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.
​

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

RE "if it has stats, we can kill it", my players derive great joy from the fact that "everything has HP" including doors, walls, stone slabs, and the planet itself. It doesn't come into play often, but the fact that it is at least theoretically possible to destroy everything increases their enjoyment--and mine too.

 

[Hussar]

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?

Objective phenomena cannot be subjectively interpreted. You don't get to believe things about gravity or 2+2=4. Well, you can, but, then you'd be wrong. These are measurable forces. Water at sea level boils at 100 C. The philosophical bent of the observer cannot change that. So, yes, you are trying to argue that alignment is subjective.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Objective phenomena cannot be subjectively interpreted.

I might actually argue that all phenomena can only be subjectively interpreted - the act of interpreting is itself a process of subjective judgement.

You don't get to believe things about gravity or 2+2=4. Well, you can, but, then you'd be wrong. These are measurable forces. Water at sea level boils at 100 C. The philosophical bent of the observer cannot change that. So, yes, you are trying to argue that alignment is subjective.

Whether or not 2+2=4 is real or some sort of fiction or useful language or other subjective thing is actually open to some debate, but that's not the most grounded conversation for our purposes here.

In PS, at least, that there is some force called "good" that exists depends on observing minds believing that to be the case, and so cannot be said to exist without an observer (an observer assigns, say, altruism to this "good" force, and so "good" becomes linked to altruism). If no one believed in this force, "good," then it would not exist (that's the way the fictional universe works!). But it does not depend on any one particular mind's belief - you cannot personally just say that "good is an illusion" and have it be true any more than you can say "Bruce Wayne is the Joker" and have it be true, despite the fact that neither PS-style "good" or "Bruce Wayne" have any objective existence.

 

[pemerton]

The game posits an unmediated access to consistent effects, which get labelled as "good" and "evil" in the metagame--but there's no need for a PC or even a player to accept that label.

I agree at least with the point in bold, and I've been saying something very much like it for ten pages or so.

What, then, do you think that Detect Good or Detect Evil (pre-5e version) is detecting?

It's not detecting value per se - because you deny that the torturing villain, or succubus, is obliged to accept the deliverances of the spell as stating evaluative truths.
[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] suggested, upthread, that it is detecting X, Y and Z - but then characterised X, Y and Z using evaluative language. You seemed to do the same thing when you referred to "petty reasons".

And when you recharacterise your villain as ""Yeah, I probably shouldn't have lost my temper and tortured that lady for losing my laundry. Oh well, we all have off days." you have a villain who is not the hero of his adventure at all! He's conceding error. (Though is failing to manifest contrition.)

I don't know that the language analogy is helping

It's not an analogy.

You said that, in PS, the truth of your evaluative Xs, Ys and Zs (say, "beauty" or "doing right by others") is determined by majority belief. Beliefs are mental states with propositions as their contents. So we can't talk about shared beliefs until we have an account of proposition individuation, which will require an account of concept individuation.

In the case of chairs and tables, the account of concept individuation is fairly straightforward: my word "chair" and the French word "la chaise" are synonyms because they are both introduced into their respective languages by reference to things of the same kind (namely, chairs, with which we interact in all sorts of mundane and non-spooky ways).

In the case of evaluative language, the account of concept individuation is hugely contested, and is perhaps the longest ongoing intellectual debate in human history. Some people think that you work out the French word for "good" by seeing what word, in the French language, serves as a general term of praise and commendation (which is the basic use of the English word "good"). But in that case, to judge something good is to judge it as praiseworthy - which won't work for the framework you're trying to set up, because you want the demon to be able to agree that the Seven Heavens is X, Y and Z yet deny that it is praiseworthy.

An alternative approach would be to identify some non-evaluative X, Y and Z to be a supervenience base for the evaluative terms. The debate about whether or not this is possible for the social sciences is over 100 years old and still going strong. I've certainly never seen anyone even try and do it for D&D alignments, and even if you did you would likely get a contentious list of factors which - whether or not it was accurate as a matter of fundamental analysis - would not necessarily work for play purposes (because it is contentious).

