for me is yet another strike against it.

Well when you acually prove this maybe I'll reconsider my position...

 

[Imaro]

Because your beliefs only matter insofar as you can convince others to believe the way you do. There is nothing to actually believe in. Someone who comes along and believes differently than you do has just as much chance (objectively) of being "right" as you do. It's pure nihilism. There's no good or evil, just opinion?

No. there is good and there is evil (just not objective good and evil)... and you have the power in Planescape (feel like we need to specify when talking specifically about Planescape now) to shape what those things are and make those beliefs tangible... You can literally shape the cosmos into what you feel would be a better place and you're telling me that it doesn't matter what you believe? IMO, this is when it matters most... you can't blame anyone but yourself (collectively or individually) for what the world is around you... because you have the literal power to reshape and re-define the essence of the cosmological forces that make up creation. If this isn't the time to actually be care about what you actually believe in, not sure when it is...

 

[Hussar]

But there is actually nothing to believe in. I can believe X to be good. You can believe X to be evil. If you get enough belief power behind you, you're right, if I get enough, I'm right. But, at the end of the day, good and evil are just subjective labels.

Which doesn't make any sense based on D&D alignment, where good and evil are not subjective. To be fair, in 2e, when Planescape was created, they actually did make a stab at the idea of good and evil being subjective. Spells like Detect Evil actually took into account your viewpoint. But, it was, on the whole, incoherent and haphazardly applied. But, 2e was the only edition to actually even try to make evil and good subjective. That concept was largely abandoned in 3e forward and certainly never applied in 1e.

Again, I've got no real problem with Planescape on its own. I think in a different system, like say FATE or various other more hippy dippy story stick style games (which I really like), it would absolutely shine. Heck, isn't Exhaulted following a lot of the same basic tenets as Planescape without the alignment baggage?

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.

Either given a different alignment setup, or a game with no alignment set up at all and mechanics that actually deal with belief, i could probably get behind a Planescape game. Within the context of D&D? Not so much.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But, D&D certainly doesn't present alignment this way. Good is not subjective at all. This, right here, is my basic problem with using D&D for this. Alignment is not subjective at all. It is objective and presented as such. And given that good and evil are actually physical forces in the universe, I don't really see how they can be subjective

Perhaps they are not this way in broader D&D. But the alignments ARE this way in PS, and are presented as such. They are physical forces as well -- because people believe them to be.

The Greeks believed that if you treated a guest poorly, the gods would punish you. That it was a horrible act. If that world functioned by the "belief makes reality" mantra and had alignments, this would mean that this was literally true, and is literally true only because people believed it to be the case. If someone in that world treated a guest poorly, a god would actually punish them, and this vile man who would not share his meal with his guests would be considered "chaotic evil." At some point in time, we stopped believing this to be true. Hospitality isn't quite as important now. So now, that person who doesn't share his meal with his guest might be, at most, kind of a jerk? But not "chaotic evil." Not worthy of divine punishment. If our world continued to function by the "belief makes reality" mantra and continued to have 9 alignments, and abandoned that moral code, they wouldn't really ascribe much of any sort of alignment to that action. Maybe a little Chaotic Neutral since it's a social faux pas? Kind of a stretch even there. So such a jerk would not be punished by the gods, and would not be dubbed "chaotic evil."

In PS, the story of that transformation plays out as a fantasy story. It might be the story of a man shamed by the gods and destined for an afterlife he thinks he does not deserve because of his actions, who believes the gods are being far to cruel here. That man confronts a society that doesn't agree with him, a group of gods who wish to condemn him, and a universe set up for his failure, and through adhering to his strong belief in "Your definition of evil is wrong!" transforms the planes. There are inhospitable hosts burning in the pits of hell that he saves from that fate. There are proud gods whose codes he upends. There are rude guests who now have no claim to divine sanction.

People believe evil to be a physical force, so it is, just like when people believe in gods, gods are created, and when people believe in a certain afterlife, that afterlife comes to be.

If the belief changes, so does the reality.

you still have a finite makeup of moral and personal attitudes
...
individual planes very much have limits on the make-up of the moral traits that they epitomize

I think those limits only exist as much as a given person believes they do. The "here and now" in PS is a baseline world that you are expected to change. That might include the idea that peace and justice are "evil," or somehow undesirable, or whatever one cares to try and make true.

But there is actually nothing to believe in. I can believe X to be good. You can believe X to be evil. If you get enough belief power behind you, you're right, if I get enough, I'm right. But, at the end of the day, good and evil are just subjective labels.

