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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7974388" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me this goes right back to questions of genre and fidelity to its tropes.I'm no expert on viking law codes, but my understanding is that assassination was considered ipso facto murder, quite different from (say) killing in a duel or in warfare.In Gygaxian terms (focusing on his presentation of alignment, and not so much his presentation of assassins which is a bit half-baked), the problem with assassination is not that it's killing per se, but that it doesn't affirm truth. Rather, It's sneaky and dishonourable.To me this seems to be a long way out of touch not only with romantic fantasy source material but even REH Conan, which doesn't involve this sort of thing.And framing it a bit more abstractly, it's hard to see how that sort of thing could be framed as affirming the value of life over purely selfish considerations.I'm not saying anything about JRRT's opinions. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they changed over time - many thoughtful people in Europe did change their opinions, in various ways, between 1914 and 1945. I am taling about the implicity moral and political theory of LotR.I am not aware of any plausible reading of LotR which doesn't characterise the Captains of the West - Aragorn, Imrahil, Eomer in particular - as good. Nor Aragorn's and (after he is freed by Gandalf) Theoden's rulership as just. Even Denethor's rulership is not condemned, until the very end when (to quote Gandalf) he falls into madness and evil. Though in D&D terms I think it would be fair to characterise Denethor as LN rather than LG - he stubbornly elevates Gondor and its traditions and its traditional claims above the demands that current circusmtances make upon him and his realm.Here (p 871 of my one-volume edition) is JRRT on Theoden leading the charge of the Rohirrim:Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borned up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young.And then 10 pages later we get this:Thus came Aragonr son of Arathonr, Elessar, Isildur's heir, out of the Paths of the Dead, borne upon a wind from the Sea to the kingdom of Gondor; and the mirth of the Rohirrim was a torrent of laughter and a flashing of swords, and the joy and wonder of the City was a music of trumpets and a ringing of bells. But the hosts of Mordor were seized with bewilderment . . . knowing that the tides of fate had turned against them and their doom was at handThere is not the least hint of irony in any of this. No doubt Orome is one of the wilder Valar, but his a Valar, something like an angel, and undoubtedly a force of, and for, good. Theoden is likened to him And the soldiers of Rohan manifest their legitimate joy and mirth by wielding their swords to inflict doom upon their foes.This is a morality of permissible violence when wielded in a just cause - defensive and retributive - against a deserving enemy who have, themselves, sought to use violence to inflict harm.It wouldnt surprise me if JRRT did not himself share the morality implicit in his work of fiction. It's a work of fiction, and he was a sophisticated literary critic. That said, if someone asked me to name important twentieth-century writers who were defenders of democracy and critics of tyranny, I wouldn't put JRRT at the top of my list. Graham Greene is another Catholic English writer who overlaps Tolkien in period (about 10 years younger). The moral vision of his work is very different.But if I wanted a RPG to explore the sorts of iddeas found in Greene's work, I woudn't even think of using the D&D alignment system. It would have absolutely nothing to offer.</blockquote>

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