“It’s rusty too,” intones the Dungeonmaster, “and pieces of it keep breaking off. Look, you’re not supposed to be farming. You’re supposed to go into the forest and find the dark elves. I don’t have anything else about the farmers. The elves are the adventure.” Reluctantly, I give up my agricultural rescue plan and we go into the forest to hack at elves.
I got a very similar response when my Lawful Neutral Cleric wanted to set up a formal inquisition to root out the evil cultists in the city rather than go to the big bad’s cave and whack them on the head. Also a barbarian of mine wanted to run a brothel after the party defeated the gang that controlled it before. It mysteriously burned down the following night.
In general some DMs have a hard time dealing with characters that want to weave baskets instead of going hack and slash.
My lawful neutral character attacked the rest of the party when they assaulted a group of innocent (until proven guilty) goblins in the first encounter.
Assuming: 80% of Evil creatures are guilty of a hanging offense according to an authority
Assuming: 5 randomly-selected goblins in the group
The probability that all members of the group deserved death according to authority should be (0.95*0.8)^5 = 0.254.
Of course, that last assumption is a bit problematic: they’re not randomly selected. Still, depending on the laws, they might still be legally entitled to a trial. Or perhaps the law doesn’t consider being a member of an Evil race reasonable suspicion of crime, and they wouldn’t even have been tried by Lawful Authorities.
It seems like a coherent position to me to assign negative utility to the lives of “evil” creatures in the first place, even if they haven’t committed something that would legally be a hanging offense.
You might say that you target evil creatures because they’re likely to commit offenses that are punishable under law by death, but then, you might say that certain crimes are punishable by death because they show that the perpetrators are Evil.
As a moral theory, it may not make a very good legal foundation in our world, but when we’re dealing with a world where you can actually cast Detect Evil, and look at people, or even magical objects, and tell if they’re Evil, things may be kind of different.
You might say that you target evil creatures because they’re likely to commit offenses that are punishable under law by death, but then, you might say that certain crimes are punishable by death because they show that the perpetrators are Evil.
In a world in which you can cast “Detect Evil”, but don’t know which of these two is true, the word “Evil” attached to your “Detect Evil” spell may not have the semantic weight you think it does.
All you know is that you have a particular sensory action that you can perform, which returns a quantitative result when applied to a given target. We have chosen to call this quantitative value “Evil”. To be clearer, let’s call it their EQ (for “Evil Quotient”).
You happen to know, experimentally, that beings with a high EQ tend to commit actions that decrease general utility in the population whose utility you care about. Now, you have an important question to ask yourself: is high EQ causative of that net decrease in general utility, or is it merely correlative?
You then have a further philosophical question: Should the utility of high-EQ individuals be weighed the same as the utility of other individuals when aggregating your global utility function? (This will depend on many things, one of which is the potential for “false positives”, but another of which is the base assumption of whose utilities are worth considering).
You happen to know, experimentally, that beings with a high EQ tend to commit actions that decrease general utility in the population whose utility you care about.
You know a lot more than that. You know that they go to different afterlives than Good or Neutral beings, that they can be affected by different spells and abilities, and that depending on their class their own abilities might be affected by their evilness.
A moral theory that supports the eradication of Evil beings need not be utilitarian. I don’t think a conventional paladin would function as a utilitarian, for example.
And these afterlives tend to be less pleasant, as I understand it. As an added wrinkle, there are also Evil energies and spells, for example the energy animating a non-evil undead, or certain spells cast by a non-evil cleric.
That’s not how alignment works in D&D, you’re either Evil or you’re not. If you are, then you will actively seek to perform Evil acts.
Even in core, there is some concept of quantitative evil. For starters, look up detect evil. Evil supernatural beings and evil clerics are notably more evil than the evil bartender. And you can expect the kind and amount of evil acts they perpetrate to be much worse. It’s noted prominently in some sourcebook (though I can’t remember if it was a core one) that normal evil people might opportunistically steal but probably won’t eat your babies, in contrast to (say) demons.
Also, depending on the edition you should expect to see a scalar alignment chart somewhere in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, commonly used for tracking alignment drift. A character can be obviously evil and in no danger of an alignment shift (say, 0 out of 100 good points in Neverwinter Nights terms) or right on the cusp of switching to neutrality (30 out of 100 good points).
Nevertheless, if you know that the target is Evil, then you know that they will actively try to perform Evil acts—which, if you’re Lawful Good, should be against the law. If your resident legal system is letting off Evil goblins, then it is broken, if not actively evil itself. Lawful characters are not obligated to follow corrupt legal systems—although their means of soling this problem should itself be lawful. In this case, however, I got the impression that the player had assumed “innocent until proven guilty” was itself the Lawful Good attitude to take, when in fact it is merely stupid (and, of course, he knew full damn well those goblins were guilty of something and would go on to commit more crimes.)
