D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think the problem here is that the bolded bit is hard to support, and it's extremely easy to argue that in practice this is purely about protecting elites and allowing the targeted suppression of any dissidents, not creating "great quality of life" generally. The more closely you look at laws in both real-life and fictional surveillance states, the more apparent and certain this becomes.

Well, I'm thinking of some specific examples.

There's one Asian city state that, while by no means perfect (especially if you're big into free speech or LGBT rights) goes far further than it has to to pacify the population and the powers that be (who are tough to dislodge, so good luck if this ever changes) in making everyone's quality of life decent to exceptional. (Obviously weighted more towards the ruling class, but even the worst-off people in the society are doing significantly better than their counterparts in neighboring nations.)

There are plenty of non-oppressive somewhat-collectivist states (again fictional and RL) which aren't creepy, but I cannot think of a single one which engages in mass surveillance.

I can think of at least one. But I agree with you about the general rule.

Speaking historically, the concept of the panopticon is a good example of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", and basically every attempt to construct an RL torment nexus panopticon has proven that it's incredibly deleterious to mental health of the people subjected to it (and people have tried) and absolutely fails to achieve any objective beyond making prisons cheaper to run at the expense of the well-being of the prisoners (and there are a million ways to do that, if that's your clearly non-Good goal). Humans simply aren't intended to be surveilled at all times, they're not psychologically equipped for that. I imagine the same would be true of most D&D races, because most have fundamentally human ways of thinking.

100%. I've got very strong feelings about the increasingly common license plate reader cameras in the US, which seem like a great idea until you hear about cops using the system to find their estranged spouses and beat them into a coma, etc. And that's independent of all the times we don't hear about where the authorities use them to monitor and harass their political opponents.

It honestly raises some very large questions about how "thought-through" Krynn's setup was, and how much of it was just slapped on the page without even considering it.

I feel like D&D cosmology didn't get much thought until Planescape and then it was largely about how to rationalize a pretty poorly designed structure.

It's funny because I think you could tell essentially the same story as Krynn, i.e. a nutcase decided to "wipe out Evil", and got so bad and powerful that even the gods could only shut him down with apocalyptic destruction, and then were so horrified they left for hundreds of years, and make it vastly more compelling and make sense, relatively easily. But perhaps that's hindsight because we've got this clear evidence of how far wrong you can go?

I think it's probably a reflection of a large strain of patriarchal thought in American culture, especially at the time, with both religious leaders and God being seen as the ultimate authority figure and that what they do is inherently right, even if we disagree with it, by virtue of their position.

 

[TwoSix]

Looking at the two major inspirations/allegories for the Cataclysm--the Flood and the Downfall of Numenor--we never get a sense that Istar has reached the levels of wickedness comparable to antediluvian human civilation or Late Second Age, imperialist, human-sacrificing, Melkor-worshipping, Numenor. One of several reasons the Cataclysm doesn't work for me, along with the religious allegories wrapped up in Istar and the post-Cataclysm 'abandonment of the gods.' (Note that for those reasons, I've never read the Kingpriest Trilogy, so maybe I've missed a reimagining of Istaran civilization.)
I think Hickman's original concept--made explicit in his proposal notes that he placed online a few years back, and still hinted at in places like DL12 and Tales of the Lance--works better. The Cataclysm was simply the magical backlash from the Kingpriest's hubris-filled attempt to magically summon a god to Krynn to wipe out Evil.

To be fair, I've heard the people of Istar put cheese on their apple pies, so the Cataclysm was entirely warranted.

 

[M.L. Martin]

I think that's a very interesting question because the sheer common-ness of the concept does suggest a common ultimate source, but I'm 47 and have been thinking about this for a long time, but haven't really seen any pop-culture place this "We need like, good and evil both maaaaaaaan" concept comes from (and you'd expect it to be present in the 1950s through 1970s).

Same age, similar length of time thinking about it, and I haven't nailed down the ultimate source either. D&D has just enough influence at the right time that it might be to blame, but I think there are other factors. I'm inclined to suspect Morcoock and pop Eastern religion combined with rising anti-Christian sentiment and disillusionment with 'the Establishment', with the idea being that 'Good' just means the Free World/televangelists and 'Evil' the Nazis/Soviets/Satanists.