Which doesn't make any sense based on D&D alignment, where good and evil are not subjective. To be fair, in 2e, when Planescape was created, they actually did make a stab at the idea of good and evil being subjective. Spells like Detect Evil actually took into account your viewpoint. But, it was, on the whole, incoherent and haphazardly applied. But, 2e was the only edition to actually even try to make evil and good subjective. That concept was largely abandoned in 3e forward and certainly never applied in 1e.

One of the things PS is doing here is screwing with alignment. That's part of it's impetus to be "weird fantasy," and to give D&D stereotypes a kick in the nads. Alignment is designed as a tool for morally unambiguous cosmological conflict, and PS takes that framework and twists it so that it is morally ambiguous and about your personal philosophy. Believing alignments are objective is a hallmark of the Clueless, just another thing that "standard fantasy characters" don't realize the "truth" of (the truth that PS uses as part of its own unique take on what D&D is).

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.

I mean, without alignment, those planes can't rightly be called good planes any more, can they? And you loose the interesting tweak, that expectation twist. Alignment serves a purpose in PS. I won't say it's necessary, but it's inclusion is likely deliberate, to take people used to typical D&D/Tolkeinesque fantasy and show them that Lawful Good doesn't always mean what you think it means. That's part of the Wow Factor there, part of why PS is a unique D&D setting. The Great Wheel fits in a similar boat for me: not exactly necessary, but used to good effect, as it shows visually how every alignment is on par and, in fact, related to all the others.

PS is a product of it's environment, and that environment is D&D. You could do a lot of PS-y stuff without that framework, but it's not necessary to ditch that framework to do PS. Quite the contrary, PS uses that framework to highlight and distinguish itself.

Either given a different alignment setup, or a game with no alignment set up at all and mechanics that actually deal with belief, i could probably get behind a Planescape game. Within the context of D&D? Not so much.

Say that much louder, and I'm going to have to dust off an old campaign that never saw the light of day.

 

[Nivenus]

I think Gygax makes it clear that "good" denotes "contributes to human welfare", and that law and chaos are means to that end.

Whether or not Gygax believed this is so, he's not the sole authority on the nine-alignment system.

LN, CN and N are valid for play. So is evil (qv assassins). But they are not morally valid. Gygax makes it clear that to be neutral with respect to good and evil is to fail to prioritise human wellbeing (life, relative freedom and the reasonable expectation of happiness). The 3E/d20 system agrees (using the language of "respect" and "dignity" in lieu of the language of rights).

Yeah, kind of. But lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, and neutral characters can take part in a good-aligned adventure (which is the default sort) with relatively little trouble and all three were fairly popular throughout 3rd edition (by WotC's own admission). Evil alignments are more difficult though, because they're innately opposed to good. But chaos-aligned and law-aligned character's aren't, so relatively few adjustments need to be made for them to participate.

Sure. They are flawed value systems (within the framework of D&D's 9-point alignment). Someone who supports freedom as a basis for human life and happiness is CG - s/he is committed to human wellbeing, and believes that social order is a threat to it. Someone who pursues his/her own freedom without regard to the welfare of others, except perhaps in hestitating to kill or destroy those who get in his/her way, is CN. By the lights of 9-point alignment, a morally flawed person.

Yes, if you accept pure good/kindness/empathy as the best form of good. Which isn't a LG or CG person's perspective.

Of course. My main point is that a CG person therefore has no basis for strife with a LG person - it's a dispute over taste and inclination.

Sure they do. They're likely to disagree over all sorts of things. Is is better to work within a corrupt system to change it for the better or to rebel against it? Is a thief's crime justified by their need or should the law be executed impartially, without regard to circumstance? Is "compelled" charity (like taxes to support the poor) a legitimate expression of good or is it a violation of individual liberty? People have gotten into fistfights over less.

I think you misunderstood my point.

You can delete the alignment line from all 4e monsters and NPCs and, except for a very few marginal elements that @Imaro mentioned upthread, the game and the cosmology stand unchanged.

Not really. What does the Elemental Chaos represent if not chaos? And while I'll grant you the Astral Sea isn't pure law and order, it certainly leans that direction more than its predecessor Astral Plane does; most of the creatures inhabiting it (non-lawful gods aside) are either lawful good or have personalities and goals that read very similar to those written for lawful neutral creatures in prior editions (while having unaligned as their official alignment).

