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Worlds of Design: Tabletop RPGs Are the Most Naturally Co-operative Games
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7760787" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I'm not making any suppositions about how "it has always been". I'm happy to condemn slavery as an evil thing, although I'm aware that there have been slave societies in various places and times in human history.</p><p></p><p>For the claim that the laws of war aren't based on any moral standards, I'll only mention that there's a pretty signficant literature that argues to the contrary. Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars is the starting point for much of it. A recent representative publication is The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: You mentioned alignment somewhere in there, I think. Gygax's account of alignment in his PHB and DMG has its flaws, but <em>Good</em> is defined as straddling most of the mainstream moral views: human rights, and (at least for LG) welfare maximisation. He also includes truth and beauty among the values that <em>good</em> people uphold.</p><p></p><p>That's all pretty uncontroversial stuff except for some fairly hardcore consequentialists and some fairly subtle post-Kantians whose views - however interesting - I think have little relevance to making moral sense of the fantasy worlds of D&D. And perfidy, prisoner-killing, enslavement, and the like are all going to contradict these commitments.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7760787, member: 42582"] I'm not making any suppositions about how "it has always been". I'm happy to condemn slavery as an evil thing, although I'm aware that there have been slave societies in various places and times in human history. For the claim that the laws of war aren't based on any moral standards, I'll only mention that there's a pretty signficant literature that argues to the contrary. Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars is the starting point for much of it. A recent representative publication is The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War. EDIT: You mentioned alignment somewhere in there, I think. Gygax's account of alignment in his PHB and DMG has its flaws, but [I]Good[/I] is defined as straddling most of the mainstream moral views: human rights, and (at least for LG) welfare maximisation. He also includes truth and beauty among the values that [I]good[/I] people uphold. That's all pretty uncontroversial stuff except for some fairly hardcore consequentialists and some fairly subtle post-Kantians whose views - however interesting - I think have little relevance to making moral sense of the fantasy worlds of D&D. And perfidy, prisoner-killing, enslavement, and the like are all going to contradict these commitments. [/QUOTE]
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