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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[FormerlyHemlock]

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?

You're pointing out that alignment has multiple failure points. I don't disagree, but this is a non-issue for what I'm discussing. Even if the GM does manage to unambiguously determine alignment, and regardless of how the GM determines what alignment the creature possesses, it's still merely an objective phenomenon, not an internalized self-assessment. If the GM's definition uses words like "beauty" in his alignment descriptor, it kind of stinks to be one of his players because you're playing guessing games with him about what beauty is, but it's not really important unless 1.) Your PC personally cares a lot about his alignment (reasons to do so will vary), or 2.) alignment mechanically interacts with things PCs care about. For instance, magic items that function only for certain alignments (Robe of the Neutral Archmagi), or societies that have access to effects that show alignment (lots of Sprites) and obsess about it the way Americans obsess about credit ratings (Lawful creatures get a discount rate on business loans).

You could certainly run a game where alignment is subjective and the Succubus therefore detects as Good-aligned, but I don't believe anyone in this thread is proponing a subjective alignment system like that, and I'm personally not interested in discussing such a system because like you I feel that it would be incoherent and hard to adjudicate. Take it as a given that we're talking about alignment as a reliable, objective, repeatable measurement.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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?

I might quibble with the degree to which these concepts are part of alignment (or which particular concepts are exclusively part of one alignment or another), but there is a rather explicit answer to this question in Planescape.

In PS, if something is "Good" ("right", "helpful", or "conscientious" to use 5e's concepts) it is because most creatures believe it to be so. A demon who detected itself as evil would know that, as defined by the belief of most, it was not right by society, helpful to others in need, or acting according to a conscience. The same would be generally true, of, say, a modron (who acts in accordance with a code that may not always line up with what is right by society), or a slaad (who follows whims which may be entirely conscience-free).

"Most creatures" becomes in the setting a more narrative concept than a numerical concept - "most" in this case means a number so unreasonably large that it might as well be (and may actually be, depending on the DM's interpretation) infinite. PS protagonists often change the setting by changing how "most" creatures believe, by accomplishing tremendous actions and affecting the hearts and minds of people far removed from their current surroundings (a kind of butterfly effect). Part of the reason you play PS is because you want to play such a character, so the setting makes such a character possible.

So "detect good" in PS latches onto if most people believe the target to have the qualities that most people have defined to be good, or if they do not believe that (in 3e, this would be explicitly "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings").

In PS, that friendly business associate would probably still ping as evil (most people believe that they hurt, oppress, and kill others, to use 3e's terms).

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

It is not so much contentious in D&D, where "Good", at least in 5e, only means that you do right by society, you help others according to their needs, or you obey your conscience (presumably, excluding people/creatures who cannot form a conscience), and that when you die, your soul goes to A Particular Place. There's plenty of reasons one could have to reject what society thinks of as right, to refuse to help others, or to ignore your conscience. This would make you not-good. These are also things that every human being is familiar with doing in their lives.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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".

That's a non-sequitur. Clearly the fiend DOES NOT share the same values as the entity (me, the DM) evaluating him as Neutral Evil. You state that he must, but I don't understand your argument for it. Is this that "subjective alignment" thing again? I've already said that I don't use subjective alignment.

Are you asking about my methods for determining his alignment? If you're arguing that I should call him LG I'll just say, "No. He kidnaps and tortures people for petty personal reasons. That's evil, and it's not lawful, but I'll call him Neutral instead of Chaotic because he usually doesn't cross the law without a specific reason." You (pemerton) can dispute that label and so can he--but are you disputing my ability to give him that label without his agreement? Because clearly I can do it. Are you really arguing that I can't?

 

[pemerton]

So "detect good" in PS latches onto if most people believe the target to have the qualities defined to be good, or if they do not believe that (in 3e, this would be explicitly "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings").

The question still arises.

How do I tell that a person is judging so-and-so to be altruistic? I need criteria for concept-individuation, and how am I going to do that?

If I'm trying to work out whether they are talking about chairs or tables or trees or mountains, the problem is not too bad: I look at what they point to when they teach the word to a child.

But what is the common anchor for my belief about Bahamut's behaviour, your belief about it, etc, such that we can all be said to be judging that he is altruistic?