Again, the mechanical impact is lesser, but there's definitely a defined dualism at work.

It's interesting to see the two of you embracing what @Aldarc presented as a type of reductio ad absurdum!

I wouldn't say I embrace it per se; it's not my preferred way of thinking about alignment (and I did say one could see it as a debasement of all four axes). But if you're going to talk about things like "100% good" or "100 lawful" (as Aldarc did in his question) I think it's a sensible way of addressing the idea.

The claim that each individual ony has the capacity to care so much about a given value set is an extremely doubtful proposition of moral psychology. For instance, I have two children. A work colleague of mine has four children. I doubt very much that she loves each of her children ony half as much as I love each of mine! The idea that human emotional and affective commitment is a finite quantity is a conjecture with little evidence to support it.

Except there's some evidence people do have a limit to how much empathy they can show: it's known as Dunbar's number. The basic idea is that humans can only maintain so many meaningful, stable relationships before they ultimately have to choose between one or the other (not necessarily consciously). However the number's so large (usually considered to be somewhere between 100 and 200), that very few people (as in, all but a handful of polygamous men in recorded history) have enough children that whether they could extend their love to another is at all a practical issue.

Someone with more children doesn't necessarily love their children any less than someone with fewer children, but if the concept of Dunbar's number is correct, it does mean their children occupy a bigger portion of their total potential relationships.

This is not true in D&D though. Alignment is virtually completely defined by ends (by which I take it you mean results). Killing isn't necessarily evil. It's who you kill (the end result) that matters. I can sit around and think evil thoughts all day long, but, unless I act on those acts, i will never be an evil character.

Actually it is true, at least according to some sources. Good ends do not justify evil means.

When do good ends justify evil means to achieve them? Is it morally acceptable, for example, to torture an evil captive in order to extract vital information that can prevent the deaths of thousands of innocents? Any good character shudders at the thought of committing torture, but the goal of preventing thousands of deaths is undeniably a virtuous one, and a neutral character might easily consider the use of torture in such a circumstance. With evil acts on a smaller scale, even the most virtuous characters can find themselves tempted to agree that a very good end justifies a mildly evil means. Is it acceptable to tell a small lie in order to prevent a minor catastrophe? A large catastrophe? A world-shattering catastrophe?

In the D&D universe, the fundamental answer is no, an evil act is an evil act no matter what good result it may achieve. A paladin who knowingly commits an evil act in pursuit of any end no matter how good still jeopardizes her paladinhood. Any exalted character risks losing exalted feats or other benefits of celestial favor if he commits any act of evil for any reason. Whether or not good ends can justify evil means, they certainly cannot make evil means any less evil.

There may be other sourcebooks that dispute this interpretation, but it's certainly not alien to D&D's alignment system.

Morality as a zero sum game? I dunno about "absolute" focus, but I do know that it's possible to score perfectly on both a math test and a history test at the same time. If the two axis are independent, why does focus on one axis preclude focus on another?

True and some individuals are skilled enough to get a doctorate in both mathematics and history. But could they also get a doctorate in medicine and astronomy? What about law? At some point you start running into a limit as to how much any one individual human can learn about and claim to be an expert in. Additionally, someone who is an expert in both mathematics and history may be more educated in either field than a layman but less so than a specialized expert, who devotes their time entirely to the study of the mathematics or history.

Again, I don't think you have to treat morality as a zero sum game if you don't want to; Kamikaze Midget's way of looking at alignment also works. But that's the way Aldarc asked the question and if you're going to operate with the assumption that you can be 100% good, I think it's fair to say that you can't be 100% good and 100% lawful or 100% chaotic.

 

[Hussar]

So, Nivenus, that would mean that there isn't actually two axis wouldn't it? At least, not two independent axis. As you slide one way or the other up one axis, you have to slide towards the center on the other axis. Is that a fair way of describing things?

I mean, without alignment, those planes can't rightly be called good planes any more, can they?

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356422-The-Multiverse-is-back/page89#ixzz3GGytnlNv

Really? Do you actually need alignment labels to decide that a paradise of peace and happiness is good (small g, not the alignment descriptor) and a plane of unending torment and pain is evil? But, the thing is, without the alignment framework, it doesn't make sense to have only three "good" planes and three "evil" planes (obviously subdivided after that). There could be an infinite number of either, each one fitting within the belief framework of those that go there.