Nevertheless, if you know that the target is Evil, then you know that they will actively try to perform Evil acts—which, if you’re Lawful Good, should be against the law. If your resident legal system is letting off Evil goblins, then it is broken, if not actively evil itself.
Still not necessarily true. Take Jim the reforming criminal. Jim already served his time, so should not be arrested just for having committed evil acts. And since he still detects as evil, he can still feel the evil impulses tearing at his soul at every turn. But he fights them every day, and (I’ll stipulate) he manages to avoid doing anything evil for the next two weeks, after which ‘detect evil’ doesn’t work on him anymore.
So when the cleric casts detect evil on Jim and the rest of the party decides to vigilante-slaughter him for his loot, what should our Lawful friend do?
Resisting these “evil impulses” is itself a Good action, or it would not result in an alignment shift.
And, once again, in a world running on D&D, Jim should, in fact, be arrested—because otherwise he will commit Evil acts. If the authorities have discovered a way to persuade Evil characters to act Good—perhaps with threats of punishment or magic—then good for them, and I doubt a Good character would object, but that is not the case in the example given—these are Goblins, and without any reason to privileged the hypothesis that they have somehow been induced to act for the good of society, stabbing them is better than allowing them to continue harming others.
So when the cleric casts detect evil on Jim and the rest of the party decides to vigilante-slaughter him for his loot, what should our Lawful friend do?
The Lawful friend will attempt to follow the law—or, depending on the particulars, his code of honor / sacred traditions / whatever. If the Law says that criminals are innocent until proven guilty, then the Lawful guy would treat the criminal as such. He doesn’t need to know whether the criminal is reforming, or struggling with his inner demons (of the figurative kind), or whatever; all that matters is making sure the Law is followed.
Thus, if the Law says, “you can’t murder Evil people unless you have evidence of them committing actual crimes and/or atrocities”, then that’s that. Both our reforming criminal, and Stalin McHitlerguy, would be treated the same by a Lawful character who followed that Law.
They don’t ? I was under the impression that they did, to an extent; just like Lawful Evil characters have to obey at least the letter of the law. This is why their evil is all about convoluted contracts and complex machinations with plausible deniability—as opposed to, say, torching villagers while laughing maniacally.
Oh, they would prefer to reform the system from within proper channels, obviously, but they can consider a specific law non-binding based on their own code of honour or whatever. Lawful characters can free slaves because their human rights are being violated, for example.
Different DMs (and even different publications) might disagree with you. Moreso, if that is always true, then the addition of certain other sourcebooks and adventure modules produce an incoherent universe (regrettably I forget which ones) - which is part of my original point.
I was using the standard definition from Core. IIRC there are books specifically dedicated to alignment issues that contradict this, but those are optional and frankly have issues of their own. (The Book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exalted Deeds spring to mind.)
Ok then, let’s define this more rigorously, so we have something unambiguous to talk about.
If we’re going with the idea that D&D “Good” and “Evil” are objective measures that follow your definition, then does the following make sense as a rigorous definition of them:
A being’s ‘Alignment’ on the good-evil spectrum is a measure of how well its utility function is coupled to the utility functions of other beings in general.
A “Good” being is compassionate—that is, its utility function has a positive coupling constant (between 0.00 and 1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to maximize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Likewise, an “Evil” being is sadistic—that is, its utility function has a negative coupling constant (between −0.00 and −1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to minimize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Interestingly, once it becomes mathematically spelled out like that, the paladin’s dilemma is just math—“slay evil” isn’t a primary goal, it’s just the only way to resolve the feedback oscillation inherent in wanting to maximize everyone’s utility, including the utility of those whose utility is coupled to minimizing everyone else’s utility.
That would clear up a lot of philosophical issues with the alignment scale (at the cost of making Evil beings rare outside of “a wizard did it” and very hard to play), but it’s not especially consistent with the way D&D uses the words. D&D products tend to conflate Evil with selfishness; some (usually supernatural) Evil beings are described as taking the suffering of others as what we’d call a terminal value, but often they just have a weak coupling constant and happen to be pursuing zero- or negative-sum goals.
Then there are other complicating factors: a few zero-intelligence creatures (mostly undead) are described as Evil even though they don’t have goals, for example. It’s a mess, honestly; a hash of consequentialism and virtue ethics and deontology, and let’s not even talk about how messy it gets once you take the Law/Chaos axis into account.
a few zero-intelligence creatures (mostly undead) are described as Evil even though they don’t have goals, for example
(Complete rationalization mode: ENGAGED.) That’s just equivocation. Being evil (in ialdabaoth’s sense) in D&D attaches some negative energy to the soul (it’s detectable with a Detect Evil spell) which happens to be the same thing that animates undead. So it’s not so much that mindless undead are actually evil, so much as that tests and effects for evil also work on undead.
See, now we’re actually approaching something like a coherent system!
