Why is it evil to kill the prisoners?

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Killing criminals is really a necessary evil, but it evil all the same.

<<snip>>

There is no such thing as "Ruthless Good." Ruthless Good (as practiced by occasional bloodthirsty PCs) is just Evil wearing a White Hat(tm).

There's no such thing as a necessary evil. There are unfortunate necessities, and there are convenient evils, but if something is truly necessary, it is not evil. Most of what are labelled as "necessary evils" are either not necessary, or not evil-- such as the example of executing dangerous criminals. There are many arguments on both sides of this issue, and it's not my interest to delve into them, but it can be fairly easily argued that it is not necessary. I will also maintain that it is not evil, depending on the severity of the crime.

I agree with you about "Ruthless Good." Good always requires boundaries, acts which you cannot commit in good conscience. To be Good, the ends cannot justify the means. This does not mean, however, that Good cannot be aggressive, vicious, or even a little bloodthirsty, as long as the characters are seeking to protect the innocent and to work for the betterment of society-- whether as a whole, as a Lawful Good might, or for the sake of individuals, as a Chaotic Good might.

Just because one's job involves unpleasantries doesn't mean that you shouldn't be proud of it and try to enjoy it, especially if your job serves to protect and improve the lives of people who cannot do your job.

 

[The Firstborn]

Quote:

Because it -IS- the logical mode of thinking for people who have been engaged in lifelong conflict.

Such as people from the inner city like myself, as well as people from small tribal units that engage in warfare over resources such as my character (a Wild Elf) and my own Amazonian ancestors, and people who make a living off of independantly sought out conflict.

What baffles me is why people bring in the ethics of modern day suburbanites mixed in with a glamorization of medieval knights and apply that to characters who exist in small scale usually independant -freebooting- skirmish units.

End Quote

You make the assumption that I am a modern day suburbanite. Wrong. I grew up as an inner icy kid. I was born to a second generation Mexican American father and mother who found it necessary to work as migrant workers up north because in San Antonio, Texas there were not a whole lot of opportunities for Mexican Americans in the 1960’s even if you were a high school graduate (back when a high school diploma meant something). My father was killed at the age of 32 after having spent 5 years of his life in prison. I was 11 when he died but he was gone from the time I was 4 til I was 9. In my childhood I suffered from loneliness, despair and anger because of my situation. I sometimes had to comfort my mother as she wept because she struggled so long to pay the bills alone in order to keep a roof over our heads and fed most of the time. I had two things going for me. God and a library card. The Lord kept me from spiraling into depression and reading kept my young mind occupied. I had trouble with it at first because Spanish was my original first language until I got put into speech classes in the third grade. I read a lot of books checked out from libraries because we were too poor to buy any books. The characters in the books were role models for me because despite all their trials and tribulations there was always the belief that a person could transcend their beginnings, whether noble or common. I learned that the most important thing in life was not money or power but the condition of your soul. I joined the Army when I was 19 to get away from my neighborhood because I was in danger of becoming a drug addict. My MOS was 91A/B Medical Specialist. I went first to an Armored Battalion for a year then an Infantry Battalion for two years. What I learned from this experience is that people are different even if they have similar backgrounds and that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity no matter what they came from. I then went home and got a bachelors degree but I had to make a pit stop in Iraq in 1991 before I was able to complete my degree. I then got married had some kids and got a masters degree. My education came with a hefty price tag, which I have to pay back. No one has given me anything for free. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I did not while away my youth daydreaming about knights in shining armor. My life has been a struggle day in and day out. I am a product of the old ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps philosophy’.

Despite all that I still believe in Heroes. People who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others. Why do I insist on talking about heroes and heroic action? Well it is because in my personal ethics our actions define who we are and whether we are good or not, not some military doctrine that states that it is okay to kill prisoners if you are behind enemy lines. Being lawful or chaotic has nothing to do with this issue because in the field the PC's are left to thier own recourse as to what should be done. The Law of Mankind has always rationalized things so that murder can be perceived as a necessary evil in order to achieve good. Part of the issue here is that players want to be able to have thier characters commit evil acts but want to rationalize that they are not evil because they did it for the greater good. Society is not going to suffer the characters consequences for committing the evil act. It is only the soul/alignment of the PC's in question that are at stake not the butchers, the bakers or the candlestick makers. Only the PC's will be ultimately held responsible for thier actions. This kind of stuff is part of the reason America is having so much trouble today. No one wants to be held accountable for his or her own actions. I am tired of whiners saying ‘I am a screw up because my mom didn’t by me a Nintendo when I was a kid’. If we can’t get past things like this we will never be able transcend our environment. That environment being the world in general. Fantasy characters are no different. They face ethical dilemmas just as we do. If they did not it would create a great amount of disbelief in the game world. This applies to everyone in the game world not just knights. Just because the PC’s work together as a small mostly independent unit doesn’t mean that they are somehow free from moral or ethical dilemmas. In fact because they are so independent they face them more often as they are faced with far greater decision making requirements than any soldier in the kings army.