Therefore, the coherence of the position that (a) Detect Good/Evil delivers uniform results, because (b) the X, Y and Z are intersubjectively accessible features of the scanned entities/places, because (c) the X, Y and Z are determined by majority belief, is not easily demonstrated. You need an account of concept individuation for the Xs, Ys and Zs that doesn't depend upon a presupposition of being admirable/undesirable. That's not easy to do.

If we put to one side the worries about concept individuation, though, then it's fairly easy to see how we get (d) anyone is free to deny that the results of Detect Good/Evil has no necessary bearing on his/her self-evaluation. Because all that amounts to is rejecting the majority consensus in respect of <something - not sure what, because I've put the issue of concept individuation to one side>.

Which gives rise to (e) can evaluative judgements, in this system, be in any way non-arbitrary or can play some sort of justificatory or reason-giving role in a person's life? I don't see how. And given that Bahamut has a 20+ INT, presumably he can reach the same conclusion. How does he differentiate the killings he urges his paladins to undertake from the murders by demons that he condemns? As I posted upthread, the whole thing is very much in danger of collapsing into teams, with no moral asymmetry at all. Which, again, Bahamut, with his 20+ INT, can notice.

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

That's not true of "any economist" - not all economists subscribe to psychological egoism.

But that to one side, of course it's not self-evident that (i) through (iii) are admirable: Ayn Rand may not be correct, but she hardly failed to notice a self-evident truth. My point is that if you don't think they're admirable then it is not at all clear that you think they are markers of generosity, given that to decribe something as "generous" carries with it an implication of worthiness of admiration. But if you don't think they're markers of generosity, then how are you going to participate in the great social consensus that establishes the meaning of the Xs, Ys and Zs?

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

What does "define" mean here? It can't mean make true - because in that case they couldn't (rationally) accept or reject as they see fit. (Contrast: the positions of stellar and planetary masses "define" the shortest distances along which light rays travel - as with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s example of objective gravity and boiling point of water, light rays aren't free to accept or reject the consequences of general relativity as they see fit; and rational physicists are obliged to bring their beliefs into conformity with reality.)

(unless they can change it)

<snip>

Change the opinion, and reality will work differently.

What is at stake in changing anything? I mean, if I make everyone believe that shiny armour is ugly and saving princesses is ignoble, and that acidic corrosion is beautiful and wanton killing noble, paladins will still go to the Seven Heavens when they die, and the Abyss and the Seven Heavens will still be at loggerheads. Perhaps, because the X, Y and Z for good and evil are held constant, Detect Good will now ping on demons and Detect Evil on paladins, but I don't see how that is of any great interest.

I certainly don't have any sense of what it means to say that paladins used to be good but now are evil, when no behaviour in the world has actually changed, and I haven't changed my mind about anything either.

The characters in a PS game exist in a setting where social consensus has defined alignments and what they mean

<snip>

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.

I'm not confused about what PS asserts. I'm expressing doubts about its coherence - both conceptual and practical.

If we solve the conceptual problem of even establishing what the global consensus is - far from trivial, because of the complexities and disputes around concept-individuation for evaluative terms - we get to the practical question: who cares what the consensus is? If I'm a paladin, and my goal is to relieve suffering and vindicate the innocent, why do I care what labels the majority of people use to describe my conduct (unless I'm guilty of the sin of vanity)?

And to leverage this practical question back to a conceptual one: if it is not per se irrational to value things differently from the global consensus, then why does the content of the consensus have any relevance to anyone? If there's no reason per se to have regard to it in one's own practical deliberations then it is arbitrary, and hence not a rational object of concern.

 

[pemerton]

In PS, at least, that there is some force called "good" that exists depends on observing minds believing that to be the case, and so cannot be said to exist without an observer (an observer assigns, say, altruism to this "good" force, and so "good" becomes linked to altruism). If no one believed in this force, "good," then it would not exist (that's the way the fictional universe works!).

But if the force called "good" ceased to exist, what would actually change?

As far as I can see, nothing. It's all epiphenomenal.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What, then, do you think that Detect Good or Detect Evil (pre-5e version) is detecting?

