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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2054113" data-attributes="member: 3146">I can't say your position strikes me as any less subjective. However, let's see if we can salvage something from the impasse here:1. You're confusing a standard for evaluating acts with a standard for evaluating people. Starting from the assumption that lying is an evil act, it does not necessarily follow that anyone who ever tells a lie is an evil person in non-theological terminology. So, it's quite possible for D&D to simultaneously have a system that makes both vassalage and prostitution evil all the time and yet to simultaneously allow us to have good people--even good prostitutes--living within the system.The situation is somewhat different for paladins since paladins have to keep track, not only of their virtue-standing (personal alignment), but also have to avoid specifically evil acts. That's the crux of this discussion. Sir Cedric could conceivably be Lawful Good (though he doesn't sound like it in the initial story and the other parts of the story are simply "rude paladin acts like a badass"). Lawful good characters can commit evil acts from time to time and the effect of a particular act on the overall evaluation of their character is not always clear. Where I part company with Shilsen is in whether or not Sir Cedric can be a paladin.2. I don't see anything inherently evil about a hierarchical social system. It would be uncomfortable for most north americans, but as long as the natural rights of people are respected, I don't see it as necessarily better or worse than any other system. Systems are evaluated on the protection of natural rights and their effect on the virtue of their citizens, rather than on how closely they correspond to modern egalitarianism. Egalitarian democracy is a tool for achieving that; not a fundamental plank of my moral system.Consent is a somewhat fuzzy concept itself it you get right down to it (as is demonstrated by the various sex codes and rules at universities which sometimes seem to suggest that consent can be withdrawn after the fact, the notion of tacit consent, the notions of an age of consent (which seems to imply that insent must be informed and competent and that, at certain times, some people are unable to meaningfully consent to acts or obligations whether sex or credit cards). More to the point, neither consent nor enfranchisement are the lodestones of my ethical system. On this point, it is sufficient to say that prostitution is wrong because it is contrary to the inherently intimate and non-commercial nature of sex.That said, I would argue that prostitution is inherently--or at least inescapably--unequal. So, if you choose to make consent and equality the only guiding lights of your moral system, it's still inconsistent to support prostitution.Hmm. I don't think I necessarily said the values were modern unless simply being held by a contemporary individual makes them so. However, for a short list, I think:truth, [retributive] justice, piety (sacred and familial), and sexual morality make the cut. Much as I like them, egalitarianism, free market capitalism, and democracy do not.I know this isn't directed towards me, but it seems a particularly weak argument. It's very difficult to point out the single specific cause of most societal collapses. Losing a war is far more often how that happens than why it happened. There are, however, a good number of societies which were destroyed or badly damaged after becoming lazy, decadent, and hedonistic. Greece was conquered by Philip of Macedon and Alexander because the Greeks lacked the will to heed the warnings of precedent men. Similarly decadence was the undoing of the Roman and Ottoman empires. If one were to analyze the moral decay, prostitution would almost certainly play a part of it. (Plautus, at least, provides plenty of evidence of that for Rome).It's no more declaring an absolute transcultural truth by fiat than saying that all inhibitions against prostitution are strictly cultural and have no truth value. The absence of transcultural moral significance is just as significant a declaration as its presence.As for sacred prostitution, you're conflating several distinct things:1. The letter of the D&D rules specifies that good and evil are transcultural. They do not, however, specify a very exhaustive content. So, while the letter of the D&D rules may not make prostitution evil, if prostitution is evil (which the D&D rules do not specify), they specify that it is transculturally evil and would influence participants alignments towards evil.2. You're once again conflating the use of alignment as an evaluative tool for individuals or societies with its use as an evaluative tool for acts or practices. It's quite possible (indeed, it's even likely) that a neutral society (or even a good one) would have a number of evil cultural practices. The overall judgement of the culture is separate from the evaluation of each of its practices just like the evaluation of Hitler [evil, lest anyone be confused] is separate from the evaluation of his vegetarianism and anti-tobacco stance.3. You seem to be under the impression that "sacred" prostitution is generally different from the normal kind. My understanding of the subject is that temple prostitutes were not necessarily free or respected. In fact, my impression of a lot of it is that the temples and shrines were just a religious veneer on top of the practice of prostitution--much like in Paradigm Concepts' Arcanis setting, most prostitutes have a shrine to Larissa in their place of business and call it "receiving Larissa's blessings."I think you're mistaken to think that just because D&D can't model them as GOOD societies, it can't model them. For me, a part of the interest in playing in such a society would be to explore the difference between their cultural conception of what it means to be a good Roman or a good Mongol and what it actually means to be a good person. That need not be done in a didactic or even obvious way--it's fine to play a character who embodies the Roman ideals but has LN or LE written on his character sheet instead of LG. Similarly, a viking game is easily supported by the D&D rules, but if I were playing Grettir