If someone is 60% good, 40% evil, 60% chaotic and 40% lawful, where do they go when they die? How far along the axis would you have to be to go to your "proper" afterlife? And does worship have any place in that? I could certainly worship a LG god with those percentages - does that mean I go to the LG plane when I die?

 

[Nivenus]

So, Nivenus, that would mean that there isn't actually two axis wouldn't it? At least, not two independent axis. As you slide one way or the other up one axis, you have to slide towards the center on the other axis. Is that a fair way of describing things?

The way the Great Wheel cosmology typically renders things, where Elysium is "more good" than Celestia and Mechanus is "more lawful?" Yes, in a sense. It's more like a circle (which fits the wheel imagery), where along the perimeter (alignment extremes) you're always an equal distance from the center (true neutrality). If you think of good and evil as the y-axis (where positive coordinates good and negative coordinates evil) and law and chaos as the x-axis (law = negative, chaos = positive) and alignment as a circle rather than a square, than yes, LG's apex is going to be positioned lower than NG and further to the right than LN. And that is actually where Celestia lies on your typical map of the Great Wheel.

Really? Do you actually need alignment labels to decide that a paradise of peace and happiness is good (small g, not the alignment descriptor) and a plane of unending torment and pain is evil? But, the thing is, without the alignment framework, it doesn't make sense to have only three "good" planes and three "evil" planes (obviously subdivided after that). There could be an infinite number of either, each one fitting within the belief framework of those that go there.

I actually kind of agree with you (although there's actually a total of seven good-aligned Outer Planes in the Great Wheel cosmology). You don't need alignment to necessarily tell you that a paradise of peace and happiness is good (or at least appears to be). But alignment is a part of D&D and so the cosmology makes use of it.

But yeah, other settings needn't concern themselves with the Great Wheel's way of doing things. The World Tree of the Realms has nine celestial planes. Eberron only has a single good-aligned plane, Syrania. There's a lot of different possibilities to run with. The Great Wheel's just the default way of looking at things; it doesn't need to be the only one.

If someone is 60% good, 40% evil, 60% chaotic and 40% lawful, where do they go when they die? How far along the axis would you have to be to go to your "proper" afterlife? And does worship have any place in that? I could certainly worship a LG god with those percentages - does that mean I go to the LG plane when I die?

Part of this is setting-dependent. In the Realms, petitioners usually go to the plane of whatever deity they worshiped rather than whichever one corresponds to their alignment. So Moradin worshipers go to Dwarfhome, Lathander's followers go to the House of Nature, and those who worship Talos go to Fury's Heart (this is actually one place where I slightly prefer FR's default take on things, it makes more sense to me that a mortal's afterlife relates to their religion than anything else).

Well, that's a bit of a simplification actually: first they go to the Fugue Plane, where Kelemvor the god of the dead sorts them out into the Faithful, the False (those who betrayed their god's principles), and the Faithless. The Faithful go their god's plane; the False they are punished by Kelemvor for all eternity (to a degree dependent on their transgression); the Faithless are put into the Wall of the Faithless, their souls destined to slowly be consumed into nothingness.

However, for the Great Wheel, it'd probably be fair to say that whatever forces are dominant in a person are the ones that determine their destination. In your example of a 60% good, 40% evil, 60% chaotic, and 40% lawful person, who's mostly (but mildly good) and mostly (but mildly) chaotic, it seems likely they'd either end up in the Outlands (where neutral petitioners go) or Ysgard (where petitioners somewhere between chaotic good and chaotic neutral usually end up). Because they're both slightly good and slightly chaotic, the latter seems most likely to me.

 

[The Shadow]

I know I said I was leaving, but darnit!

I agree with The Shadow that this seems a Nietzschean idea.

I probably differe from The Shadow in thinking that there are interesting, even plausible, elements to the Nietzchean idea

Yeah, it's quite safe to say we differ there.

(it sees development in a range of other modern philosophers: the existentialists; Foucault; Ayer and Russell; Simon Blackburn; etc).

Not a list designed to arouse my sympathy.

If for Sartre Hell was other people, for me Hell is reading Sartre! And for my money, as a philosopher, Russell was a great mathematician. Your mileage no doubt varies.

But it needs a lot of work - if value commitments are a mere matter of taste, then killing in pursuit of them seems outrageous - it would be killing others simpy to satisfy one's own desire, which in D&D terms is practically the definition of evil.

Brother, you just said a mouthful! I'm trying to imagine terms under which that *wouldn't* be evil, and am coming up blank.

