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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Firstborn" data-source="post: 597166" data-attributes="member: 9767">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 QuoteYou 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 QuoteFunny 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.</blockquote>

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