Okay, so this lends evidence to the idea that there’s essentially two different phenomena at work in the D&D world, BOTH of which have been labeled “evil” simply because the only detector that could be constructed, detected both of them.
Now, how could we prove this theory? What would be different if it were true or false?
Now, how could we prove this theory? What would be different if it were true or false?
The correct answer is obviously “Ask your GM.” That aside, maybe you could convince a good or neutral cleric to raise undead, then Detect Evil? (Disclaimer: I have only a basic understanding of D&D mechanics, and the alignment system never made sense to me either.)
You’d probably need a neutral cleric to do that, but they’d have to be careful, since some DMs might make premediated casting of a [evil] spell simply to gain knowledge as something that would push a neutral individual over to evil.
If said cleric casts that Evil spell, but does it unknowingly (e.g. mind control, or other more convoluted scenarios, perhaps involving magical sensory deprivation), are they still considered to have done an Evil act?
Yes, though it’s usually not much of an Evil act. More to the point, in most versions, clerics are prohibited from using opposed-alignment spells, which nicely insulates them from accidental alignment shifts due to spellcasting.
A good wizard, on the other hand, can actually cast protection from good (an evil spell) every day until he feels like committing horrible atrocities.
That sounds like the True Neutral alignment (Neutral on both axes). Druids are quite fond of it, and, in some sourcebooks, it’s compulsory for them. Depending on how loyal they are to the group, they could edge into Chaotic Neutral; they could also edge toward Lawful Neutral if they are more attached to the ideals of the group than the group itself.
Druids are loyal to trees and/or other Druids, but not to much of anyone else?
Is there much of what you might call ordinary nationalism or ordinary prejudice in D&D? I’m not asking about aspects of D&D where the rules map onto real world group loyalties, I’m talking about, for example, inhabitants in a region having a preference for other inhabitants of the region.
Druids are loyal to trees and/or other Druids, but not to much of anyone else?
They are also quite fond of squirrels. Can’t forget the squirrels. Heh. But speaking more accurately, Druids are dedicated to nature, and nature is quite Neutral. At the same time, most Druids do realize that sentient beings (such as Humans or Elves or whomever) are part of Nature. Thus, the Druids seek to uphold some sort of a balance between civilization and wilderness, as opposed to, say, flooding the entire world with squirrels.
Is there much of what you might call ordinary nationalism or ordinary prejudice in D&D ?
Is there ever ! Traditionally, Elves hate Dwarves with a passion, which is quite mutual. Underground races such as the Drow, Svirfneblin and Druegar hate surface-dwellers, as well as the regular Dwarves. Human kingdoms quite often all hate each other. Clerics of one god often hate those who follow some other god, especially if their god’s alignment is in opposition to their own.
That said, the specific hatreds depend greatly on the setting, unlike the rules about Druids, which are a lot more uniform. For example, in Iron Kingdoms, Humans are pretty much the dominant race, and their political situation is… quite complicated. In Eberron, on the other hand, there is a state of lukewarm war between a relatively progressive multiracial kingdom (Khorvaine) on the one hand, and a ruthless dictatorship of wannabe mind-controlling transhumanists (Riedra) on the other. The more traditional inhabitants of Khorvaine also struggle with a multitude of internal tensions.
Pejudices can also develope out of a particular party’s experiences. For example, I’ve seen a party adopt a “persecute all halflings that we encounter” policy after getting mugged by a gang of halflings. That same campaign featured the human nation going to war with elves, and an (admittedly evil) PC inciting mob violence against a community of elves living in a human city. This lead to “elven Ann Frank” jokes.
Good point. In addition, Rangers get a “Favored Enemy” class feature built-in, which means that they hate some specific species (which may include, say, Goblins or Elves) so much that they get combat bonuses against them.
Interesting to note though, if I’m not mistaken, that only Evil Rangers can pick their own race as a favored enemy, so there is something else going on there as well...
Depends on the setting. Most commonly that’s a trait of Evil groups and a few isolationist cultures (wouldn’t be cookie-cutter high fantasy without elves sneering down from their wooded fastnesses, after all), but not so much of people in general, or at least it’s not emphasized much.
“Good” implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.
Being good or evil can be a conscious choice. For most people, though, being good or evil is an attitude that one recognizes but does not choose. Being neutral on the good-evil axis usually represents a lack of commitment one way or the other, but for some it represents a positive commitment to a balanced view. While acknowledging that good and evil are objective states, not just opinions, these folk maintain that a balance between the two is the proper place for people, or at least for them.
Yup, seems to work. I wonder how this ties into the cosmology …
It depends on the interpretation, which differs from setting to setting (and from GM to GM, of course). In some of settings, the Law/Chaos axis determines your behavior as much, if not more, as the Good/Evil axis does. A Chaotic character is practically compelled to perform Good/Evil acts; a Lawful character, on the other hand, will follow the Law as much as he’s able, even when doing so would prevent him from achieving his short-term Good/Evil goals.