I wouldn't expect a typical D&D group to stumble onto the problem in exactly the terms I've put it, but I think the problem is a real one. The way I think it would most likely manifest itself would be via a more obvious vicious circularity: good is defined as "What everyone judges to be good", and we explain the content of various peoples' concepts of good by pointing to the Upper Planes. I don't know the Planescape texts well enough to know whether or not they present this sort of circularity, but I would not be surprised if they do.

 

[pemerton]

That's a non-sequitur. Clearly the fiend DOES NOT share the same values as the entity (me, the DM) evaluating him as Neutral Evil. You state that he must, but I don't understand your argument for it. Is this that "subjective alignment" thing again? I've already said that I don't use subjective alignment.

Are you asking about my methods for determining his alignment? If you're arguing that I should call him LG I'll just say, "No. He kidnaps and tortures people for petty personal reasons. That's evil, and it's not lawful, but I'll call him Neutral instead of Chaotic because he usually doesn't cross the law without a specific reason." You (pemerton) can dispute that label and so can he--but are you disputing my ability to give him that label without his agreement? Because clearly I can do it. Are you really arguing that I can't?

Of course you can give him that label, but then why not just say that he's evil (in the full-fledged moral sense) and be done with it?

I'll focus on your use of "petty personal reasons". This is why he detects as evil. Whereas let's say a jailer or even executioner in the court of Furyondy or Cormyr presumably need not, per se, detect as evil - these people also inflict suffering, but not for petty personal reasons.

But now, when the villain casts Detect Evil on himself, and comes up positive, is he obliged to conclude that he is inflicting suffering for petty personal reasons? If not, why not? What other explanation is there for the fact that he registered to Detect Evil? If so, then hasn't he just been told, by the detection magic, that he is committing moral error (in this case, mistaking petty personal reasons for genuine ones)?

Even if the GM does manage to unambiguously determine alignment, and regardless of how the GM determines what alignment the creature possesses, it's still merely an objective phenomenon, not an internalized self-assessment.

What does it mean for the villain in your example to realise that, as an objective matter, he is inflicting suffering for petty personal reasons, but yet for this not to amount to internalised self-assessment? The only way that you could avoid the self-assessment is to reject the characterisation of your reasons as petty. Yet the Detect Evil spell is unambiguously telling you that your reasons are petty ones.

You could certainly run a game where alignment is subjective and the Succubus therefore detects as Good-aligned, but I don't believe anyone in this thread is proponing a subjective alignment system like that,

Nor am I, although someone in a recent thread did (maybe not this one, maybe the one about the "problem" player of a CN PC).

I'm making the point that if Detect Evil pings on "scornful of beauty" (as another indicator alongside "inflicts suffering for petty personal reasons"), and the succubus pings as Evil, then she herself has to conclude that she is scornful of beauty. Whereas in the real world it would be open for her to argue that the received conception of beauty is deeply flawed (look at the disputes between mainstream and avant-garde artists between the late nineteenth century and (say) the 1960s - and notice how work that was once scandalous is now completely mainstream and used on chocolate boxes and family TV commercials).

In other words, in the real world she would not have to accept the "internal self-assessment" that she is scornful of beauty, but the world of Know Alignment spells obliges her to.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The question still arises.

How do I tell that a person is judging so-and-so to be altruistic? I need criteria for concept-individuation, and how am I going to do that?

Well, in D&D, you could tell that with something like detect thoughts, or you could ask someone what they think of so-and-so (presuming they're not being dishonest). But a single individual's opinion wouldn't typically matter that much cosmologically. What matters is the people in aggregate, and as a character in that setting, that's defined for you before you're born, and easily discoverable with spells/maps/conversations with your local priest/etc.

If I'm trying to work out whether they are talking about chairs or tables or trees or mountains, the problem is not too bad: I look at what they point to when they teach the word to a child.

But what is the common anchor for my belief about Bahamut's behaviour, your belief about it, etc, such that we can all be said to be judging that he is altruistic?

You mean aside from the spell? Because looking at a spell's results is probably just as empirical as looking at a tree.