 

[Marc17]

But all that's doing is saying that the faction labelled "Good" is really just stupid.

I don't think I would consider it stupid. What we call irrational, sure. Once dealing with ideas of Pure <whatever>, it stops working on the ruleset we understand, because they are working with a different ruleset. I don't think good "winning" would destroy the world, but certainly change it. An example I could give for my game is that if a character decided to go reside on one of the Seven Heavens of the Angel in my previous post, they would most likely be given a spot to sit and sing to the Source to empower it to shine a light on all that provides sustanance for all creatures on the plane. Then they would be expected to do so for all of eternity, as that is the most benefitial for the common good. That is what everybody does on the plane, works tirelessly doing what is best for everybody else. It's not that they don't have free will, but rather the idea of doing something for themselves and putting their own desires over that of everybody else, such as reading a book, or working on a hobby, would be selfishness and therefore evil which they don't have the capacity for. Somebody thinking that such a choice to do evil must be included for free will just shows how evil is baked into the thinking and existence of the prime material plane.

I'll compliment that with part of the 1E DMG, pg. 60 under DETECTION OF EVIL AND/OR GOOD, which if it was in the actual spell description would have saved lots of conflict in games, especially with the paladin's Detect Evil ability (bolding mine):
"It is important to make a distinction between character alignment and some powerful force of evil or good when this detection function is considered. In general, only a Know Alignment spell will determine the evil or good a character holds within.It must be a great evil or a strong good to be detected. Characters who are very strongly aligned, do not stray from their faith, who are relatively high level (at least 8th or higher) might radiate evil or good if they are intent upon appropriate actions."

Meaning that Detect Good or Evil has pretty much always been what it is now in 5E and demonstrates the general neutrality of the Prime Material.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's one Asian city state that, while by no means perfect (especially if you're big into free speech or LGBT rights) goes far further than it has to to pacify the population and the powers that be (who are tough to dislodge, so good luck if this ever changes) in making everyone's quality of life decent to exceptional. (Obviously weighted more towards the ruling class, but even the worst-off people in the society are doing significantly better than their counterparts in neighboring nations.)

Two points worth considering with societies like this, whether fictional or real:

1) Re: the bolded bit, how much of that is due to the wealth of the society doing the totalitarianism? Because I would say an awful lot of it is. I don't think that's really anything inherent to the approach to running a society as much as it is to how much wealth that society possesses. Like if you have a lot of money/production/however you measure wealth in the society where you're doing totalitarianism, things are going to be better for everyone than if you don't.

2) Cui bono. Consider whether this is really anything to do with "great quality of life", or whether this is just playing totalitarian oppression smart and long-term, rather than dumb and short-term. In any society where all dissidents are suppressed, change is suppressed, protest is suppressed, and so on, the result of cui bono is "the elites benefit most", and the more elite, the more they benefit. It's just that historically, the elites in society tend to be so greedy, so short-sighted, so keen to just jam that marshmallow in their mouths that they cannot/will not let things be run in a long-term-ist way. They're incapable of being the proverbial "Old Bull". I would offer that some localized societies where the dominant force is actually violent organised crime (rather than the supposed government) also often have a relatively higher quality of life in the areas they control as compared to the ones they do not, so long as you don't cross them.

(Of course you might actually ask the same question re: non-totalitarian societies too - the results might be uncomfortably similar. Really this is why the only utopian societies tend to be ones where the main thing is have enough food/housing/healthcare etc. that they're willing to let everyone have it - massive energy production and later the replicator + not being greedy short-term-ists (+ IDIC/not being dumb bigots) are how you get The Federation)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Two points worth considering with societies like this, whether fictional or real:

1) Re: the bolded bit, how much of that is due to the wealth of the society doing the totalitarianism? Because I would say an awful lot of it is. I don't think that's really anything inherent to the approach to running a society as much as it is to how much wealth that society possesses. Like if you have a lot of money/production/however you measure wealth in the society where you're doing totalitarianism, things are going to be better for everyone than if you don't.