Furthermore, “Evil” is sometimes defined as something closer to “selfish”, whereas “Good” is something closer to “altruistic”. Under this model, an Evil character would seek to increase his own wealth and power, or possibly just sit in the tavern all day getting drunk and playing tricks on the other patrons—depending on what he’s into. A Good character, on the other hand, will seek to help the villagers to live better lives, according to his definition of “better”.
This makes “Chaotic Good” a truly terrifying combination (f.ex. see Planescape Torment), because a Chaotic Good character will seek to reshape the world in his own image regardless of whether anyone asked him to do it or not. If a few villages (or towns, or nations) need to be burned to the ground for the Greater Good, then so be it.
True. If the law took that into consideration, and precedent indicated that creatures that are most likely Evil are deserving of death unless evidence indicates that they are Neutral or Lawful or Good, then his actions would not have been justified. However, Larks indicated that that is not the case: goblins are considered innocent until proven guilty. Larks’ character thus, refusing to be an accessory to illegal vigilante justice, attacked their party in self-defense on the goblins’ behalf. In the long-term, successfully preventing the goblin’s deaths would cause more legal violations, yes, but legally, they’re not responsible for that. (I assumed the legal system is relatively similar to that of modern America, based on the “innocent until proven guilty” similarity and Conservation of Detail.)
Of course, if they assigned negative utility to all violations of law in proportion to severity and without respect for when they occur or who commits them, the best position would be as you described, and their actions were incorrect.
Goblins are “usually Neutral Evil”. What this means is up to the DM, but in my experience is generally taken to mean that, while they can of course be other alignments (perhaps if raised by humans or something) their “default” in this setting is Evil. In other words, killing them is OK as long as you don’t have reason to suspect they’re Good, but actual genocide is frowned upon. Remember, these are adventurers, killing monsters and taking their stuff is part of the job description.
D&D rules are mostly combat rules. If somebody says they want to play D&D, most people assume they want to play in such a way that the D&D rules are relevant. This isn’t a safe assumption, because the name “Dungeons and Dragons” is famous enough that some people will claim they want to play it without knowing what it involves. DMs should clarify to new players that D&D is heavily combat focused, and point out more suitable systems if the player isn’t interested in that.
I may be an outiler here, but while combat being a minor part of the overall campaign I want to play I’m incredibly annoyed if its broken or simplistic.
Roleplay never struck me as the kind of thing that needed rules as detailed as combat. Say negotiating with someone in game is already complex enough since you can do nearly anything you can in a real conversation including optimizing body language or having other people to suggest the same idea as you have.
Roleplaying is all about playing a character who is different from yourself. In real life, I can’t wield a two-handed battleaxe (or a shotgun, for that matter). Almost no one can. However, many people can do other things I can’t, such as seducing enemy spies, lying convincingly to a room full of people, or piecing together esoteric knowledge gleaned from ancient texts written in seven dead languages. Therefore, I cannot realistically roleplay a character who does these things.
This is where the rules come in. Instead of “optimizing body language”, which I can’t do in real life, I roll a d20 and add my Charisma modifier along with my Bluff rank. If the result is high enough, then everyone in the room is convinced that I am the Grand Vizier and they should do what I say. This includes the NPCs, who are controlled by the GM, as well as the PCs, who are not convinced in real life, but pretend to be for the purposes of the game.
This way, I can play the character I want to play, who is different than my real-world self—and I can do so fairly, because everyone follows the same rules.
Combat works the same way, except that it can be even more fun if done properly. Of course, if you aren’t a fan of turn-based strategy games such as X-Com or even chess, then you might want to stay away from detailed combat rules and stick to something more cinematic.
Of course, some combat (as well as social) systems are simply way too complicated (f.ex., Rifts and Earthdawn, IMO). I shouldn’t need to consult three different tables just to swing my sword or tell a convincing white lie. But that’s a problem with specific dice systems, not with dice systems as a general category.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I want to see a system that explicitly timeskips combat encounters. Like maybe do fights like Risk, with perhaps charts for who got injured and how badly. Ideally, fighting would be generally bad for all involved.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a timescaled combat system, where you spend as much time playing out combat vs simulated battle time as you would playing out “scenes” vs simulated scene time. Most battle systems work on some assumption that e.g. 1 turn = 3 seconds of “world time”. This system would have similar strategic conscious player-control over outcomes to that of a real fight: very little beyond shifts in intent and the rest just game-simulations of instinct, body movement, applications of martial training, etc.
Throw initial conditions (e.g. initial intent of first action, like “hold ground and overpower incoming enemies” vs “charge and slash at any opening in this enemy’s guard”), plug in training and reflexes and trained reactions for the combatants, compute results, wham, five or ten seconds of combat have elapsed and the computer tells you that you just broke your arm while killing two goblins (possibly generating an epic recounting of your spectacular exploits, à la Dwarf Fortress). Ideally a computer would be doing all the heavy lifting, of course, which implies making software on top of designing rules, which implies way more time and effort than I’ve ever been motivated to put into something like this.