Quote:

My current PC sees the group as a tribal unit, or a gang. Those are the best analogies to her viewpoint. A previous PC saw her band as 'land-privateers' because they were operating under official sanction of Cormyr to raid and clear out the Dwarven Ruins they'd found.

In forming the characters, I looked to ethical compasses that fit those modes of thought.

End Quote

Funny thing about what you claim is that you seem to be applying modern day ethics to fantasy characters even though you don’t see it. I believe that the reason we differ in what we perceive as good and evil is due to the way in which we have handled the things that have impacted our personal lives. We are both taking our personal ethics and applying them to our characters. What has impacted my life is fictional fantasy literature in the absence of a father figure. Exactly what impacted yours I cannot say. But what I can see is that you appear to be playing characters that don’t want to show any mercy and that It may be because no one ever showed any mercy to you in your own personal life. I am just reaching and hope I have not offended you.

Understand that I am putting my thoughts out there for you to mull over so that you can get someone else’s perspective on the issue rather than just agreeing with you which would go against everything I believe in.

 

[The Firstborn]

Hey Arcady,

Quote:

We come to a ruined Elven city (Elven Port in FR) and have reason to assume it is Orc infested. We begin to scout out a stone fortress on the edges of this city and find Orcs in it. We proceed to take them out.

At the end of the battle we have 4 to 5 of them sleeping thanks to my spells. A debate ensues on how to deal with them.

The very people opposed to killing prisoners want to slit these guys throats. Some of us want to wake them and question them about the area and the strength of it's local communities. But if we wake them, we know the very people who simply want to kill them now will suddenly be advocating for keeping them alive.

This is one of those moments when D&D ethics -or rather the ethics I witness from D&D players- confuses me.

End Quote

Actually I can see your confusion. Sorry but I really got focused on you actions as a PC rather than your real question.

Kill them all (Other PC’s and prisoners) and let the gods sort them out.

Just kidding.

The problem here is probably that they are not in touch with their inner child.

Sorry, another bad joke.

Okay. These folks have obviously not decided what the ethics for their characters are. Or they are flip flopping between personal ethics and the characters ethics. Either way, they are not being consistent in their the application of ethics. I agree with you that it seems … how do I say this tactfully…stupid. There it’s out. I have no answer for you really because I am not those players. Only they could tell you and it doesn’t seem like they have put much thought into it at all.

I did enjoy talking about our individual ethics though.

Thanks

 

[dcollins]

What baffles me is why people bring in the ethics of modern day suburbanites mixed in with a glamorization of medieval knights and apply that to characters who exist in small scale usually independant -freebooting- skirmish units.

Umm... because those are the rules of D&D?

Every edition of D&D has defined good and evil as really concrete concepts, and always specifically accordance with the "glamorous medieval knights" that you'd like to poo-poo. 1st Ed. DMG: "... the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of AD&D, creature rights..."; 3rd Ed. PH: "Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others."

If certain characters are truly "freebooting", if they never consider "creature rights", if they never make "personal sacrifices to help others", then they are not Good under the rules of D&D. If they "kill without qualms if doing so is conveneient", then that is by definition Evil (PH p. 88). You can feel free to play such characters, but in no way can you turn around and argue that they should be considered Good, or that such criteria are misplaced. Those are the rules of D&D, and that's all there is to it.

 

[Kichwas]

Umm... because those are the rules of D&D?

Every edition of D&D has defined good and evil as really concrete concepts, and always specifically accordance with the "glamorous medieval knights" that you'd like to poo-poo.

I don't come away with that impression at all when I read through the alignment section.

It reads a lot more general than that. So general in fact that I could probably apply quite a wide range of ethical systems to each alignment -some of which would exist in direct opposition to each other.

But even if it didn't, that still doesn't address the specifics of this question.


Note to Hong: Your post is very confusing. You seem to be implying things out of my statement that weren't there, and then using them to possibly draw a conclusion that I was maybe saying the exact opposite of what I was saying. I'm not sure though, because I just couldn't make sense of it. I'm really not sure just what you were saying.

