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]

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?
...
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)?

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.

There are several problems with the argument you're making:

1.) 5E doesn't have a Know Alignment spell, and the alignment-oriented effects that it does have don't give you a detailed justification for their results. Nothing tells him, "That old lady that you tortured? That was petty." All he gets is, "You can't use the holy sword/whatever," which of course just strikes him as unjust condemnation because CLEARLY this guy isn't open to criticism! Just look at why he was torturing the old lady! In short, no of course he isn't obliged to conclude anything about his actions, he doesn't have the detailed information I gave to pemerton.

2.) He can externalize his conclusions. It's trendy nowadays to refer to this phenomenon as "cognitive dissonance" although I don't personally like that usage of the term.

2.) Most importantly, you still haven't made your argument for why he must share my axiological values. I think kindness is important. He thinks it's unimportant, except to your buddies, but he thinks making important people like himself and his friends keep face/feel good is very important. Let me know if the way I'm using "axiological values" is unclear to you, but if I assume we both know what it means in this context, all you've done is quibble over the meaning of "petty reasons" while the more fundamental point is that in his axiology, it doesn't matter if the reasons are petty or not. Being kind to random peasants isn't even on his radar as something you should do. He would disagree very strongly with my characterization of him as evil. Maybe you would too.

4.) Nitpick: re your first paragraph, "why not say he's evil". I did say he's evil. I've said it multiple times. How many times do I need to say it? But that doesn't mean he says it.

 

[pemerton]

Most importantly, you still haven't made your argument for why he must share my axiological values. I think kindness is important. He thinks it's unimportant, except to your buddies, but he thinks making important people like himself and his friends keep face/feel good is very important. Let me know if the way I'm using "axiological values" is unclear to you, but if I assume we both know what it means in this context, all you've done is quibble over the meaning of "petty reasons" while the more fundamental point is that in his axiology, it doesn't matter if the reasons are petty or not.

The issue of "petty reasons" isn't quibbling.

Clearly he doesn't think they're petty, in so far as he puts them forward as reasons to justify his treatment of the old woman. He didn't tell the PCs that he was just doing it for a lark.

Nitpick: re your first paragraph, "why not say he's evil". I did say he's evil. I've said it multiple times. How many times do I need to say it? But that doesn't mean he says it.

My point is that if you're going to have him agreeing that his reasons are petty, yet not caring, why not just have him agreeing that he's evil, but not caring?

Or, contraposing: I can see why it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to judge himself as evil. But for the same reason, he doesn't judge his reasons as petty. Which means, to him, it must be a complete shock when he registers to Detect Evil (pre-5e version).

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

I don't know that the language analogy is helping - your understanding of the moral value of "la chaise" in this context is just as empty as your understanding of the word for "helping an old woman cross the road." The stranger's language could very well put a moral value on "la chaise" (only the Oppressors use those!) and no moral value on "helping an old woman cross the road" (everyone does this, even the Oppressors!).

As far as what helping an old lady cross the road looks like to different people in PS - there is a social context to determine the "default" in the setting that the characters are aware of (based on it being D&D and also it being presented as the current state of affairs in the books). Your characters know that social context, they can see it in the geography. They can accept the moral aspect of that definition or reject it as they see fit, and of course this means that the social context will judge them as well and define what they are (unless they can change it). They also know that this social context is just that - the opinion of others, made manifest by the way this reality works. Change the opinion, and reality will work differently.

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.

Part of the issue is that it is not the case that items (i)-(iii) of your definition necessarily warrant admiration. In example, any economist would balk at anything happening without reciprocation - they'd say that of course you got reciprocation, you just didn't realize or call it that, and so why would that be any more worthy of admiration than that same boyscout charging the old lady money? At least then it would be a measurable gain that you could put to use and not some squishy social capital that might go to waste at a retirement home! That might be similar to how an LE creature would view the act, as well (with perhaps a little more emphasis on making sure ladies who can't afford it stay on the right side of the street!). A NE person might reasonably conclude that anyone who fulfilled conditions i-iii is being a fool to get nothing out of it. A CE person might claim that same process results in nothing more than fewer useless old bints getting turned into traffic hazards.

