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]

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.

Any given poster might not agree with Burke or Ruskin. But presumalby they're capable of understanding them. The most natural way to approach a pre-modern archetype like a paladin is throught that sort of lens, I think - it's certainly how JRRT does it in LotR!

And so with that prelude completed: Unless you're a stranger in your own homeland, its traditions and customs aren't external to you.

 

[Lanefan]

: Unless you're a stranger in your own homeland, its traditions and customs aren't external to you.

Sure they are. They're imposed on me every bit as much as any other law, only the 'punishment' for not following along isn't determined by judge-jury-etc. but by society.

If the tradition is that everyone in the village goes to the annual maypole dance at Beltaine, if I choose not to turn up one year I'm going to get judged by the rest of the village for it, and likely given a bad time socially for a while.

 

[Coroc]

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.

Yeah but at least they discussed it, and in this case it seems it would be in order, even if a LG paladin would commit the deed.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If I can mention as examples characters from comics we can remember the anti-villains as Magneto, or the prime sentinels, humans infected with nanotechnology to become mutant-hunter cyborgs. Their point of view is they are helping for a better world for their people, but we know they may hurt innocent people.

For game mechanics divine magic can hurt undead or unholy enemies, altought they aren't sentients to notice the difference between good and evil.

In my games good characters may be forced to do bad actions, and they don't lose good aligment, but the remorses can be very painful, even enought to cause madness. When a character becomes evil? When he causes a serious injustice, or actions against Natural Law, without any mitigating circumstance of guilt (for example the blackmail or menaces against loved beings). (And I use a sanity system as the one from Unknown Armies, and remorse is one of the pillars, with violence, defenselessness, loneliness and reality).

 

[pemerton]

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.

Unless you're a stranger in your own homeland, its traditions and customs aren't external to you.

Sure they are. They're imposed on me every bit as much as any other law, only the 'punishment' for not following along isn't determined by judge-jury-etc. but by society.

If the tradition is that everyone in the village goes to the annual maypole dance at Beltaine, if I choose not to turn up one year I'm going to get judged by the rest of the village for it, and likely given a bad time socially for a while.

Why are you not following along? Why are you not turning up?

If they're your customs, you'll go along with them! (Unless you've become alienated from your society - but then you're proabably not Lawful, are you, which would be contrary to what we had posited.)

That's how customs and traditions work - they are internalised by those who are socialised into them. That's why (I'm guessing) you default to English when you greet someone in your neighbourhood, and why (I'm guessing) you default to a handshake rather than (say) a bow as the courteous mode of greeting.

By way of contrast: at present, the idea of "touching elbows" rather than shaking hands is external. That's why it requires effort and discipline, in contrast to the intuitive shaking of the hand.

What I'm saying, and what I believe @Fenris-77 also to be saying, is that LG makes more sense when one looks at it through the lens I have just described: not that the LG person advocates commitment to external, even alien law, but that the LG person believes in culture and tradition which is valuable precisely because it is internalised by way of socialisation and hence is the way peopel can go about realising the good. Or to put it another way: the LG ideal is better understood not as resting on some idea that humans are by default unruly children who need disciplining by an external authority (which frankly sounds LN or even LE if it goes too far) but rather as resting on the diea that humans are by default social beings who flourish in communitiy, becuase it is communal practices and traditions that provide the framework and opportunities within which people can achieve wellbeing. This has naturally affinities with Burkean conservatism, but there are also liberal variants of something like this view eg Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship.

 

[Lanefan]

Why are you not following along? Why are you not turning up?

If they're your customs, you'll go along with them! (Unless you've become alienated from your society - but then you're proabably not Lawful, are you, which would be contrary to what we had posited.)

That's how customs and traditions work - they are internalised by those who are socialised into them.

And that socialization is - wait for it - an external influence.

The only time following a tradition or custom doesn't automatically equate to Lawful is if it's a tradition or custom the follower invented for him-herself only.

What I'm saying, and what I believe @Fenris-77 also to be saying, is that LG makes more sense when one looks at it through the lens I have just described: not that the LG person advocates commitment to external, even alien law, but that the LG person believes in culture and tradition which is valuable precisely because it is internalised by way of socialisation and hence is the way peopel can go about realising the good.

The Lawful person willingly accepts externally-applied laws, rules, customs, etc.; the Chaotic person at the very least questions these things and if the answers aren't to his-her liking, does not accept them.

Or to put it another way: the LG ideal is better understood not as resting on some idea that humans are by default unruly children who need disciplining by an external authority (which frankly sounds LN or even LE if it goes too far) but rather as resting on the diea that humans are by default social beings who flourish in communitiy, becuase it is communal practices and traditions that provide the framework and opportunities within which people can achieve wellbeing.

LN or LE would see it as disciplining, LG would see it as guidance, backed by enforcement only when necessary.

Because Lawful does see the natural state of society as being unruly, and seeks to constrain it (or shape it, or guide it, or whatever other term fits here) with rules.

