When modern ethics collide with medieval ethics

[DM_Fiery_Fist]

In response to: How do you adjudicate between medieval and modern ethics in your games?

I handle this problem in my own games by allowing generous interpretations of alignment and ethics. I am actually studying for a graduate degree in philosophy right now, with a sub-focus on moral psychology. Almost all people have ethical emotions and intuitions that strongly color their perception of certain situations. Knowing this, I usually avoid alignment arguments in my campaigns. It's hard enough to make sure everyone is on the same page in an undergraduate ethics debate. I've found it's even more difficult to pull it off in a DnD group. Sometimes you even get people who think that morals should not be an issue of logic, but only an issue of emotion and intuition.

So here's my solution: everyone signs up with an agreement to cooperate and compromise where necessary. If you think killing an unarmed person is always evil--that's your belief. But if a player in my game can make a compelling case for why a lawful good character would kill an unarmed person, then he gets away with it--end of story. If your character wants to roleplay an outraged response, feel free, but keep in mind that it's a game. The strictest simulation will fail if there's no one left to play it.

That being said, I tend to fall more on the gamist side of the debate, for two reasons. These are more issues of personal preference than anything (not trying to insult anyone or say that there's only one way of doing things...)

Number One: Most DMs have a really impoverished idea of what medieval culture was actually like. Their ideas have usually been filtered through years of video games and roleplaying. I have several close friends pursuing postgraduate degrees in history and I find it almost impossible to talk to any of them about the subject--they rarely agree on anything! So I like to say that my settings are strongly inspired by history, but never a simulation; I try to avoid justifying any in-game convention based on a historical one. Maybe this is just wordplay, but it tends to keep people happy. Historical arguments have no place at my gaming table.

Number Two (controversial): It's easy to drop the ball when you include things like outrageous sexism in your games. I once played with a DM who insisted that his completely made-up game world had to mimic medieval gender relations. He warned people that female characters would be frequently threatened with rape, talked down to, groped, or ignored. This same individual saw no problem with things like crazy anachronisms (Roman-era weapons alongside firearms, super-advanced sailing technology, etc.) and blatant plot inconsistencies. The questions that I always ask: How well are you getting your point across? Is it working? Are you having fun? When I told him I wanted him to include rampant sickness to make it more realistic, he disagreed on the grounds that this wouldn't be fun and would make it harder to play his game. Needless to say, the ONLY female player in the game dropped out after about two weeks.

So while I agree with the OP on this, I admit that I normally encourage DMs to err on the side of player cohesion. If you can run a strict simulation and keep a full group, more power to you. If you have to choose between simulating medieval ethics and keeping your players in the game, I'd suggest the latter. When it boils down to ethics, look to the players.

 

[gamerprinter]

I ran across this once. That was enough to learn this lesson.

Honestly, while I love history, and love a good historical game, I avoid real world religion and RPGs, at all costs. Consider your premise of 3rd Crusade. I assume, you didn't have any Muslims in your player group, it didn't cause a problem, but really could have. You obviously discovered that what an honest depiction of Catholicism in the 12th century, compared to modern beliefs (and current Catholic values) are apples and oranges.

In my Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting, I borrow concepts from Taoism, Buddhism and Shinto, however, in every case, I've renamed the religions of my setting, and while having borrowed some aspects of those religions, in other areas I completely made up as a fiction. Because I do not want what happens in game to conflict with personal religious values. While it probably wouldn't affect my immediate playing group, my setting is a published product and could be played by a Buddhist here, or in Japan or elsewhere and I don't want them to consider what I created as an attack on their religion.

As an aside, from Buddhism, I borrow the concept of the Wheel of Life or the cycle of reincarnation through the Buddhist Hells, which in modern Buddhist thought are states of mind, not literal reincarnation. However, in my setting reincarnation is real, and the setting itself is an actuation of the Wheel of Life converted into the Japanese social caste system. The latter part being my invention. I even call the religion 'Zao' - kind of an amalgamation of Zen and Tao/Dao. That's as close to real religion as I want to get. Anything deeper could be insulting to someone.

In my daytime graphic design studio, I have several local customers that are Buddhist priests. One of them, kind of a bishop, I showed what I was doing with my game setting, and she was actually pleased with the way I depicted the Wheel of Life, as she herself wants a greater appreciation of the Wheel of Life, among her laity. This doesn't equate to religious acceptance of my fiction, but it makes me feel somewhat safer in my approach.

 

[wingsandsword]

Honestly, while I love history, and love a good historical game, I avoid real world religion and RPGs, at all costs. Consider your premise of 3rd Crusade. I assume, you didn't have any Muslims in your player group, it didn't cause a problem, but really could have. You obviously discovered that what an honest depiction of Catholicism in the 12th century, compared to modern beliefs (and current Catholic values) are apples and oranges.

Yeah, that was well over a decade ago and I wouldn't do that again.

However, at the time I felt justified, since I was using an official AD&D sourcebook and setting book. Do you remember the "green book" series for 2e? I ran this campaign based off The Crusades book for that series.

To be fair, they didn't really take sides in that book, and in the campaign I ran, it was eventually revealed that the Crusades were the result of manipulations of a primeval deity of chaos and destruction (Tiamat, as in the mythological version but the D&D connotations of the name made for a great way to mess with the Player's heads) seeking to increase death and destruction in the world.

The AD&D sourcebook even presented Saladin as Lawful Good, perhaps even a Paladin (providing the only 2e example I can think of where officially the campaign villain might be a Paladin).