I think [MENTION=6787650]emdw45[/MENTION] has been using the term "axiological values" to refer to a the same idea - admiration depends on those being shared. You and the stranger do not necessarily share those. The demon likely does not share those.

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.

The characters in a PS game exist in a setting where social consensus has defined alignments and what they mean - all societies have been cosmically aggregated, each individual's ever-changing data-point tallied on some grand database, and this presented as the context. That determines the "axiological values" of the multiverse in general. Characters are free to dispute that consensus, and it is assumed that they will, at least in some form or another - that's the "things that need changing" in the 3-act structure of a PS campaign. Even LG characters find that their values will differ from the values of the multiverse at large.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The issue of "petty reasons" isn't quibbling.

Clearly he doesn't think they're petty, in so far as he puts them forward as reasons to justify his treatment of the old woman. He didn't tell the PCs that he was just doing it for a lark.

My point is that if you're going to have him agreeing that his reasons are petty, yet not caring, why not just have him agreeing that he's evil, but not caring?

Or, contraposing: I can see why it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to judge himself as evil. But for the same reason, he doesn't judge his reasons as petty. Which means, to him, it must be a complete shock when he registers to Detect Evil (pre-5e version).

I agree at least with the point in bold, and I've been saying something very much like it for ten pages or so. But you're kind of changing the subject here. You've asserted that the fiend must share my axiological values as a DM. Your post quoted here seems to concede the point ("I can see why it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to judge himself as evil"). And yes, I agree that he probably also wouldn't judge his reasons as petty, although it wouldn't matter if he did because it still wouldn't be a big deal because benevolence to nobodies isn't axiologically important to him. ("Yeah, I probably shouldn't have lost my temper and tortured that lady for losing my laundry. Oh well, we all have off days.")

If you've conceded that point, then we're done with this sub-thread, which started in post #184 with the question,

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?

If your revised answer to that question is, "No," then we're done. Or at least I am--the potential axiological divergence between DM/universe and (N)PC has been my point all along.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That might be similar to how an LE creature would view the act, as well (with perhaps a little more emphasis on making sure ladies who can't afford it stay on the right side of the street!). A NE person might reasonably conclude that anyone who fulfilled conditions i-iii is being a fool to get nothing out of it. A CE person might claim that same process results in nothing more than fewer useless old bints getting turned into traffic hazards.

I find this characterization of CE inspirational. Mind if I steal it for occasional use?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I find this characterization of CE inspirational. Mind if I steal it for occasional use?

Please do! Let me know how it goes!

 

[Elderbrain]

In the hopes that this has not already been asked/answered... are there going to be game stats for Demogorgon, Orcus, Grazz't, etc. in the Rage of Demons book, in the same way the Elemental Princes of Evil got stats in Princes of the Apocalpse?

 

[I'm A Banana]

In the hopes that this has not already been asked/answered... are there going to be game stats for Demogorgon, Orcus, Grazz't, etc. in the Rage of Demons book, in the same way the Elemental Princes of Evil got stats in Princes of the Apocalpse?

We don't know for sure, but their depiction certainly points to that likelihood.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Please do! Let me know how it goes!

It definitely makes me want to give the PCs a useful but psychopathic (Chaotic Evil) ally. Kind of like Dogbert for Dilbert. I don't know if I'll actually do it, but the idea is tickling my fancy right now and I'll chew on it.

 

[TarionzCousin]

In the hopes that this has not already been asked/answered... are there going to be game stats for Demogorgon, Orcus, Grazz't, etc. in the Rage of Demons book, in the same way the Elemental Princes of Evil got stats in Princes of the Apocalpse?

We don't know for sure, but their depiction certainly points to that likelihood.

/Hackmaster.