The 'Wonderland'-Inspired Faces of the RAGE OF DEMONS

Take a peek at some of the art from D&D's upcoming Rage of Demons storyline. This art is by Richard Whitters, who is the art director for D&D and used to work as a concept artist for Magic: the Gathering. WotC's Chris Perkins has indicated that one of the influences on Rage of Demons was Alice in Wonderland, and I think the influence is clear when you look at the characters below.

OUGALOP, kuo-toa cave cricket catcher extraordinaire.

YUK YUK and SPIDERBAIT, goblin adrenaline junkies.

THE SOCIETY OF BRILLIANCE, the Mensa of the Underdark.

GLABBAGOOL, awakened gelatinous cube.

RUMPADUMP and STOOL, myconid followers.

PRINCE DERENDIL, a quaggoth who thinks he's elven royalty.

TOPSY and TURVY, svirfneblin wererat siblings.

THE PUDDING KING, svirfneblin devotee (i.e., flunky) of Juiblex the Faceless Lord.

D&D's "Legion of Doom." What a wonderful bunch of malcontents.
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[Manbearcat]

No, why would they reject it? Maybe that spell is useful for detecting chumps and self-righteous bigots (from their perspective). Or maybe they use it to detect people who aren't worth your time trying to co-op because it won't work. Depends on your setting and how you run their goals/self-image/motivation.

Imagine an ISIS jihadist with a spell that detects faithful Coptic Christians, ones who really live their beliefs. Having an reliable way to Detect Good (Coptic) doesn't necessitate believing that Christians are actually RIGHT about anything. Neither does a Succubus's ability to Detect Chumps (Good) imply any particular value judgment on her part about the correctness of whatever attunement her spell detects.

Are you arguing that the Succubus must of necessity share the axiological values of whatever force/entity is responsible for assigning Know Alignment results? If so, why do you think that? Do you think it's so self-evident that other people must think it too?

I can't quite grok how this is coming together for you, specifically from a simulationist's perspective.

Alignment in AD&D and 3.x are empirically testable, physical laws of the cosmos no different than gravitational attraction and the immediately observable effects of combustion (the production of heat and light).

I mean I suppose you could certainly rationalize ignorance from the layfolk's perspective (to some degree) as they (a) are generally distant from the cosmological certainty of alignment due to their fundamentally mundane existence (till fields, raise children, barter, etc) and (b) don't interface regularly (if at all) with the magical means of discernment nor the implications of said discernment. However, I don't see how you could do the same for adventurers or any collection of immortals (demons, devils, gods, etc) of which (a) and (b) above are 100 % inverted. Could you have a stray demon who is all "yea I don't buy that rot"...sure, I suppose. However, I can't imagine that his skepticism (whether he actually prosletyzed or just passively objected) would move the requsite number of units to be anything but the most extreme outlier without a shred of evidence to support his personal ethos.

Could these immortals/adventurers possibly have discussions about the utility (solely within the scope of their own personal needs) of each alignment? Sure, I could see that I suppose. But that isn't the same thing as denying the utterly inescapable cosmological fact that some entity (or entities) organized the universe such that behavioral profile x unerringly yields alignment y upon detection. And further, that said entity which organized universal laws has already rendered their, obviously authoritative as the creator-entity, judgement upon the cosmological nature and utility of each alignment.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Why? There is no chance of failure with these spells, particularly if they are self administered. Alignment in DND is objective. It has to be or it wouldn't work.

The reason new points don't get made is because of this insistence that alignment is anything other than objective.

I'm arguing that alignment is am objective phenomena, which like all things objective, is subjectively interpreted according to the value system of the observer. Who's arguing that it's subjective? You?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Part of the issue is that "Good" in D&D isn't meaningful beyond a few basic facts. You can say that someone is "Good" becaue you magic it and you can say that Good people tend to act like X, Y, and Z, and go to That Place when they die, and these are all factual and useful bits of knowledge, but this doesn't translate into there being any particular REASON for an individual to behave that way. A person who knows they are "Evil" knows that they tend to act like X, Y, and Z, and will go to That Other Place when they die, but there's no inherent reason for them to want to change the way they act. Okay, so burning this orphanage down and pinning it on the local gnome population is "Evil." So what? A gnome assassin killed my father and plunged my family into poverty and these orphan's deaths will help me find him and extract vengeance - why should I care if that selfish, hedonic desire for simple bloody revenge will plunge me into the Abyss when I die?