And you're also assuming those 'communal practices and traditions' are not evil or chaotic in and of themselves; and are worth preserving and-or adhering to.

This has naturally affinities with Burkean conservatism, but there are also liberal variants of something like this view eg Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship.

You keep throwing these various names out; and while they may mean something to other readers, for my part you might as well not bother as I've not heard of any of them.

 

[billd91]

And that socialization is - wait for it - an external influence.

The only time following a tradition or custom doesn't automatically equate to Lawful is if it's a tradition or custom the follower invented for him-herself only.

I don't necessarily think that the act of doing something traditional or customary is necessarily Lawful. The whole Law/Chaos thing gets at why the character behaves a certain way, not exactly what that behavior is. A lawful character does what is expected of him, a chaotic character does what is personally meaningful to him, whether it bucks convention or not. He can still follow some traditions or customs, but he does so not because that's what the outside world, including his own society, expects and, chances are, there are a significant number of traditions or customs he has rejected.

 

[Oofta]

Why are you not following along? Why are you not turning up?

If they're your customs, you'll go along with them! (Unless you've become alienated from your society - but then you're proabably not Lawful, are you, which would be contrary to what we had posited.)

That's how customs and traditions work - they are internalised by those who are socialised into them. That's why (I'm guessing) you default to English when you greet someone in your neighbourhood, and why (I'm guessing) you default to a handshake rather than (say) a bow as the courteous mode of greeting.

By way of contrast: at present, the idea of "touching elbows" rather than shaking hands is external. That's why it requires effort and discipline, in contrast to the intuitive shaking of the hand.

What I'm saying, and what I believe @Fenris-77 also to be saying, is that LG makes more sense when one looks at it through the lens I have just described: not that the LG person advocates commitment to external, even alien law, but that the LG person believes in culture and tradition which is valuable precisely because it is internalised by way of socialisation and hence is the way peopel can go about realising the good. Or to put it another way: the LG ideal is better understood not as resting on some idea that humans are by default unruly children who need disciplining by an external authority (which frankly sounds LN or even LE if it goes too far) but rather as resting on the diea that humans are by default social beings who flourish in communitiy, becuase it is communal practices and traditions that provide the framework and opportunities within which people can achieve wellbeing. This has naturally affinities with Burkean conservatism, but there are also liberal variants of something like this view eg Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship.

I'll echo @Lanefan on the appeals to authority. They're meaningless because appeals to authority usually are, and because I have no freakin' clue what you're talking about. This isn't an advance civics philosophy board, it's a D&D message board.

Having said that, I still reject just about everything else. Someone may have grown up and live in a society that they see as corrupt and evil. Rejecting it in every way but still following what they perceive as a path of righteousness. Maybe they realized that slavery was wrong, or came across irrefutable evidence of the ruling hierarchy's misdeeds. Their philosophy may have been imparted by an external source such as a book, a wise teacher or in a fantasy world divine revelation. Or maybe they just took what was good in what they were taught, rejected other pieces and invented their own philosophy that they are now trying to spread.

I don't understand the need or the desire to pigeon-hole and force a PC into such a narrow mold.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I just wanted to add that I've been watching the first season of The Last Kingdom, and the "hero" Uhtred is a very good example of how you can play very solidly Chaotic Neutral, and still have playable character who would largely function in a group and propel the story forwards. Though he would probably get the group into a lot of trouble unless they controlled him.

Uhtred literally hates pretty much everything that could be considered "lawful" (authority of any kind, the church, rules in general, even obviously reasonable ones), changes sides frequently enough that "traitorous dog" is a fair description of him, is constantly forced to lie wildly by his own behaviour, yet is outraged when others lie about him, and is largely amoral though not cruel or nasty.

That said it strikes me that Ragnar Lothbrok from Vikings is probably an even more playable (if less extreme) form of CN (with a basically would-be-LG eldest son!).

 

[pemerton]

I'll echo @Lanefan on the appeals to authority. They're meaningless because appeals to authority usually are

I'm not "appealing to authority". I'm pointing to authors who have done more work on the nature of socialisation, and culture, and its relationship to the "internal" vs "external" than anyone on these boards.

@Lanefan from time to time talks about weather in his games, and his expertise in that respect. Well just as meteoro;logy is a field of knowledge, so is sociology and social philosophy.

Someone may have grown up and live in a society that they see as corrupt and evil. Rejecting it in every way but still following what they perceive as a path of righteousness.

Such a person would not be following custom or tradition. Hence would not be an example of what @Fenris-77 and I are suggesting as a paradigm of LG.

It seems likely - given the experiences you describe - that such a person would not tae the view that the best, perhaps only, way to achieve general wellbeing is by way of social organisation. Hence it seems unikely that such a person would be LG at all.

I don't understand the need or the desire to pigeon-hole and force a PC into such a narrow mold.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm suggesting a certain understanding as paradigmatic of LG. If alignments don't have some relationships to, and implications for, how a character would think and act, what are they for?