the Strong or Skarphedin, I wouldn't have a good alignment on my character sheet.The idea that D&D good and evil are meant to model the worldview of the cultures one encounters in game is an absurd one anyway that should be shattered as soon as one realizes that the goblin cleric with the Evil domain and Unholy Blight actually embodies the ideals of goblin society. If one asked the goblin who he was smiting with the spell, he certainly wouldn't say "good people." He might say "adherents of the slave/human morality," "enemies," or "the [morally] weak." That it actually harms good characters and neutral characters is the transcultural effect that produces the goblin's cultural view. Similarly,  Hextorites would not refer to themselves as evil, but would have a different word for the epitome of their ideals. The game system evaluates the goal as evil. The characters do not and should not.If you want to slap a [Good] alignment on them, you may be more alone than you think. I rather like the Arcanis setting which features nearly all of the things you list, but it doesn't generally insist that the slave traders are good aligned. In fact, I think the setting is at its most interesting where the various cultural practices and effects make it hard for a character to know what the right thing to do is and/or supports characters who don't care what the right thing to do is as much as they care what the Elori or Coryani thing to do is--or what the profitable thing to do is.Myself, I think it took the easy way out by refusing to give aggregate alignments rather than labelling the whole world as lawful evil to true neutral (with the possible exceptions of Solanos Mor and Tir Betoq). The paradigm people evidently think that such aggregate labelling wouldn't be helpful and aren't happy with alignment in general. But that's beside the point. And how would that would be different from reality?Seriously though, I'm not sure why one needs to have good Roman emperors in order to be able to faithfully model Rome or good Khans to model the mongols. If we say that the great emperor is Lawful Neutral, how does that make him any less (or more) the embodiment of Roman ideals?No more than having no conditions for prostitution to be non-evil makes a good prostitute impossible. (And I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as a good aligned prostitute or John; I'm just arguing that prostitution is evil and therefore forbidden to paladins).Returning yet again to the distinction between the evaluation of individuals or societies and acts or social practices, it's quite possible to have a good character who commits some evil acts--just not a paladin who does so.No they're not. They're proper Thayvians. It's just something that the players acknowledge to be an evil campaign. You seem to write as if all characters had to be good aligned or believe in the ideals of good. For all that I don't allow evil charactes in my campaigns, and generally don't find evil campaigns attractive, an evil campaign where the characters didn't pursue "evil," but rather pursue their own goals in a manner consistent with their [evil] culture could be interesting. And I certainly don't generally require that characters be dedicated to good as an abstract concept or specific moral order. (One of the interesting facets in my most recent campaign is how some characters whose goals are not primarily moral have been interacting with a moral universe).Sir Cedric's judgement seems a lot more likely to be impaired when the prospect of sexual pleasure is involved than otherwise--especially given his attitude that the world owes pleasure to him in return for his great services. (Also, at least in the story, there doesn't seem to be any great amount of discernment required for him to know who to kill--the bad guys he does kill might as well have t-shirts that say "Team Bad Guy.")I don't think we can boil the paladin down to simply needing to be an admirable individual all things considered. That's a lawful good character. A paladin is held to a much higher standard. He cannot commit any evil acts. That's not the same thing as saying his every deed must be admirable, but even if we adopt a culturally relative view of evil acts, the paladin cannot do anything that would be shameful.Now, I don't think that beats all role-playing out of the class. Even if a paladin had to be perfect, actually trying to be morally perfect in a D&D world would be a role-playing challenge that, quite frankly, I don't think most gamers are up to. However, there's plenty of ground for conflict, decisions, and individual personality (ascetic or boisterous, grim or vivacious) in the class.Much easier said than done since its other peoples observation and judgement that are in question as much as Cedric's. Perhaps more to the point, not something that Cedric has given the remotest shred of an indication that he does. In fact, his outburst to Sir Magnus, has quite the opposite effect as it would seem to justify patronage of any house of prostitution. To go one step further, Sir Cedric seems almost explicit in his denial of any obligation to consider the effect of his example when "off duty."It usually isn't, but it could easily be necessary because the plot mcguffin necessary to save the world (or whatever needs saving) is on the island. Maybe it's the lich's phylactery. Maybe it's the legendary sword of kingship that will reveal the true king and prevent the war. Whatever it is though, if the paladin wants to get to the island, odds are good that he wants to do something there that can't be accomplished somewhere else.I'm not convinced that vassalage is necessarily a problem, but it still misses the point. Food is essential to survival. Sex--even sex with prostitutes isn't.And the analogy has a further flaw: if there is something inherently wrong with prostitution, the wrongness would be directly involved in soliciting the prostitute but only indirectly involved in eating serf-grown grain.Still, the idea of a paladin/ranger who hunts in the forests and gathers his own food so that he can eat without living on the backs of the oppressed peasants of his land seems interesting--something to do with the new Dedicated Tracker feat no doubt.</blockquote>

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