If I die and my soul becomes transformed into a demon what does it matter, in a practical sense, if I am "Evil?" It's not going to STOP me form doing what I do, from viewing my own hedonic pleasure as most important to me, even from encouraging EVERYONE to act the way I act. If that makes everyone evil - sure. Whatever. Who cares? It doesn't matter. From my personal perspective as an individual, "Evil" doesn't mean I shouldn't do it, it just means celestials will try and stop me.

What sense would it make, in Planescape say, for the Seven Heavens to fail to register to Detect Good?

If someone were to go to Celestia and Detect Good and fail to get a ping, it would mean that the area around them doesn't have traits X, Y, and Z that are defined as Good by the mutliverse (ie, the rulebooks/gygax/crawford, or in PS specifically, a sort of planar consensus).

It would probably mean that - for whatever reason - the beings who live there and who make up the plane's matter are no longer doing the right thing by society, helping others, or acting according to conscience. It may mean that the souls who act like that are going somewhere else. It may mean that something is preventing souls from acting like that.

It'd be a pretty awesome plot hook in PS.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In any event, I think that a game that adopts the shorthand label approach has a reasonable chance of encountering one or both of a couple of issues. There is the first issue I described in relation to the "Detect Copt" example: a subtle game may put pressure on issues like "what is welfare" or "what is beauty", and hence bring to light any disagreements over such matters among the game participants, and hence make the use of Detect Evil or Detect Good a contentious matter even when divorced from moral evaluation - who's to say, after all, that the succubus hasn't really gotten to the bottom of the issue of welfare (maybe the Sadeian theory of libertinage is correct), in which case perhaps she should register positive to Detect Good!

I've run campaign in which the PCs (and their players) form the view that the (so-called!) Heavens are wrong, because they have formed the view that the gods' conceptions of welfare are corrupt and self-serving. In such circumstances, how do we determine who registers to Detect Good. What sense would it make, in Planescape say, for the Seven Heavens to fail to register to Detect Good? The whole notion seems incoherent to me.

You've written a lot, and it's worthy of response but unfortunately I'm on a phone, so I've just picked what I think is the key point here. It sounds as if you're describing a party above who has concluded that Gygaxian labels of good and evil are incorrect--and there's no way to prove them wrong. That doesn't mean that the Seven Heavens aren't "good-aligned" according to the spell (because the spell goes off of Gygaxian definitions), it means that the Gygaxian definitions aren't credible in the eyes of that party. This is boo different than Morgoth not crediting Detect Faithful because he doesn't believe in Eru's correctness, or the ISIS dude not crediting Detect Good (Coptic) because Christians violate monotheism (in his view) and therefore cannot be good. Objective phenomena must always be subjectively interpreted.

And, to bring it back on topic, thus is true even if you AGREE with the Gygaxian definitions. You have to acknowledge the possibility that other people won't. The succubus can't be expected to just scan herself with Know Alignment and go, "oh, I guess I'm I'm the wrong. I'm so awful." She might be good enough in her own eyes (you mentioned libertinage) and bad in yours, and Know Alignment doesn't change that any more than the Ten Commandments do.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I can't quite grok how this is coming together for you, specifically from a simulationist's perspective...

Could these immortals/adventurers possibly have discussions about the utility (solely within the scope of their own personal needs) of each alignment? Sure, I could see that I suppose. But that isn't the same thing as denying the utterly inescapable cosmological fact that some entity (or entities) organized the universe such that behavioral profile x unerringly yields alignment y upon detection. And further, that said entity which organized universal laws has already rendered their, obviously authoritative as the creator-entity, judgement upon the cosmological nature and utility of each alignment.

Sorry to give short shrift, but here I go:

Therefore what? So there's a detection spell, and maybe (depending on your cosmology) also an after-death effect that shunts your soul/shade to the appropriate plane. So that makes, Know Alignment basically a "detect planar linkage" spell (and that is exactly how I run it in AD&D). So what?