I may be an outiler here, but while combat being a minor part of the overall campaign I want to play I’m incredibly annoyed if its broken or simplistic.
Roleplay never struck me as the kind of thing that needed rules as detailed as combat.
Thanks, this matches my impressions of D&D perfectly but I haven’t actually been able to articulate it before.
In general, a system needs rules for resolving disputes about what is going to happen, and that’s mostly combat. The roleplaying part doesn’t need a ‘system’ at all.
In general, a system needs rules for resolving disputes about what is going to happen, and that’s mostly combat. The roleplaying part doesn’t need a ‘system’ at all.
It bloody well does need a system! It’s just that often the “system” doesn’t take pages of rules, it may be “the Dungeon Master has the last say on everything”, or even not be an implicit assumption.
Some roleplaying systems are made to encourage the players to take a major hand in the world building, especially their character’s relationship to it. Not only “what town does my guy come from”, but also things like “is the mayor of that town a villain?”, “Why did the Gods abandon the world?”, etc. Those aspects are important, especially when you have creative players that want to do that kind of stuff—good rules around that can prevent it from getting out of hand. Check out this for more specific examples.
I may not be disagreeing with you! More like, bouncing off your comment to go on a rant!
But I am disagreeing with the notion that game rules should be essentially about determining the success of the players’ actions (combat, picking locks, climbing walls, seducing the guard); they can also be about collaborative world building and storytelling—not only “what happens?”, but also “what kind of world are we living in?”, “what kind of story is this?”, “What are this guy’s dreams and weaknesses?”.
Framing things as “dispute resolution” may carry the implication that the rules are mostly about disputes between characters (playing and non-playing) - for example, “My guy thinks the Sheriff should publicly resign now that his sins have been brought to light; he thinks he’s not taking any bullshit from nosy strangers”—wham, dispute! You’re going to need rules to handle intimidation, wit, maybe fistfights or gunfights, and maybe even escalation. But a dispute can also be “Bob wants the story to be about a band of outcasts going from town to town looking for thrill and adventure; Joe wants the story to be about the guilt and redemption of a pastor who made some mistakes”—often the “game rules” may not even frame that as a dispute and the resolution will be “The Dungeon master says fuck’em, today’s story is about killing dark elves in the forest and if you try to go muckin’ around the fields you’ll be fighting dark elves anyway!”.
(I checked out SpookyBeans, but didn’t see much in terms of rules, I guess you have to buy it :P)
Aha. SpookyBeans used to be a 1-page download. The dispute resolution mechanism is extremely simplistic and flexible, and is more about disputes between players rather than characters, like the kind you mentioned. Basically, anything can happen if anyone says it happens, and then the rules come into play when people disagree about what happens.
I agree that meta-level disputes about “what the story should be about” and such are outside the scope of the D&D rules. But I still haven’t seen anything that addresses those better than “have the players work that out somehow”.
It’s not really about combat, but rather about the GM’s narrative. In any game, the GM usually has some story designed, with pre-determined events, locations, characters, etc. When the players deviate too far from the plot, the GM is in trouble, because he’s got nothing prepared. He can improvise up to a point, but the overall gaming experience will suffer.
A good GM will gracefully handle whatever crazy thing the players want to do, and channel them back toward the prepared plot tree in a way that feels seamless. A bad GM (such as, sadly, myself) will flail around for a while, employing increasingly desperate measures to get the players back on track. A truly terrible GM will flat out tell his players, “no, you can’t do this, for no better reason other than that I told you so”.
Sometimes players like to feel they’ve stymied the DM, for instance by using a loophole to bypass a whole series of obstacles and jump straight to the win. As DM I would sometimes set up situations like that, hoping that they would think of the loophole, and then acting all chagrined when they did. :) But of course the win came with complications of its own, which led to the main plot I was actually trying to get to. (Or if they don’t win, I’d have another way to get them there.) Anyway, the point is that it can be fun for the players to feel like they have a big impact on the plot. And hey, sometimes they actually do—players going off on tangents has led to some really cool plots that I had not planned for. Like when my plan was for them to defeat some druglords, but the swordmage decided to get addicted to the drug instead.
When the players deviate too far from the plot, the GM is in trouble, because he’s got nothing prepared. He can improvise up to a point, but the overall gaming experience will suffer.
There’s a delicate tradeoff on the effect on the experience—on the one hand, the players will feel more involved in a story that goes the direction they want it to go, but on the other hand there will have been less preparation for the content they encounter—so the result can be an improvement in the gaming experience.
