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.

 

[Flamestrike]

If you kill someone in self defense is it evil?

No, but neither is it morally good.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not really. The ethical mechanics that govern my table aren't modified or dependent on real-world moralizing about real-world examples that are supposed to explain how fantasy settings work.

Is that true though? My experience is that D&D with two-part alignments ends up one of two ways:

1) It acknowledges and draws from real-world morality of some kind (even if people are in denial about it, or have the classic problem fish/water problem).

or

2) Good and Evil are weird constructs that don't match up to real-world morality and thus no longer seem like they're actually Good and Evil in any meaningful moral sense, but rather Angel-side and Demon-side, and one may do more harm than the other but neither comes out of it looking great (this is quite common in fantasy including urban fantasy - the Diablo universe works like this for example).

 

[Flamestrike]

Not really. The ethical mechanics that govern my table aren't modified or dependent on real-world moralizing about real-world examples that are supposed to explain how fantasy settings work.

I see. So when DnD talks about good andevil and morality, those words have different meanings than we are expected to understand in the context we read them in?

So when the book says 'Orcs are Chaotic evil' what does that mean to you? Do you not apply real world moral standards (todays standards) to determine what the word 'evil' means, and how they are likely to act?

Or do you apply some other moral standard when determining what those words (evil, good) mean?

Do you think the game designers did this (intended us to apply some moral standard other than the socially agreed on moral standard that killing/raping/enslaving/ opressing others is evil) for some nefarious reason?

 

[Fenris-77]

@Ruin Explorer - I'd disagree, at least in part. The very black and white approach that a lot of fantasy takes is a selling point specifically because it isn't the rel world where we never really know about people. Even in a grim morally grey fantasy story like game of thrones there is still black and white. I don't think the life cycle really changes that very much. It could it the table wanted it to, but it doesn't have to. For example, the Shanka Abercrombie's novels have a life cycle but are also still irredeemably evil. Same with the Pantathians in Feist. It doesn't all have to map like real world ethics, and anyone who insists that it does is missing the point.

 

[Flamestrike]

@Ruin Explorer - I'd disagree, at least in part. The very black and white approach that a lot of fantasy takes is a selling point specifically because it isn't the rel world where we never really know about people. Even in a grim morally grey fantasy story like game of thrones there is still black and white. I don't think the life cycle really changes that very much. It could it the table wanted it to, but it doesn't have to. For example, the Shanka Abercrombie's novels have a life cycle but are also still irredeemably evil. Same with the Pantathians in Feist. It doesn't all have to map like real world ethics, and anyone who insists that it does is missing the point.

Youre applying real world moral standard to the actions of those protagonists here arent you in determining whether they are evil?

You cant see their character sheet or MM entry. Maybe they're morally good murders/slavers or whatever.

You cant have it both ways. You're making a call here that these protagonists are evil, based on their actions, and through your own contemporary lens.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, but I think it's totally to suggest a degree of caution about this, lest one get into very murky, grim waters.

When it's a purely supernatural being, which doesn't have any kind of sane lifecycle, if it even lives at all, or which is created from another being or the like (as undead are), then I think it's fairly safe to have those sort of things be inherently evil.

When you start making a humanoid race, who talk, live, reproduce, build functioning societies (even a tribe is a functioning society), die of old age and generally are totally mortal and normal be "inherently always evil from birth" (as opposed to say, lacking the same in-built instincts of morality as humans, but capable of acquiring them), you're getting into territory that I don't think is typically interesting or fun to explore in an RPG. It might not be terrible for a book or something, but it tends to get real genocide-y real fast in an RPG.

This is where I have a problem. I'm more bothered by colonialism and orcs if orcs can be reformed if only they dressed, behaved and worshiped the "right way". Because then orcs are only evil because society has decided they are.

I just don't see a reason to draw the lines that way. Orcs are not human. They aren't even a creature that naturally evolved, they were created as an extension of Grummsh's will.

But I'm not touting some one true way philosophy, just that I follow the RAW on this one.

 

[Oofta]

No, but neither is it morally good.

I've never said harming another creature was virtuous.

 

[Flamestrike]

This is where I have a problem. I'm more bothered by colonialism and orcs if orcs can be reformed if only they dressed, behaved and worshiped the "right way". Because then orcs are only evil because society has decided they are.

But... thats exactly how Orcs are described in 5E DnD. Its expressly stated that they are NOT inherently evil. They're evil by default because they're raised in a society that encourages evil acts (slavery, murder, rape) in a similar way to how Drow are evil for the same reason.

That is RAW.

Just like a Halfling raised among LG parents in LG community can wind up a psychotic murderer, an Orc raised in a CE society by CE parents could end up simply selfish but not evil (CN) or a CG caring and gentle soul (scorned by his peers as a weakling).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The very black and white approach that a lot of fantasy takes

Emphasis mine.

I don't think a lot of fantasy media in general does take a black and white approach to morality. LotR does, but with a compassion rarely seen when people use the phrase "black and white". You could argue that Wheel of Time does, and I might agree, but it also weakens a lot of the books, not because good and evil have to (LotR shows that it doesn't), but because it's handled in a really crude and unbelievable way.

Even in a grim morally grey fantasy story like game of thrones there is still black and white.

There's black. I dunno if there's any white.

That's the pattern in much of fantasy, going back all the way, past Tolkien, to REH and so on. Conan is very much morally grey. Conan himself is kind of nasty at times. But he frequently fights against truly despicable foes, or pitiless beings who are beyond human morality or the like.

Mentioning the Shanka rather proves my point. They're both in a book (which I suggested was less problematic, because the author isn't going to write a book about genocide), and they don't meet the tests I laid out. They've got a lifecycle (you claim, I don't remember that from the books, and the wiki doesn't have anything on it), but that's it.

The Panthatians I know nothing about, but googling them I got the following: "Evolved - These are the majority of the Pantathians. They are peaceful (probably more than humans and most other races but not pacifists) and have overcome their need to worship Alma-Lodaka"

Sounds like the basic Panthatians are mind-controlled/brain-washed, essentially, by their evil creator. Mind-control is a separate issue. It's one thing if a bunch of creatures are brain-washed or whatever.

But I'm not touting some one true way philosophy, just that I follow the RAW on this one.

RAW is that Orcs aren't inherently evil in 5E. We've been over this earlier (possibly in another thread?). Orcs are capable of being PCs and of being any alignment. That's the RAW.

Anything else is fine, but please don't represent it as RAW. So if your Orcs are "always evil", they're not RAW. Again, fine but not RAW. This isn't complex and it's trivial to prove.

 

[Flamestrike]

I've never said harming another creature was virtuous.

I was just clarifying my own position.