Wait, say what... the fact that I have the power to enact my beliefs upon the cosmos... is a reason to choose not to believe in anything?? Now that sounds incoherent to me.

Except that's not what I said. It isn't the power that's the issue, it's the lack of meaning. KM explicitly said there was no right answer, that good and evil are purely according to one's point of view.

If the difference between good and evil is just a matter of taste, then the only reason to choose to change the multiverse is simply the brute fact that you do, in fact, choose it.

If there is an objective difference between good and evil, then there are actual stakes in the ability to enact your beliefs. You can make the multiverse better, or you can make it worse. But if there is no standard by which the multiverse's state can be judged, all you can do is make it how you like.

And ultimately, so what? Who cares? I for one am not so maniacal as to want to force everyone to share my taste in music or food; these things don't matter much, precisely because they are purely matters of taste in which people have legitimate differences. If morality is a similar sort of taste, why is it worth trying to get anyone to share it?

You could say that getting people to share my morality could benefit me personally by, say, making it less likely that I will get murdered. But not wanting to get murdered is itself a moral stance! The very WORD 'benefit' contains the idea of 'goodness' in it! In the moral vacuum we are considering, there's no reason to value life over death, except that we happen to prefer it.

 

[Imaro]

Except that's not what I said. It isn't the power that's the issue, it's the lack of meaning. KM explicitly said there was no right answer, that good and evil are purely according to one's point of view.

I guess this would be true if the only driving forces for a person were cosmological good and evil... but as I said earlier I find Planescape more in line with sword and sorcery and weird fantasy where the protagonsist concerns are rarely centered around such things... Elric, Conan, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser... their motivation is not primarily good or evil...

If the difference between good and evil is just a matter of taste, then the only reason to choose to change the multiverse is simply the brute fact that you do, in fact, choose it.

One could want to change aspects of the multiverse for a multitude of reasons beyond good and evil...

If there is an objective difference between good and evil, then there are actual stakes in the ability to enact your beliefs. You can make the multiverse better, or you can make it worse. But if there is no standard by which the multiverse's state can be judged, all you can do is make it how you like.

Again how are there not stakes since all it takes for something to matter to someone is for them to want it and for there to be conflict in getting it. Classic sword and sorcery has actual stakes but again is rarely if ever concerned about objective good and evil. I mean if you prefer the type of fantasy where good and evil are objectuvely defined then I'll be the first to admit that Planescape probably isn't a good fit for you.

And ultimately, so what? Who cares? I for one am not so maniacal as to want to force everyone to share my taste in music or food; these things don't matter much, precisely because they are purely matters of taste in which people have legitimate differences. If morality is a similar sort of taste, why is it worth trying to get anyone to share it?

It's about making it a truth in the cosmology... in the same way that if I want to be a ruler in the game I have to get people to accept my rule... or if I want to be rich I have to amass a fortune. I'm getting the impression you assume every one plays high fantasy games of D&D that must be concerned with good vs. evil... and that's just not true.

You could say that getting people to share my morality could benefit me personally by, say, making it less likely that I will get murdered. But not wanting to get murdered is itself a moral stance! The very WORD 'benefit' contains the idea of 'goodness' in it! In the moral vacuum we are considering, there's no reason to value life over death, except that we happen to prefer it.

And that in essence is what most sword and sorcery heroes are adventuring for, because there's something they prefer and they want it. Conan doesn't risk his life so that good can reign in Hyboria. Elric and Corum aren't good people who summon demons and lay waste to civilizations (and even gods) because they want to benefit all of mankind by making the world a more benevolent place and Fafhrd and Gray Mouser don't truck with strange beings, steal and adventure to promote some objective goodness across all of Nehwon... these heroes act because they desire something and acting is the way to get, take or enforce it... plain and simple. Again I said earlier these were the type of stories Planescape felt suited for IMO, not LotR... not the Hobbit.

A quick example of The difference is... Aragorn is a king and has magical power by divine right (basically he's born privileged, whic is another reasson I think I don't particularly like heroes in this vein) and thus he is and promotes "good"... Conan has power and becomes a king because it's what he desired and he took it, he shaped his reality... Elric destroys his people and their ancient civilization that once ruled all of the Young Kingdoms because they wronged him... Fafhrd and Gray mouser steal from the Thieve's Guild because they want money to have a good time... those are the type of heroes I prefer. I can understand those who don't like the aesthetic (and if so I don't think PS at least as I envisage is for you)but claiming there are no stakes in a world that doesn't put objective good and evil at the forefront is wrong.