Which effect is stronger can depend of whether the rules covert he desired action with an interesting mechanic, whether the DM planned for diversions (through world building, lists of things that can be injected in to get things back on a track), and how good at improvisation the DM is.
I played an excellent game that was all about improvisation and going off tangents, but it was with a pretty good DM who could handle whatever we sent his way. I’m much worse at that (I’m a bad DM and haven’t DMed for a few years now).
Which effect is stronger can depend of whether the rules cover the desired action with an interesting mechanic, whether the DM planned for diversions (through world building, lists of things that can be injected in to get things back on a track), and how good at improvisation the DM is.
Agreed, though again, the rules are a secondary problem at best. Almost every game has catch-all rules that can be applied to any situation, even D&D. For example, if my players wanted to plow the field successfully, I’d have them roll “Knowledge: Nature” or, if they don’t have it, “Knowledge: Local”. If they just want to fix the plow, it’d be a “Craft” check… etc. The problem is not with the rules, but with the plot and the setting. As the GM, I probably have a detailed map of the Drow caves and an org chart of their social structure; but I know squat about growing wheat. I could find out on Wikipedia, of course, but taking the time to do so would break the flow of the game.
I got a very similar response when my Lawful Neutral Cleric wanted to set up a formal inquisition to root out the evil cultists in the city rather than go to the big bad’s cave and whack them on the head. Also a barbarian of mine wanted to run a brothel after the party defeated the gang that controlled it before. It mysteriously burned down the following night.
In general some DMs have a hard time dealing with characters that want to weave baskets instead of going hack and slash.
My lawful neutral character attacked the rest of the party when they assaulted a group of innocent (until proven guilty) goblins in the first encounter.
Did he win?
Aren’t goblins almost exclusively Evil?
Assuming: any given goblin is Evil with p=0.95
Assuming: 80% of Evil creatures are guilty of a hanging offense according to an authority
Assuming: 5 randomly-selected goblins in the group
The probability that all members of the group deserved death according to authority should be (0.95*0.8)^5 = 0.254.
Of course, that last assumption is a bit problematic: they’re not randomly selected. Still, depending on the laws, they might still be legally entitled to a trial. Or perhaps the law doesn’t consider being a member of an Evil race reasonable suspicion of crime, and they wouldn’t even have been tried by Lawful Authorities.
It seems like a coherent position to me to assign negative utility to the lives of “evil” creatures in the first place, even if they haven’t committed something that would legally be a hanging offense.
You might say that you target evil creatures because they’re likely to commit offenses that are punishable under law by death, but then, you might say that certain crimes are punishable by death because they show that the perpetrators are Evil.
As a moral theory, it may not make a very good legal foundation in our world, but when we’re dealing with a world where you can actually cast Detect Evil, and look at people, or even magical objects, and tell if they’re Evil, things may be kind of different.
In a world in which you can cast “Detect Evil”, but don’t know which of these two is true, the word “Evil” attached to your “Detect Evil” spell may not have the semantic weight you think it does.
All you know is that you have a particular sensory action that you can perform, which returns a quantitative result when applied to a given target. We have chosen to call this quantitative value “Evil”. To be clearer, let’s call it their EQ (for “Evil Quotient”).
You happen to know, experimentally, that beings with a high EQ tend to commit actions that decrease general utility in the population whose utility you care about. Now, you have an important question to ask yourself: is high EQ causative of that net decrease in general utility, or is it merely correlative?
You then have a further philosophical question: Should the utility of high-EQ individuals be weighed the same as the utility of other individuals when aggregating your global utility function? (This will depend on many things, one of which is the potential for “false positives”, but another of which is the base assumption of whose utilities are worth considering).
You know a lot more than that. You know that they go to different afterlives than Good or Neutral beings, that they can be affected by different spells and abilities, and that depending on their class their own abilities might be affected by their evilness.
A moral theory that supports the eradication of Evil beings need not be utilitarian. I don’t think a conventional paladin would function as a utilitarian, for example.
And these afterlives tend to be less pleasant, as I understand it. As an added wrinkle, there are also Evil energies and spells, for example the energy animating a non-evil undead, or certain spells cast by a non-evil cleric.
No. That’s not how alignment works in D&D, you’re either Evil or you’re not. If you are, then you will actively seek to perform Evil acts.
Even in core, there is some concept of quantitative evil. For starters, look up detect evil. Evil supernatural beings and evil clerics are notably more evil than the evil bartender. And you can expect the kind and amount of evil acts they perpetrate to be much worse. It’s noted prominently in some sourcebook (though I can’t remember if it was a core one) that normal evil people might opportunistically steal but probably won’t eat your babies, in contrast to (say) demons.
Also, depending on the edition you should expect to see a scalar alignment chart somewhere in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, commonly used for tracking alignment drift. A character can be obviously evil and in no danger of an alignment shift (say, 0 out of 100 good points in Neverwinter Nights terms) or right on the cusp of switching to neutrality (30 out of 100 good points).
