D&D General Worlds of Design: Is Fighting Evil Passé?

When I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (1975) I had a clear idea of what I wanted to be and to do in the game: fight evil. As it happened, I also knew I wanted to be a magic user, though of course I branched out to other character classes, but I never deviated from the notion of fighting evil until I played some neutral characters, years after I started.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

To this day I think of the game as good guys against bad guys, with most of my characters (including the neutrals) on the good guy side. I want to be one of those characters who do something about evil. I recognize that many do not think and play this way, and that's more or less the topic of this column. Because it makes a big difference in a great deal that happens when you answer the question of whether the focus of the campaign is fighting evil.

In the early version of alignment, with only Law and Chaos, it was often Law (usually good) against Chaos (usually evil). I learned this form from Michael Moorcock's Elric novels before D&D, though I understand it originated in Pohl Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. That all went out the window when the Good and Evil axis was added to alignment. That's the axis I'm talking about today.

This is a "black and white" viewpoint, versus the in-between/neither/gray viewpoint so common today. But I like my games to be simple, and to be separate from reality. I don't like the "behave however you want as long as you don't get caught" philosophy.

Usually, a focus on fighting evil includes a focus on combat, though I can see where this would not necessarily be the case. Conversely, a focus on combat doesn't necessarily imply a focus on fighting evil. Insofar as RPGs grow out of popular fiction, we can ask how a focus on fighting evil compares with typical fiction.

In the distant past (often equated with "before 1980" in this case) the focus on fighting evil was much more common in science fiction and fantasy fiction than it is today, when heroes are in 50 shades of gray (see reference). Fighting evil, whether an individual, a gang, a cult, a movement, a nation, or an aggressive alien species, is the bedrock in much of our older science fiction and fantasy, much less so today.

Other kinds of focus?

If fighting evil isn't the focus, what is?

• In a "Game of Thrones" style campaign, the politics and wars of great families could provide a focus where good and evil hardly matter.
• "There's a war on" might be between two groups that aren't clearly good or evil (though each side individually might disagree).
• A politically-oriented campaign might be all about subterfuge, assassination, theft, and sabotage. There might be no big battles at all.
• A campaign could focus on exploration of newly-discovered territory. Or on a big mystery to solve. Or on hordes of refugees coming into the local area.

I'm sure there are many inventive alternatives to good vs evil, especially if you want a "grayer" campaign. I think a focus on good vs evil provides more shape to a RPG campaign than anything else. But there are other ways of providing shape. YMMV. If you have an unusual alternative, I hope you'll tell us about it.

 

[pemerton]

And sometimes you have a conception of Good in the setting that is problematic. Like Clangeddin Silverbeard and his "I LIVE 4 GIANT GENOCIDE!" attitude. It's like CAN you "LIVE 4 GIANT GENOCIDE" (specificially Hill Giants, possibly the least threatening of Giants) and be Good? Because it seems like maybe not. I mean, they specifically tasked to, and I quote: "Attack hill giants whenever possible and other evil giants whenever necessary."

Errrr... doesn't that make you like, I mean, let's not say any real-world figures here but kind of like the evil orc warlord who is trying to wipe out the elves because Gruumsh told him to?

Yet I believe his followers default to LG. Which I dunno... Maybe I'm just scarred by the Hill Giant incident.

Mmmm lots of thing in there.
Hill giant genocide is the way to go. Stupid and evil. Killed countless dwarves to eat them. When they get into an area it is to eat everything they can (especially tasty dwarves) and once finished with an area, they start over again in an other zone. I know that I would do the most sensible thing and destroy these as reasoning with them is impossible.

Remember that these giants are feasting after their raiding on Sterich where they killed thousands of people with their bigger brethren (Frost, Fire and Cloud giants). They do not expect anyone to come after them because everybody fled this zone. Hardly a peaceful race if you don't mind.

I agree with Ruin Explorer that killing people just because they might be a threat is not good: it doesn't affirm the values of life, truth and beauty.

But the giants in the G1 module have committed crimes - raiding, looting, terrorising etc. The violence that is meted out by the PCs is not defensive violence but retributive violence. The intro to the module even makes this clear - the king is sending the PCs to strike back at the giant raiders. I think a lot of contemporary people would regard that sort of quasi-vigilante retributibe violence as problematic. But in a quasi-mediaeval setting I think it can fit in.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I've had many a discussion on forums with people attempting justify 'the forces of Good' storming into an Orc village and butchering everything out of hand 'because they're Orks and Orks are evil'. Taking no prisoners (or taking them and slaughtering them for convenience anyway). Literally had this exact conversation on this forum a week or two back.

This also really depends on how the setting is written. In some settings there are intelligent monsters that are irredeemably evil and nothing short of a Wish, if even then, would make one of them non-evil. And then in other settings, the same monsters are treated like humans for alignment, and can be evil, neutral, or good. So in Middle Earth, letting an orc or goblin live is foolish, so killing them is expected, but in other worlds, killing because they might be evil in the future would be evil itself and criminal behavior.