2) Cui bono. Consider whether this is really anything to do with "great quality of life", or whether this is just playing totalitarian oppression smart and long-term, rather than dumb and short-term. In any society where all dissidents are suppressed, change is suppressed, protest is suppressed, and so on, the result of cui bono is "the elites benefit most", and the more elite, the more they benefit. It's just that historically, the elites in society tend to be so greedy, so short-sighted, so keen to just jam that marshmallow in their mouths that they cannot/will not let things be run in a long-term-ist way. They're incapable of being the proverbial "Old Bull". I would offer that some localized societies where the dominant force is actually violent organised crime (rather than the supposed government) also often have a relatively higher quality of life in the areas they control as compared to the ones they do not, so long as you don't cross them.

(Of course you might actually ask the same question re: non-totalitarian societies too - the results might be uncomfortably similar. Really this is why the only utopian societies tend to be ones where the main thing is have enough food/housing/healthcare etc. that they're willing to let everyone have it - massive energy production and later the replicator + not being greedy short-term-ists (+ IDIC/not being dumb bigots) are how you get The Federation)

Oh, I don't actually like the city-state I'm referring to. I just think that they're going further than they need to -- some of their neighboring countries are also very wealthy, but are happy to concentrate much more of it at the tippy-top. That suggests to me that at least some folks in the leadership genuinely want everyone to be better off than they could otherwise get away with.

I don't think it's impossible to extrapolate this approach to a heavily Lawful, modestly Good fantasy society that operates under similar principles.

Also, I think we can have Lawful societies that are purely about control and Lawful societies that have a collectivist mindset. I think the latter is definitely more Good than the control-centric type, although it freaks out anyone with Chaotic tendencies (like me).

It also suggests that, when we're grappling with what Goodness and Evil look like in D&D, maybe we should be using utopia vs. dystopia as our axes there. And I would have once thought that everyone would agree that utopias are good, we just have to mention Blue Rose or the Radiant Citadel to find people adamantly opposed to anyone even trying to create a utopia.

There was a weirdo on the purple site years ago who went on and on about how the would-be utopia of Aldis was inherently fascist because it was focused on raising the quality of life for everyone both within and outside of the nation's borders. People not knowing what fascism actually stands for is, unfortunately, not a new thing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

we just have to mention Blue Rose or the Radiant Citadel to find people adamantly opposed to anyone even trying to create a utopia.

Blue Rose is fascinating because it's like people don't understand the setup value of having a relatively utopian state surrounded by dystopian or at least non-utopian ones. It's a really strong setup for a campaign honestly.

And these people have watched Star Trek, read The Culture novels, yet they still don't get it! If the main society had weird-ass values like, say, Cormyr does (which is sometimes presented as sort of utopian, but is gross because it's a weirdly bureaucratic scraping-and-bowing-mandatory monarchy where Midwest-esque "yeoman farmers" are somehow the backbone of society), I could see it. But Blue Rose and similar societies aren't doing anything weird. And like, if there was a game where the PCs were like Special Circumstances from The Culture, people would be all over it, but the moment you're Special Circumstances in a fantasy setting, oh no we can't have that!

(Radiant Citadel I think I would question whether that's actually a utopian situation, because it's got that classic 1980s D&D "we slapped this setting together from disparate and incoherent elements and ideas we thought we cool, without really seeing if they fit" deal going, accidentally I suspect. I mean, on one level that means a lot of the haters are wrong to hate because that's absolute classic D&D there baby! There are times, for example, where it lapses into a sort of "authoritarianism is cool so long as the authorities are on what I perceive as my side" mode too, which ill-befits some of what it's doing, and other times where it's sort of trying to do IDIC but like, imho without real conviction, which makes it ring hollow.)

 

[billd91]

OK, and would we consider that good?

By my standards, heck no. However, there are worldviews active in the world today that define that differently.
And even in D&D, it's not like alignment is a straight-jacket for behavior that would prevent you from divine cataclysms.

 

[see]

So Yeah. True Neutral? It's nonsense.

Yep.

What happened is simple enough. People read Moorcock's Law-versus-Chaos cosmology, where "Maintain the Balance" makes sense. They then moved it over to a cosmology with a battle between Good and Evil, where it makes no sense.

The best possible argument is that the Cosmic Force of Capital-G Good is not actually good. The trouble becomes, well, then, why are you calling it "Good" instead of giving it an accurate label?