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.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

I remember seeing suggestions to that effect for people turned into things like werewolves or vampires, but that doesn't sound exactly like what you're talking about. I don't remember that the Helm of Opposite Alignment called for the PC to become and NPC--it just ruined the character for the player, maybe. I never saw those come up, either, for what it's worth.

technically there are entries for vampires that do not take care to differentiate between being turned into a controlled vamp or an uncontrolled one too. In those cases its a similar problem. Some times when vampires get a collum in a book they specify you lose control if its a controlled vamp. Other times it just says you lose control if you become one. Blanket statement. Its a similar problem because those who rise as an uncontrolled vamp shouldnt lose character control. Because their alignment is changed but they retain agency. Some of the vampire entries lack the specifting detail of controlled vamps being forfeited.

Why would you need to forfeight the character if you are uncontrolled? So depending on which vampire bestiary entry, could be a similar problem.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I believe Ms. Marvel said it best...

 

[Coroc]

Really? Because monster lairs in your world spontaneously generate sufficient food that they don't have to raid the countryside?

Yea think about the original undermountain, a complete ecosystem down there , someone could say it is almost a biosphere (not)

 

[Coroc]

Right? I've tried to be that guy in parties. Not some Lawful Good stick-in-the-mud "don't rob those graves!" Paladin, but a NG Cleric or Bard or Fighter or the like, who is genuinely out to help and protect people, and is doing the right thing for the right reasons and so on.
....

Well depending on whose graves are up to be robbed at least the NG cleric should eventually object also don't you think?

 

[pemerton]

Which of course raises the next obvious question: which is more important - the means, or the ends?

It seems pretty much a matter of definition that means get their value simply from their ability to contribute to valuable ends.

This common-sense notion is exmplefied both in standard remarks about the ends justifying the means- which are typically produced when the means in some fashion undercut the ends - and also in Bertrand Russell's famous retort when someone said this to him ("What else would?").

As Gygax says (PHB p 35): characters of lawful good alignment follow these precepts (ie law and order) to improve the common weal.They don't value law and order in-and-of themselves.

The reason a paladin must avoid chaotic acts is because the paladin believes that engaging in such acts will undermine the improvement of the common weal, by undermining the necessary means thereto. Chaotic acts aren't objectionable per se.

one could - and I think I will - argue that one of the fundamental differences between Lawful and Chaotic is that a Lawful person looks to and relies on external authorities for rules and guidance on how to live (and for enforcement of such), where a Chaotic person looks within him-herself for these things and relies on his-her own judgment.

So, when faced with a thorny situation, a Lawful person is going to ask "What do the external laws and rules say must be done here?" while a Chaotic will ask "What does my own conscience say?"

As I posted upthread, and was discussing with @Fenris-77, I think your move from not internal to external in the mode of external laws is too swift. It's as if there are no options but conscience or external law. But in a FRPG, which in its tropes expressly eschews modernity, we should be looking at the social, that is, tradition and custom as the lived experiences of the people. Particularly in the context of LG, because then - even if one personally doesn't agree in the real world - one can see straight away (eg keeping in mind authors like Burke and Ruskin) the connection between upholding such traditions and customs and ensuring the common weal.

 

[pemerton]

I have no problem with a dm just not wanting to deal with evil characters.

I've played with people who ran evil PCs before. In one particular case, the guy described some things I consider pretty reprehensible. Forcing himself on women, details of torture and how he committed murder and so on. Honestly it made me really uncomfortable how he seemed to be getting into some really gross stuff. He was describing details I would never go into as a DM.

I decided that I just didn't want to deal with it.

I'm not interested in that sort of stuff either. When I've had PCs in my games who - if alignment was applied - would be evil, they have generally been power-hungry and/or callous. That is, they have subordinated life, welfare, beauty and truth to pursuing their own interests in and desires for wealth and power.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well depending on whose graves are up to be robbed at least the NG cleric should eventually object also don't you think?

Not necessarily. It depends both on who the graves belong to and what the purpose of robbing them is, whether they're still visited, and whether the NG person leans utilitarian (which as has been discussed in this thread appears to be, even according to 1E alignment guidelines, acceptable) good or individual good. It would also depend on if it impact that person's spirit in the afterlife but actually oddly D&D has a very non-pagan take on grave goods (in that it resembles Abrahamic religions, most forms of Buddhism, and so on), where they're meaningless.

I've never thought about that before - as someone with archaeological training and experience, I should have. There should probably be, at least in one D&D setting, a way to "take it with you", so that you did the keep the chariot, the horses, the slaves, the magic sword and so on into the afterlife, so long as no-one messed with your stuff, and then if they did, you could come tearing out of the afterlife like the wrath of... an angry thing...

I think that an LG character might well also be utilitarian (it's very easy for me to envision a sort of collectivist Paladin, who doesn't believe in the individual ownership of many goods or excessive wealth and redistributes them - in an orderly and harm-minimizing fashion - he probably wouldn't be a thief or destroyer of societal order, but it he might feel carefully removing stuff from ancient graves, where it is not needed, was fun), but conventionally they tend not to be, an honouring other people's ancient tombs and so on is far more in the domain of Lawful than Good (barring weirdness as noted above).

 

[Lanefan]

It seems pretty much a matter of definition that means get their value simply from their ability to contribute to valuable ends.

This common-sense notion is exmplefied both in standard remarks about the ends justifying the means- which are typically produced when the means in some fashion undercut the ends - and also in Bertrand Russell's famous retort when someone said this to him ("What else would?").

My own line, usually said in relation to my band's music-making, is the means justify the ends. Which is to say, in blunt terms, who gives a crap what it sounds like when we listen to it later; we had fun playing it and that's all that matters.

One could apply this to RPGing as well - who cares what comes out of it in hindsight as long as the here-and-now is fun.

And in context of a character, it might come down to whether the character puts more value on the journey (the means) or the destination (the end goal or result). I could see LE as being the extreme of goal-first and CN as the extreme of means-first.

As I posted upthread, and was discussing with @Fenris-77, I think your move from not internal to external in the mode of external laws is too swift. It's as if there are no options but conscience or external law. But in a FRPG, which in its tropes expressly eschews modernity, we should be looking at the social, that is, tradition and custom as the lived experiences of the people. Particularly in the context of LG, because then - even if one personally doesn't agree in the real world - one can see straight away (eg keeping in mind authors like Burke and Ruskin) the connection between upholding such traditions and customs and ensuring the common weal.

Traditions and customs are just unwritten external laws, or close enough for these purposes, so this doesn't change a thing in the basic L-C dichotomy: is your primary influence internal or external.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And in context of a character, it might come down to whether the character puts more value on the journey (the means) or the destination (the end goal or result). I could see LE as being the extreme of goal-first and CN as the extreme of means-first.

That's a very interesting take. I don't know if I entirely agree with it, but its worth thinking about, for sure.

 

[Umbran]

Well depending on whose graves are up to be robbed at least the NG cleric should eventually object also don't you think?

That depends on a lot of things.

In a game I'm playing, a long-lived elven NPC is a former companion of a now long-dead human NPC... who had a magic weapon that would very much help the party defend the local area, but was buried with them. The Elf directly told the PCs he didn't feel the human would mind if someone robbed the grave for the right reasons.