It's not detecting value per se - because you deny that the torturing villain, or succubus, is obliged to accept the deliverances of the spell as stating evaluative truths.
[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] suggested, upthread, that it is detecting X, Y and Z - but then characterised X, Y and Z using evaluative language. You seemed to do the same thing when you referred to "petty reasons".

And when you recharacterise your villain as ""Yeah, I probably shouldn't have lost my temper and tortured that lady for losing my laundry. Oh well, we all have off days." you have a villain who is not the hero of his adventure at all! He's conceding error. (Though is failing to manifest contrition.)

Here on Earth, even our sociopaths are capable of conceding error, if not in any sincerely remorseful way, especially if there's a rational reason for them to want to do so, such as making parole or even ending an unpleasant conversation. You're reading too much nonexistent moral angst into an offhanded, unapologetic remark.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The conceptual problem

But that to one side, of course it's not self-evident that (i) through (iii) are admirable: Ayn Rand may not be correct, but she hardly failed to notice a self-evident truth. My point is that if you don't think they're admirable then it is not at all clear that you think they are markers of generosity, given that to decribe something as "generous" carries with it an implication of worthiness of admiration. But if you don't think they're markers of generosity, then how are you going to participate in the great social consensus that establishes the meaning of the Xs, Ys and Zs?

This is what you describe as the "conceptual problem", right?

I don't see the problem. If it's not self-evident that these qualities are admirable, then it's not self-evident that they carry a necessary implication of "worthiness of admiration," and so they lack that "evaluative" property - they describe an action or a trait, as simply as "chair" describes an object.

It's rather trivial to use "generosity" to describe the bare quality of a "liberality in giving or willingness to give" without regarding that as inherently admirable or undesirable. I may say that a generous person is a fool, or that they are a saint, or that they are simply doing as they desire, or that they are generous in accordance with some internal system or that they simply like to give stuff away and I don't care why. The fiend and the celestial can agree that they are markers of generosity - that the person so described is liberal in giving and has a willingness to give - but only one would agree with your assertion that this implies a worthiness of admiration.

This is without even getting into the thorny weeds of fantasy languages and cultures - perhaps there's no word in Abyssal for the concept that a player would regard as "Generosity", and so, much like English borrowing the word schadenfreude to describe something it has no word for, the fiend uses the Common phrase "generosity" to describe something it has no word for. Maybe if you wanted to describe someone as "generous" in Abyssal you'd have to use a word that would also mean "spreader of plagues."

But put simply, one can describe the trait while acknowledging that there are competing value judgements on that trait and thus have a common basis for understanding without a common basis for values.

The Practical Problem

who cares what the consensus is? If I'm a paladin, and my goal is to relieve suffering and vindicate the innocent, why do I care what labels the majority of people use to describe my conduct (unless I'm guilty of the sin of vanity)?

In PS, you care because to realize your goal, to relieve suffering and vindicate the innocent on a planar scale, you will need to change the minds of those who believe that these goals are wrong or harmful or unacceptable or undesirable in some way (that is your antagonist, and it is an antagonist that cannot simply be slain). These opponents make up a part of that consensus, and when you overcome them and change their beliefs, the consensus shifts to be closer to your own view, thanks to more people agreeing that what you say is true.

if it is not per se irrational to value things differently from the global consensus, then why does the content of the consensus have any relevance to anyone? If there's no reason per se to have regard to it in one's own practical deliberations then it is arbitrary, and hence not a rational object of concern.

The consensus is setting material - you can say "I don't care about the Dawn War!" when you play in the Nentir Vale, but that doesn't mean that the Dawn War isn't relevant to other characters in the setting - including other PC's, and/or your antagonists. You can even say "I don't care about the Dawn War!" in the midst of a campaign about a gods vs. primordials war in that setting and you wouldn't stand out - you might be just another mercenary with a handy sword-arm and the Churches aren't the ones threatening to wreck all the nice stuff you're spending their money on. No need to care about the setting material even a little, just point yourself at the things threatening your goal and end 'em.