 

[pemerton]

So by the logic above, all soldiers of aggressive/interventionist nations are "murderhobos"? It feels you're intentionally removing any value from the term by using it so wildly broadly.

In the real world, soldiers who kill surrendered enemies are murderers. Soldiers who kill civilians are murderers. Soldiers who carry out retributive as opposed to defensive violence are murderers.

What counts as defensive violence can be contentious - obviously, and especially when you're talking about masses of mobilised soldiers, the best defence sometimes is a good offence. But the scene that @jgsugden is describing doesn't seem like it counts as any sort of defensive violence.

However, judging from the gif that was posted, this looks more like a *one-sided) duel. Most contemporary legal codes, and I imagine many contemporary people, regard killing in a duel as murder. But in the context of a quasi-mediaeval game I think it makes sense to drop this perspective. Thor is a viking, and vikings didn't characterise killing in a duel (as opposed to, say, killing by stealth) as murder. If someone willingly puts his/her life into jeopardy by challenging Thor, it might be generous or merciful of Thor to spare him/her, but it is not obligatory on his part. In this framing, Thor hasn't violated any right enjoyed by his victim.

 

[Flamestrike]

So in Middle Earth, letting an orc or goblin live is foolish

Tell that to Gandalf. He directly advocated the opposite (with regards to Smeagol).

If Frodo had have ignored that advice and killed Smeagol (wholly corrupted by the One Ring) out of hand, Sauron would have won.

There was a moral there that Tolkien was trying to make; 'killing things just because they're evil' leads to a greater evil.

I just cant agree with the argument of 'killing things simply because they're evil'. It leads to the lunacy of Paladins detecting evil at the tavern and then slaughtering anything that 'pings'. If the only thing that separates your forces of 'good' from the forces of 'evil' is whom their slaughter is directed at, then you're left with some very warped morality indeed.

Surely the forces of 'good' and morally good people don't engage in merciless slaughter because that's not morally good.

 

[Flamestrike]

In the real world, soldiers who kill surrendered enemies are murderers. Soldiers who kill civilians are murderers. Soldiers who carry out retributive as opposed to defensive violence are murderers.

Indeed those actions are morally reprehensible; hence why we criminalise them.

What counts as defensive violence can be contentious - obviously, and especially when you're talking about masses of mobilised soldiers, the best defence sometimes is a good offence. But the scene that @jgsugden is describing doesn't seem like it counts as any sort of defensive violence.

The issue is people conflate self defence with having to wait around till you get stabbed or shot at first. That is not (and never has been) the case in any context, historical, legal or otherwise.

If a reasonable person in your position would have an apprehension that lethal force is about to be performed on them (or someone else) they have the legal right to respond with force (including lethal force) in response to that reasonable apprehension.

We dont make such uses of force a crime, even if the victim was killed, as long as the apprehension and force used was reasonable in the circumstances. In other words we dont morally condemn the killer.

If a group of adventurers is beset by a group of creatures intent on doing them harm, the adventurers are within their rights to respond with force (including lethal force) if necessary. Whether thats a dragon swooping from the sky, an incursion of Orcs from a nearby encampment, bandits on the road, or even a group of Paladins who are attacking out of a case of mistaken identity.

Such force is not 'evil' regardless of the alignment of the victim. It's also not 'morally good' either.

Thor is a viking, and vikings didn't characterise killing in a duel (as opposed to, say, killing by stealth) as murder.

Pretty intresting laws in relation to Norse duels:

If someone speaks insults to another man ("You're not the like of a man, and not a man in your chest!" – "I’m a man like you!"), they shall meet where three roads meet. If he who has spoken comes and not the insulted one, then he shall be as he's been called: no right to swear oaths, no right to bear witness, may it concern man or woman.

If the insulted one comes and not he who has spoken, then he shall cry "Niðingr!" three times and make a mark in the ground, and he is worse who spoke what he dared not keep.

Now both meet fully armed: if the insulted one falls, the compensation is half a weregild; if he who has spoken falls, insults are the worst, the tongue the head’s bane, he shall lie in a field of no compensation.

Holmgang - Wikipedia

 

[Flamestrike]

Genocide is the way to go.

As for allowing a player to play an Evil Character... It is only a matter of time for the evil to come into play and infuriate one of the other players (if they play correctly and if they catch the evil character in his evil ways). Not getting caught is not getting ignored. Never worked out in my groups.

Is there a need to play an evil PC in your games, when your good guys are racing around engaging in flat out genocide on behalf of the forces of good?

When your 'morally good' PCs are little more than Chaos warbands engaging in wanton slaughter and genocide, I shudder to think what you consider to be 'evil'.

 

[pemerton]

I struggle to understand what exactly people think they're trying to defend here.

I can only speak for myself. (Obviousy!)

I think that - at least as Gygax presents it in his AD&D books - good covers a wide range of moral outlooks that affirm human (and other sapient) wellbeing, life and rights, and also truth and beauty. Conversely, the evil are those who disregard or even scorn such values in their action.