Within the Christian tradition (specifically Mormon, which I know best), Lucifer knows perfectly well where he's going when this is all over. Doesn't mean that he thinks he deserves it. And isn't the self-image of evil creatures what we're talking about in this subthread? I am, primarily. To analogize, they may acknowledge that they're going against RAW (cosmological creator's rules, i.e. mine as DM) without acknowledging that they're having badwrongfun (i.e. actually in the wrong).

 

[pemerton]

It sounds as if you're describing a party above who has concluded that Gygaxian labels of good and evil are incorrect

It goes deeper than that.

Those definitions, and some of their later-edition counterparts, use concepts like "dignity", "rights", "innocent", "truth", "beauty" etc.

So what does a Detect Good spell latch onto? Does it latch onto a character's attitude towards, and treatment of, truth, beauty and human dignity? But in that case, who gets to determine that the Seven Heavens rather than the succubus has really got the hang of beauty and dignity? In a broad-brush or four-colour game we can take it for granted that the Heavens are right and the succubus wrong, but that won't do for a more subtle game.

In practice, at least as I've experienced it, these spells latch onto the GM's two-word alignment descriptor for the character in question - but that's hardly making the tension go away, is it?

Part of the issue is that "Good" in D&D isn't meaningful beyond a few basic facts. You can say that someone is "Good" becaue you magic it and you can say that Good people tend to act like X, Y, and Z

<snip>

If someone were to go to Celestia and Detect Good and fail to get a ping, it would mean that the area around them doesn't have traits X, Y, and Z that are defined as Good by the mutliverse (ie, the rulebooks/gygax/crawford, or in PS specifically, a sort of planar consensus).

It would probably mean that - for whatever reason - the beings who live there and who make up the plane's matter are no longer doing the right thing by society, helping others, or acting according to conscience.

This doesn't really address what, in post , I called the first issue with Detect Copt.

You seem to assume that whether or not someone is beahving in ways X, Y and Z is epistemically accessible in just the same way whether "X", "Y" or "Z" is stopping at traffic lights and shaking hands as a greeting and not leaving the house naked, or doing the right thing by society and helping others and fostering and admiring beauty. But as soon as you move out of broad-brush or four-colour storytelling this isn't the case. There is no sort of category error or basic failure of comprehension, for instance, in a succubus arguing that Sadeian libertarianism is true, and hence that by breaking down received mores she is in fact doing the right thing by society. (In fact, when you compare contemporary sexual ethics across huge parts of the world, compared to sexual ethics when the succubus was first conceived of as a threat to human wellbeing, you can see that the Sadeian argument has already made great progress!)

But if she is right, then Detect Good should ping on her, and not the Seven Heavens, even though the basic facts of their behaviour are no different from those set out in the relevant rulebooks. Which, as I said, would be verging on the incoherent.

Two solutions suggest themselves. First, stick to broad-brush or four-colour rather than subtle explorations of value. This is the norm for D&D, I think, but by no means exhausts the possibilities inherent in the system. Second, drop alignment as an ingame phenomenon directly accessible via informational/cosmological magic.

I'm arguing that alignment is am objective phenomena, which like all things objective, is subjectively interpreted according to the value system of the observer.

This seems to assume a contrast between objective things and value systems. But alignment is about values. Even if you treat "good" and "evil", as they are used in the alignment system, as shorthand labels rather than having their ordinary English evaluative meanings, you don't avoid the problem that the X, Y[ and Z for which they are shorthands are, as I've just replied to KM, themselves open to argumentation and contestation.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Part of the issue is that "Good" in D&D isn't meaningful beyond a few basic facts. You can say that someone is "Good" becaue you magic it and you can say that Good people tend to act like X, Y, and Z, and go to That Place when they die, and these are all factual and useful bits of knowledge, but this doesn't translate into there being any particular REASON for an individual to behave that way. A person who knows they are "Evil" knows that they tend to act like X, Y, and Z, and will go to That Other Place when they die, but there's no inherent reason for them to want to change the way they act. Okay, so burning this orphanage down and pinning it on the local gnome population is "Evil." So what? A gnome assassin killed my father and plunged my family into poverty and these orphan's deaths will help me find him and extract vengeance - why should I care if that selfish, hedonic desire for simple bloody revenge will plunge me into the Abyss when I die?