The social context - what "most people think." In PS, again, this involves uncountably vast amounts of people for "most" so that it becomes a narrative conceit in practice (you know most people think that way because the book tells you most people think that way and you want to play the game). Presumably if there were only 9 people in existence in such a world and 5 of them thought Bahamut was not altruistic, then Bahamut would not ping on a detect good spell and would not go to one of the upper planes when he died. If one person changed their mind, he'd be pinging again. But, of course, that is not really a situation that arises in practice.

 

[pemerton]

Well, in D&D, you could tell that with something like detect thoughts, or you could ask someone what they think of so-and-so (presuming they're not being dishonest).

<snip>

The social context - what "most people think."

This doesn't address the point.

In the real world, when I meet a stranger who speaks a different language from me, how do I translate it? I might point to a chair and say (in English) "chair", and the stranger might point and say (perhaps) "la chaise", and by repeating the process I gradually build up a sense of some common nouns of the stranger's language. Similar techniques are used to learn common adjectives, verbs, adverbs etc.

But now how do I work out what the word for "generosity" is in that person's language? If I look to see what word s/he uses to describe (say) boy scouts helping old ladies across the road, then I'm building into my translation an assumption that s/he shares my values. Which doesn't look very much like what you described for Planescape.

If I look to see what word the stranger uses to describe (i) episodes of one person providing goods or services to another with (ii) no obvious reciprocation and (iii) of which the stranger seems to approve, then I'm building into my translation an assumption that generosity warrants admiration. Which doesn't look very much like what you described for Planescape - you want the demons, for instance, to be able to coherently say of something both that (i) it is generous, and (ii) it is not worthy of admiration.

You can try and strip all your X, Y and Zs down to simple observables, like chairs and tables and mountains, but no bit of D&D alignment text has ever actually managed to do that (they all use value-laden words like "truth", "beauty", "innocent", "dignity" etc) and there are plausible arguments (mostly coming out of work on the methodology of the social sciences) that it can't be done.

 

[pemerton]

You mean aside from the spell?

That's what I started with. The spell latches onto the two-word entry in the alignment box on the character sheet/statblock.

But that doesn't make the problem go away - it just reinforces it. In two respects. First, from the point of view of other game participants, labelling doesn't make it so: I can draw a stick figure portrait and stick "brilliant work of art" in the aesthetic value box on its statblock, but no one is going to take that seriously.

And from the point of view of the metaphysics of the gameworld, characters now have a sui generis property - an alignment label - which is divorced from and knowable independently of any particular behaviour they engage in, yet is also supposed to do much the same conceptual work as natural language value concepts for which neither independence claim is true (ie the things we talk about using natural language value concepts are not independent of, and are not epistemically accessible independent of, the more basic facts on which they supervene).

 

[Von Ether]

So ... yeah. When did I get to beat up on some undead 'cause they are the villains and I'm the hero?

D&D over the years has played fast and loose with anything that wasn't archetypical with a baseline that was changed for different settings (Planscape, Eberron and Ravenloft) all of it written as work-for-hire by hundreds of people over a generation. So to find a coherent philosophy in all that might be fun, but it's ultimately a mental exercise with no real resolution.

My own anecdote on this line was the time a GM made my paladin unfun to play. Basically the fellow would keep switching between a black/white morality and then a more modern take on a whim to make my PC's job much harder.

One minute he'd ask for me to "Think of the goblin children" and free will and then the next drag me by the nose with "blue flashes" of vision that pointed parts of the dungeon we missed. Not a very consistent fellow.

 

[Rejuvenator]

Here's a thought: Detect Evil/Good does NOT measure the moral weight of individual actions. It measures the balance of morality of all of an individual's actions.

Presumably, the cosmos has some obscure algorithm that judges a person's psyche and behavioral history to produce an overall score of Good, Neutral or Evil. Just like a soul needs a positive balance of 'Good points' minus 'Sin points' to go to Heaven, or otherwise go to Hell.

The only difference between a real-life medieval devout peasant, vs a fantasy devout peasant, is that the latter can find out objectively if they're currently destined for Heaven or not. But neither can prove that any one act that they've committed is itself objectively good or evil in any single specific context.