There are real-world moral questions - some of which are very live debates at present! - about (eg) what sorts of trade-offs across values, and between one person and another's wellbeing, are permissible. Gygax, though, glosses over all those debates in his presentation. So do most superhero comics. In this sense, at least, I think D&D benefits from being simple or even :simplistic". I think the D&D alignment system simply lacks the resources to do (say) health economics in any serious way.

But there is a second aspect to D&D morality that I think is important if we are to preserve the tropes of heroic and romantic fantasy. In the real world, many people who have considered views on the matter tend to doubt the morality of violence, especially retributive violence. And they tend to doubt that (eg) dueling or other consensual submission to violence is morally acceptable.

But if you take this outlook into D&D then the whole suite of mediaeval tropes - knights who fight against dragons who terrorise the countryside; jousts and duels; G2, as has been discussed above - disappear. Instead we need anachronistic institutions and moral conceptions like police forces, independent prosecutorial agencies, standing armies, etc.

So I think that D&D and similar fantasy RPG works best when (i) we go aong with Gygax and don't get down into the weeds of sophisticated thinking about how values relate to one another but focus on scenarios where they can all be affirmed togehter, and (ii) we don't treat (justified) retributive and conensual violence as a scorning of the value of life and the rights of others.

As I said, this approach will collapse if you try and do the morality of infection prevention and quarantine (and for a comic-book comparison: if you ask why Storm uses her powers to fight Magneto and Dr Doom rather than ending drought and famine the world over, the whole moral framework of the X-Men collapses). But it will certainly survive surrendering hobgoblins, orcish children (if you want them), etc - because the approach I've described has plenty of scope for thinking about honour and redemption!

 

[DammitVictor]

This claim is pretty controversial, and I think is better treated as a possible conclusion of play, rather than as an input into play.

It's not intended to be an "input into play"-- it's intended to be a controversial statement that provokes people into reexamining the relationship between the two axes of alignment, specifically that Chaotic Good is an unprincipled, undiscplined lesser form of Good, and that Lawful Evil is an honorable, reliable, acceptably heroic form of Evil.

The positive spin on Lawful societies is that they are preserving traditional mores-- preserving and enforcing those mores upon people who do not conform to them. This means, by definition, that they are harming the well-being and liberty of people-- sometimes quite severely-- on the basis of behaviors that are not harmful to the well-being and liberty of others. Being Lawful is inimical to being Good.

Likewise, being Lawful is about preserving the legitimate political authorities of your culture... however one defines them. This means, among other things, respecting their authority to police themselves. Respecting that legitimate authorities-- however they are selected-- have prerogatives that do not need to be justified because they are superior to others and only their superiors, in turn, may discipline them. If a low-ranking official is predatory and his chain-of-command is apathetic... well... that's just the system. The system is more important than its victims.

Before you tell me that's "not Lawful Good", ask me how many separate incidents of Fallen Paladins I can name-- from other people's tables-- that were exactly this.

Do I actually believe this? Well... yes. Do I want the game to work this way? No. I just want it to stop working the other way, where more "heroic" games allow Lawful Evil than Chaotic Neutral.

The intro to the module even makes this clear - the king is sending the PCs to strike back at the giant raiders. I think a lot of contemporary people would regard that sort of quasi-vigilante retributibe violence as problematic. But in a quasi-mediaeval setting I think it can fit in.

The purpose of retaliatory strikes is to make the prospect of attacking your people again less attractive-- a lot of contemporary people have a lot of very stupid ideas about war, but I do think most of them recognize this as a negotiable middle-ground between "pre-emptive self-defense" and "actual self-defense".

 

[jedijon]

To the extent the game is based on creativity and expression—any repetitious themes sap joy from the experience.

To the extent it’s killing and looting—it hardly matters.

Also, see the age/life-experience of the human pondering the article’s title.

 

[Flamestrike]

I can only speak for myself. (Obviousy!)

I think that - at least as Gygax presents it in his AD&D books - good covers a wide range of moral outlooks that affirm human (and other sapient) wellbeing, life and rights, and also truth and beauty. Conversely, the evil are those who disregard or even scorn such values in their action.

I think one needs to be careful using Gygax as our moral arbiter.

Leaving aside his own personal and well documented religious views (that I wont go into here), he was on record as claiming it was perfectly OK for a LG Paladin to slaughter Orc babies because in his words 'nits make lice'.

But there is a second aspect to D&D morality that I think is important if we are to preserve the tropes of heroic and romantic fantasy. In the real world, many people who have considered views on the matter tend to doubt the morality of violence, especially retributive violence. And they tend to doubt that (eg) dueling or other consensual submission to violence is morally acceptable.

Indeed.

My trope of the morally good fantasy hero is not 'slaughter your foes with no pity, remorse or mercy to the point of genocide' and I shudder at the thought that people can genuinely get down with such actions being morally good, or in the genre.

I mean they can be in the genre. But the people that espouse such ideas are morally evil, even if they only espouse such ideas for a 'greater good'.