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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1642384" data-attributes="member: 10201">This one has two very different expressions in pulp and noir, IMHO. In the adventure pulps, sure, the "heroes" often did things that, by modern standards, are morally questionable. Some of them (much of what The Spider and The Shadow did) were questionable by contemporary standards, too--i'll go out on a limb and say that Doc Savage's brain surgery was seen as enlightened generosity (vice prison/corporal punishment/execution), comparable to curing an addict of an addiction, in modern terms. But, and i think this is an important defining characteristics, this didn't call their hero-ness into question. If you're wearing the White Hat and beat information out of an innocent Indian, you're no less the Good Guy. It's a simplistic morality where the good guys are the good guys, because they oppose the bad guys--it's not a morality where you are good because of your means, just your ends. Ends justify the means, almost without exception--and most of the stories manage to sidestep the "kill baby Hitler" type questions, in order to better portray this style of morality.Contrast that with noir, where the heroes once again do things that are of questionable morality by contemporary standards. But the difference is that doing so raises moral questions, rather than sidestepping them. Noir explores the question of whether you're really the good guy if you do all these bad things. Casablanca is an excellent example: you question whether anybody is truly a "hero", and most of the characters are acting in a morally-ambiguous area where they are neither hero nor villain. Sam Spade is definitely the protagonist, but he's not clearly a Good Guy--he might be merely a lesser evil.Or, in short, i think it is reasonable to say that noir says "we all do bad things, so are any of us actually Good?" while adventure pulps say "we all do bad things, but the Good Guys only do them in service of a Greater Good". Pulps put ends first, noir puts means first, when analyzing morality. At least, that's my thumbnail analysis.Sure. But isn't that also true of sword-n-sorcery, high fantasy, Arthurian tales, and supers, among other genres? In other words, does that quality really differentiate Eberron from any other D&D setting, or just D&D play in general?And, at least in the US, a lot of people apparently are comforted by B&W morality, where one can clearly identify Good Guys and Bad Guys, and where the Good Guys can do bad things without calling their Good Guy status into question. That's certainly had an impact on politics, so i'd expect it to have an impact on entertainment.</blockquote>

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