Yeah. Here's another scenario I've thought about using:

A friendly (fiend, human tyrant, black dragon, vampire) has invited the PCs over to talk business. Maybe he's putting together a treasure hunting expedition to another sphere, and he wants these guys to be part of it. Partway through negotiations/dinner, the fiend pauses briefly to check up on something else: he's got a hireling nearby in a cell with a withered old lady, doing... things with a needle and a hot poker. If the horrified PCs inquire, it turns out that, "Yeah, I've got this buddy. He's in an unsavory line of business, and this woman, this peasant nobody, called him out in front of his friends and family, told them about his work and said he was an awful guy. It shamed him, you know, made him feel really bad. So I talked to a guy I know and brought her here. When they're all done I'll let the word get out that nobody messes with my pals."

If the PCs try to stop him forcibly, the fiend is liable to take it personal. "I invite you into my home to talk mutually profitable business, and you repay me with treachery? Forget that." Voila! Instant treasure rivalry! Too bad the fiend hadn't finished telling them exactly where on the planet the cache was located, but the PCs will find a way around that.

Or they could just bite their tongues, go along with it, and become filthy rich.

Either way, in the bad guy's mind, he's the good guy. The hero of his own story.

 

[SkidAce]

Hence why my "Detect" spells only register supernatural good or evil. Demon or angel? Ping ping ping....

Evil (as per society and values) cannibal shopkeeper... silence on the radar screen.

Unless of course he manages to get supernaturally tainted...cause if you've seen Time Bandits, you know there ARE chunks of pure evil out there...

 

[pemerton]

A person who knows they are "Evil" knows that they tend to act like X, Y, and Z, and will go to That Other Place when they die, but there's no inherent reason for them to want to change the way they act. Okay, so burning this orphanage down and pinning it on the local gnome population is "Evil." So what? A gnome assassin killed my father and plunged my family into poverty and these orphan's deaths will help me find him and extract vengeance - why should I care if that selfish, hedonic desire for simple bloody revenge will plunge me into the Abyss when I die?

I've already explained, in my post above this one, how the issue about alignment goes "all the way down" - as in, the X, Y and Z themselves are open to interpretation and contestation.

But this passage gives rise to another point: the claim that no one has an inherent reason to do good (let's say, to promote the interests of others even when this doesn't directly further his/her own interests; to encourage beauty rather than squalor; etc) is iteslf hugely, hugely contentious. For most of the history of philosophy, pages of ink were spilled trying to rebut it (Hobbes and perhaps Hume stand out as pre-19th/20th century philosophers who accept the claim).

That's not a reason to reject the claim - perhaps Hobbes was right and everyone else from Socrates through to Kant wrong - but if we're going to affirm it, we probably should at least take it seriously. How can such everyday practices as praise, blame, punishment and the like - all of which are part of D&D (eg it's OK to kill the orcs, because they're to blame for doing the wrong thing) - be reconciled with the fact that the ones we are blaming never had a reason to do otherwise? In which case, what are we blaming them for? Failing to toss the coin again and again until it came up heads rather than tails?

Hobbes, and in a slightly different way Nietzsche, are prepared to bite the bullet and say that value is really just about desire and power. But they didn't believe in angels, paladin or the Seven Heavens, either!

 

[pemerton]

Yeah. Here's another scenario I've thought about using:

A friendly (fiend, human tyrant, black dragon, vampire) has invited the PCs over to talk business.

<snip>

If the PCs try to stop him forcibly, the fiend is liable to take it personal. "I invite you into my home to talk mutually profitable business, and you repay me with treachery? Forget that."

<snip>

in the bad guy's mind, he's the good guy. The hero of his own story.

Sure. But how does the NPC register to Detect Good/Evil? And how do we work that out?

In the scenario you describe, the NPC is punishing the old woman for shaming his friend. So why doesn't this count as upholding dignity and social order (ie LG)?

It seems to me to answer that question you have to take a stand on what dignity, proper social order, etc consist in - and you have to assume that these are as binding on the NPC and his friend as the PCs (because presumably Detect Evil gives the same result whoever casts it). To borrow from your post upthread, the NPC and his friend "must of necessity share the axiological values of whatever force/entity is responsible for assigning Know Alignment results".

At which point, if we're going to have alignment as an ingame phenomenon at all, why not just take a stand on what good and evil are? What is gained by pushing it back one degree to dignity, innocence, help/sacrifice, truth, beauty etc?