Nevertheless, if you know that the target is Evil, then you know that they will actively try to perform Evil acts—which, if you’re Lawful Good, should be against the law. If your resident legal system is letting off Evil goblins, then it is broken, if not actively evil itself. Lawful characters are not obligated to follow corrupt legal systems—although their means of soling this problem should itself be lawful. In this case, however, I got the impression that the player had assumed “innocent until proven guilty” was itself the Lawful Good attitude to take, when in fact it is merely stupid (and, of course, he knew full damn well those goblins were guilty of something and would go on to commit more crimes.)
Still not necessarily true. Take Jim the reforming criminal. Jim already served his time, so should not be arrested just for having committed evil acts. And since he still detects as evil, he can still feel the evil impulses tearing at his soul at every turn. But he fights them every day, and (I’ll stipulate) he manages to avoid doing anything evil for the next two weeks, after which ‘detect evil’ doesn’t work on him anymore.
So when the cleric casts detect evil on Jim and the rest of the party decides to vigilante-slaughter him for his loot, what should our Lawful friend do?
Resisting these “evil impulses” is itself a Good action, or it would not result in an alignment shift.
And, once again, in a world running on D&D, Jim should, in fact, be arrested—because otherwise he will commit Evil acts. If the authorities have discovered a way to persuade Evil characters to act Good—perhaps with threats of punishment or magic—then good for them, and I doubt a Good character would object, but that is not the case in the example given—these are Goblins, and without any reason to privileged the hypothesis that they have somehow been induced to act for the good of society, stabbing them is better than allowing them to continue harming others.
The Lawful friend will attempt to follow the law—or, depending on the particulars, his code of honor / sacred traditions / whatever. If the Law says that criminals are innocent until proven guilty, then the Lawful guy would treat the criminal as such. He doesn’t need to know whether the criminal is reforming, or struggling with his inner demons (of the figurative kind), or whatever; all that matters is making sure the Law is followed.
Thus, if the Law says, “you can’t murder Evil people unless you have evidence of them committing actual crimes and/or atrocities”, then that’s that. Both our reforming criminal, and Stalin McHitlerguy, would be treated the same by a Lawful character who followed that Law.
Actually, Lawful Good characters don’t have to obey Evil laws.
EDIT:
Emphasis on the code of honour types.
They don’t ? I was under the impression that they did, to an extent; just like Lawful Evil characters have to obey at least the letter of the law. This is why their evil is all about convoluted contracts and complex machinations with plausible deniability—as opposed to, say, torching villagers while laughing maniacally.
Oh, they would prefer to reform the system from within proper channels, obviously, but they can consider a specific law non-binding based on their own code of honour or whatever. Lawful characters can free slaves because their human rights are being violated, for example.
Different DMs (and even different publications) might disagree with you. Moreso, if that is always true, then the addition of certain other sourcebooks and adventure modules produce an incoherent universe (regrettably I forget which ones) - which is part of my original point.
I was using the standard definition from Core. IIRC there are books specifically dedicated to alignment issues that contradict this, but those are optional and frankly have issues of their own. (The Book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exalted Deeds spring to mind.)
Ok then, let’s define this more rigorously, so we have something unambiguous to talk about.
If we’re going with the idea that D&D “Good” and “Evil” are objective measures that follow your definition, then does the following make sense as a rigorous definition of them:
A being’s ‘Alignment’ on the good-evil spectrum is a measure of how well its utility function is coupled to the utility functions of other beings in general.
A “Good” being is compassionate—that is, its utility function has a positive coupling constant (between 0.00 and 1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to maximize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Likewise, an “Evil” being is sadistic—that is, its utility function has a negative coupling constant (between −0.00 and −1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to minimize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Interestingly, once it becomes mathematically spelled out like that, the paladin’s dilemma is just math—“slay evil” isn’t a primary goal, it’s just the only way to resolve the feedback oscillation inherent in wanting to maximize everyone’s utility, including the utility of those whose utility is coupled to minimizing everyone else’s utility.
That would clear up a lot of philosophical issues with the alignment scale (at the cost of making Evil beings rare outside of “a wizard did it” and very hard to play), but it’s not especially consistent with the way D&D uses the words. D&D products tend to conflate Evil with selfishness; some (usually supernatural) Evil beings are described as taking the suffering of others as what we’d call a terminal value, but often they just have a weak coupling constant and happen to be pursuing zero- or negative-sum goals.
Then there are other complicating factors: a few zero-intelligence creatures (mostly undead) are described as Evil even though they don’t have goals, for example. It’s a mess, honestly; a hash of consequentialism and virtue ethics and deontology, and let’s not even talk about how messy it gets once you take the Law/Chaos axis into account.
(Horrible nerd mode: DISABLED.)