In the few quasi-historic games I've done since then, I've taken great liberties with the level of realism. They have only nominally "real world", with big disclaimers about realism, and there are significant fantasy elements added, though typically geographically roughly where those elements came from in folklore and literature and being more liberal about allowing anachronisms so players could have all their various D&D staples (Dwarf Barbarian Vikings alongside Wood Elf Druid & Ranger Celts and Human Paladin & Fighter Britons, ect.).

It's only very, very loosely historic, but the players liked it.

 

[gamerprinter]

However, at the time I felt justified, since I was using an official AD&D sourcebook and setting book. Do you remember the "green book" series for 2e? I ran this campaign based off The Crusades book for that series.

Yeah, I have the Celtic sourcebook for 2e.

 

[malcolypse]

2 hours sleep + 2 pots of coffee + my opinions and experience =

I am just curious if other groups have had this kind of issue. Also how you handle modern ethics VS more medieval ethics in your games?

Fair warning: In this post, I veer off topic, incorporate my love of all things Mel Brooks, plot to make my players cry, and hopefully get across that I agree with Elf Witch and Broken Druid for the most part on this subject.

Long story short: To get the players to really sink their teeth in, you have to address their personal ethical standing.

Long, possibly incoherent, rambling story longer: I'm about to start a Classic Deadlands game. I don't know about medieval ethics coming into play, but in the setting, both the north and the south freed the slaves within the last decade (terrible, extra-dimensional monsters have kept the civil war going through 1776 through covert manipulation), and I plan on seeing how my players react to the newly emancipated slaves (I expect hilarity to ensue the first time they come across a black sheriff and I can start quoting Mel Brooks movies).

Alas, none of my players will be playing female characters (who are much more empowered in a world with the male population depleted by a great deal due to ongoing war, but still don't have the right to vote, for example), or I'd dig into that as well. One of the characters is a proper southern gentleman, so I can't wait to see how he reacts to a gunfight with a woman. I'm planning on reminding him that his upbringing demands a "ladies first" mentality that may get him dead.

I enjoy pushing my players buttons, and plan on doing so. I personally am very hard to offend, and if I'm made uncomfortable by a game I just dig into my character more. If I do manage to offend a player, I'll back off for their sake, but I won't edit myself because of the possibility of offending someone.

If I'm presenting a grim, offensive thing to my players and they're not grimly offended, then I'm not doing my job. They shouldn't want to fight monsters for their loot, they should want to fight evil in all it's forms because it's terrible and needs to be destroyed for the good of humanity.

Their morality is a tool that I can use to explore the gamut of emotions with them, to corner them like rodents, or to have them rise above their preconceived limitations.

That requires that as a GM I use the players personal ethics to affect their character, and that they as players try to let their character's ethics trump their own. Essentially both sides of the screen should be working at the same thing from opposite directions, and if it works immersion magic happens (hopefully).

 

[S'mon]

What has surprised me is you never can tell what will offend individiuals. In a historical setting. For examples some players will be offended if slavery is part of the setting, others will be offended if you eliminate it (because it can appear you are glossing over a major stain on US history).

Yeah, I felt quite revolted when a GM who wanted to run Deadlands explained to me that in Deadlands' Civil War era setting, the South had banned slavery and become non-racist, but the Civil War was still going on. It turned what to me was IRL a nuanced conflict with right and wrong on both sides, into the literal 'War of Northern Aggression' that Southern secessionists talk about. But I suspect the authors did it more from misguided Political Correctness and marketing reasons than because they were paid up League of the South members.

 

[S'mon]

I think that you could argue that if certain behaviours were practiced widely enough, they would in fact constitute " ethics as practiced " even if they were not backed up, and perhaps even abhored, by formal doctrine.

Yeah, but - this is equally true today. POWs are still frequently killed today. I was going to say more, but I think I'd better not.

 

[S'mon]

In response to: How do you adjudicate between medieval and modern ethics in your games?

Simple: Don't Use Medieval Ethics!

Ethics in my campaigns:

1. Wilderlands: Southlands uses REH Howard 1930s Conanesque ethics. The PC who thinks he's Conan but recently executed two high-status female prisoners may be in some trouble there.

2. Forgotten Realms: Loudwater uses standard (2012) modern fantasy ethics, anything inimical to a liberal 21st century Westerner is pretty well Evil. It's fairly black & white and easy to run.

3. Gygax's Yggsburgh is by far the most ethically complex and challenging, probably because it's mostly run online. It's the only one where social mores form a significant part of the game. These are a mix of 18th-19th century comedy of manners (from Moll Flanders to Jane Austen), a bit of 1950s, a lot of 1970s America, from Animal House to Gygaxian AD&D, and some bits of contemporary London & England, where I live. My experiences with the southern English upper-middle and upper classes are certainly an influence. Here and there are pre-17th century elements, eg there were off-stage crusades against the Paynims, but very very little that is truly medieval.

 

[S'mon]

Long, possibly incoherent, rambling story longer: I'm about to start a Classic Deadlands game. I don't know about medieval ethics coming into play, but in the setting, both the north and the south freed the slaves within the last decade (terrible, extra-dimensional monsters have kept the civil war going through 1776 through covert manipulation), and I plan on seeing how my players react to the newly emancipated slaves (I expect hilarity to ensue the first time they come across a black sheriff and I can start quoting Mel Brooks movies).

Amazing coincidence that I chose Deadlands as my example of a personally-revolting RPG setting in the very next post!! I hadn't read yours when I posted.

 

[GSHamster]

I think that for a lot of people, morality is not an intellectual construct.

It's something deeper, something laid down in childhood and other formative experiences. But this means that it is really hard to exchange your moral construct for a different construct. Intellectually, maybe they think they can do it, but when push comes to shove, their personal beliefs reassert themselves.

If this is the case, I don't think there's really much you can do, aside from playing with different players. You'd be better off playing a campaign where the campaign morals match that of the players.