Note to Firstborn: The case I mentioned is a recent specific that is typical of the behaivoir I have observed over the years throughout my gaming, and through the reading of other's logs / story hours.

The thing is, I'm taking the time to break it all down and look at it. To take myself out of the moment and compare a groups actions at one point with their actions at another.

The inconsistancy glares out at me because it comes at a point where I disagree with the conclusions. But such inconsistancies are common in people's -in game ethics- from what I have observed.

And not by any stretch just with D&D. Though that is the case here and what is relevant for this board.

 

[Snoweel]

It's all been mentioned several times, but the key issue is what happens to a sentient when it dies in any given campaign. Maybe death will put the tormented soul of an orc/goblin/whatever(even human) to rest?

Another point is exactly how much any particular race has a right to live in the first place.

In the end it all comes down to the campaign world's cosmology.

At another level, each individual character in the world may or may not have been taught a particular version of right from wrong, which may or may not be true to whatever degree.

I think the DM should make it clear what the "Good" deities (if they exist - they certainly don't in my campaign) teach their followers by way of divine divination spells granted to their clerics and recorded over how ever many years...

All told, there are a lot of factors.

 

[Kichwas]

You make the assumption that I am a modern day suburbanite.

I make no assumptions about individuals, but rather about larger group trends. That's how I tend to see things.

But what I can see is that you appear to be playing characters that don’t want to show any mercy and that It may be because no one ever showed any mercy to you in your own personal life. I am just reaching and hope I have not offended you.

None taken though it is an incorrect conclusion as to my history and the fuller details of my specific characters.

What is interesting in my current character is that she is one of the few in the group who usually advocates the path of not getting involved in a conflict, but also one of the few who, once that conflict is underway has the -guts- to see it through to the -nessessary- end (as she defines it).

Eventually, she will probably challenge one of the others on this. If they question her next time she goes to kill a captured foe, she will simply point out that we would not have this foe if they hadn't put us in the situation to begin with.

If you asked her about Heroes, she would probably say something like:
Heroes and Villains seek out and create conflicts, the rest of us are left to deal with them.


However, that's all a specific case, rather than a general addressing of the issue on dealing lethally with captured prisoners in your typical fantasy roleplay conflict.

I could draw out the same conclusions with a heroicly molded character. Largely because as I see it, there is an inconsistancy in the -during conflict- and -post conflict- ethics. To resolve that inconsistancy one or the other has to be adjusted. Adjusting the -during conflict- would from my frame of view, usually result in characters who simply cannot morally justify their participation in the conflict. So I've adjusted the other end to match it's counter.

 

[Snoweel]

Because it -IS- the logical mode of thinking for people who have been engaged in lifelong conflict.

This is actually an excellent point.

Any individual growing up in an environment as violent as that of the typical quasi-medieval D&D campaign world would have far less respect for life than a modern-day Western suburbanite.

Such an individual would also have taken the concept of mutual exclusion to the core of their being.

21st century, Western morality would be alien to them.

Of course, the concept of "do unto others...<blah, blah, blah>" which was brough up by somepne else 2 pages ago is a nice starting point for Good. Or maybe Neutral, I'm not sure.

But then one can reach the stage where one would harm, kill or expolit others because one would expect them to do likewise.

But I guess that's Evil, innit?

Edit: hungover

 

[Sulimo]

Re: Re: Re: Re

you mean like the ancient greeks? Read the history of the peloponesian (sp) war and then come back to this.

Boy, does it irk me when people throw out the "no rules of warfare before the geneva convention" strawman.

I didnt mean to suggest that either. I was thinking about how alignment is applied more widely, rather than the issue of killing civilians or unarmed prisoners. Take slavery for instance...whilst I'm sure more than a few 'round here would class slavery as evil, pretty much all ancient societies practiced it and I dont think they thought of the practice generally as evil.

 

[Kichwas]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re

whilst I'm sure more than a few 'round here would class slavery as evil, pretty much all ancient societies practiced it and I dont think they thought of the practice generally as evil.

In fact, in Exodus 21 there are official rules from God on slavery.

The word of God says it is something you can do.

So for anyone in the Christian, Muslim, or Jewish world, you cannot possibly say slavery is evil unless you are willing to counter the word of God.

That's a dicey dilema for modern moralists.

The debate on that however, goes elsewhere. Exodus makes for a very interesting read for a number of reasons.