That's possible in PS. You can say "I don't care what other people think!" That doesn't mean that what other people think isn't relevant to other PC's and/or your antagonists. Since the setting is founded on the conceit of a battleground for ideas, it's likely going to affect your character, even if your character is just a well-paid mercenary making practical choices. In this respect, making such a character in PS is a little like the DM saying "We're going to have a campaign about the Dawn War" and the player saying "My character doesn't care about the Dawn War!" You can do it, but you're kind of ignoring the meat of the game.

Because this is PS, even if you play a character who doesn't care about what others think, you will wind up affecting how others think, thus subtly changing that consensus. Similarly, in a Dawn War campaign, even a character who doesn't care about the Dawn War will still wind up slaying elementals and helping the gods. That's just the story being told, even if you're not digging deeply into it.

And I'd say in both situations, for meta-game reasons, you're better off making a character who is invested in the conflict. 4e D&D has divine power linked to classes; PS has factions whose explicit goals are to change the consensus.

But if the force called "good" ceased to exist, what would actually change?

In D&D, and rather more strongly in PS's concept of the planes and planar natives, the "force of good" (like the force of any alignment) is a magical mana that can be detected, transmuted, abjured, harnessed, etc.

So if that force ceased to exist, that might mean that, for instance, the Talisman of Pure Evil cannot harm any creatures (since no creatures can be considered "good" - good has ceased to exist).

Narratively, it might further mean that the upper planes and its residents cease to exist or slowly fade away (since there is no "good soul" that can go there, and people have lost faith in the "force of good" that powers them). The planes in PS are somewhat considered to be made of this nebulous alignment-mana, so without it, the planes powered by it would cease to be planes. If the other alignments don't change, then displaying the qualities of good don't have any more cosmic relevance than displaying the qualities of hunger or boredom or chairs - there is no greater meaning to your altruism, no cosmic force behind your conscience. You would create a world with no heavens, only hells, where the guy who burns down orphanages has cosmic power backing him but those defending the orphans have none. The particulars would probably vary pretty dramatically with the individual DM there, but it'd be a pretty good plot, I think!

 

[Rejuvenator]

But if the force called "good" ceased to exist, what would actually change?

You would create a world with no heavens, only hells, where the guy who burns down orphanages has cosmic power backing him but those defending the orphans have none. The particulars would probably vary pretty dramatically with the individual DM there, but it'd be a pretty good plot, I think!

I think that's because, in this hypothetical scenario, the force of "evil" continues to exist. That is, in in the absence of Force of Good, the triumphant Force of Evil pushes psychopaths to burn down orphanages, etc. and drives regular folk into turncoats or apathy and despair.

What if the question was: if the forces called "good" and "evil" (and "neutrality") ceased to exist, what would actually change?

Couldn't the outer planes and angels and demons continue to exist, founded on individual virtues and sins and beliefs that continue to persevere in the hearts and minds of the immortals and mortals? If people still cherish their values, must the outer planes come crashing down in this new secular world?

 

[Jeff Albertson]

Whether or not 2+2=4 is real or some sort of fiction or useful language or other subjective thing is actually open to some debate[/URL], but that's not the most grounded conversation for our purposes here.

Yeah, it was questions like "…but why does 2+2 = 4…?" that failed Albert Einstein out of school.

 

[Imaro]

What if the question was: if the forces called "good" and "evil" (and "neutrality") ceased to exist, what would actually change?

I believe it would lead to a world dominated by the opposing forces of Law and Chaos... A place where the concept of good, evil, and neutrality are gone. One would pick a side (or be picked by a side like our favorite Moorcockian albino) either voluntarily or involuntarily and only whether one subscribes to order or chaos in his beliefs and actions would be of any importance...

Couldn't the outer planes and angels and demons continue to exist, founded on individual virtues and sins and beliefs that continue to persevere in the hearts and minds of the immortals and mortals? If people still cherish their values, must the outer planes come crashing down in this new secular world?

I don't think they would continue to exist in their current form... Again instead the multiverse transforms into a place where Law and Chaos are the opposing forces instead of good and evil. It's a place where fiends and angels would find common cause in keeping the multiverse from sliding into utter chaos at the hands of allied demons and djinni... even thought their methods, tactics and behavior would still differ... Or did you mean if all cosmological forces were gone?