(Complete rationalization mode: ENGAGED.) That’s just equivocation. Being evil (in ialdabaoth’s sense) in D&D attaches some negative energy to the soul (it’s detectable with a Detect Evil spell) which happens to be the same thing that animates undead. So it’s not so much that mindless undead are actually evil, so much as that tests and effects for evil also work on undead.
See, now we’re actually approaching something like a coherent system!
Okay, so this lends evidence to the idea that there’s essentially two different phenomena at work in the D&D world, BOTH of which have been labeled “evil” simply because the only detector that could be constructed, detected both of them.
Now, how could we prove this theory? What would be different if it were true or false?
The correct answer is obviously “Ask your GM.” That aside, maybe you could convince a good or neutral cleric to raise undead, then Detect Evil? (Disclaimer: I have only a basic understanding of D&D mechanics, and the alignment system never made sense to me either.)
You’d probably need a neutral cleric to do that, but they’d have to be careful, since some DMs might make premediated casting of a [evil] spell simply to gain knowledge as something that would push a neutral individual over to evil.
… Spells are also categorically Good or Evil?
If said cleric casts that Evil spell, but does it unknowingly (e.g. mind control, or other more convoluted scenarios, perhaps involving magical sensory deprivation), are they still considered to have done an Evil act?
Yes, though it’s usually not much of an Evil act. More to the point, in most versions, clerics are prohibited from using opposed-alignment spells, which nicely insulates them from accidental alignment shifts due to spellcasting.
A good wizard, on the other hand, can actually cast protection from good (an evil spell) every day until he feels like committing horrible atrocities.
Yes, see for example in the 3.5 SRD how “Animate Dead” has the bracketed Evil after it here.
How does this system handle having strong loyalty to a group but being neutral to negative towards outsiders who are themselves not especially evil?
That sounds like the True Neutral alignment (Neutral on both axes). Druids are quite fond of it, and, in some sourcebooks, it’s compulsory for them. Depending on how loyal they are to the group, they could edge into Chaotic Neutral; they could also edge toward Lawful Neutral if they are more attached to the ideals of the group than the group itself.
Druids are loyal to trees and/or other Druids, but not to much of anyone else?
Is there much of what you might call ordinary nationalism or ordinary prejudice in D&D? I’m not asking about aspects of D&D where the rules map onto real world group loyalties, I’m talking about, for example, inhabitants in a region having a preference for other inhabitants of the region.
They are also quite fond of squirrels. Can’t forget the squirrels. Heh. But speaking more accurately, Druids are dedicated to nature, and nature is quite Neutral. At the same time, most Druids do realize that sentient beings (such as Humans or Elves or whomever) are part of Nature. Thus, the Druids seek to uphold some sort of a balance between civilization and wilderness, as opposed to, say, flooding the entire world with squirrels.
Is there ever ! Traditionally, Elves hate Dwarves with a passion, which is quite mutual. Underground races such as the Drow, Svirfneblin and Druegar hate surface-dwellers, as well as the regular Dwarves. Human kingdoms quite often all hate each other. Clerics of one god often hate those who follow some other god, especially if their god’s alignment is in opposition to their own.
That said, the specific hatreds depend greatly on the setting, unlike the rules about Druids, which are a lot more uniform. For example, in Iron Kingdoms, Humans are pretty much the dominant race, and their political situation is… quite complicated. In Eberron, on the other hand, there is a state of lukewarm war between a relatively progressive multiracial kingdom (Khorvaine) on the one hand, and a ruthless dictatorship of wannabe mind-controlling transhumanists (Riedra) on the other. The more traditional inhabitants of Khorvaine also struggle with a multitude of internal tensions.
Pejudices can also develope out of a particular party’s experiences. For example, I’ve seen a party adopt a “persecute all halflings that we encounter” policy after getting mugged by a gang of halflings. That same campaign featured the human nation going to war with elves, and an (admittedly evil) PC inciting mob violence against a community of elves living in a human city. This lead to “elven Ann Frank” jokes.
Good point. In addition, Rangers get a “Favored Enemy” class feature built-in, which means that they hate some specific species (which may include, say, Goblins or Elves) so much that they get combat bonuses against them.
Interesting to note though, if I’m not mistaken, that only Evil Rangers can pick their own race as a favored enemy, so there is something else going on there as well...
Depends on the setting. Most commonly that’s a trait of Evil groups and a few isolationist cultures (wouldn’t be cookie-cutter high fantasy without elves sneering down from their wooded fastnesses, after all), but not so much of people in general, or at least it’s not emphasized much.
That’s not bad, actually. Hmm...
Yup, seems to work. I wonder how this ties into the cosmology …
It depends on the interpretation, which differs from setting to setting (and from GM to GM, of course). In some of settings, the Law/Chaos axis determines your behavior as much, if not more, as the Good/Evil axis does. A Chaotic character is practically compelled to perform Good/Evil acts; a Lawful character, on the other hand, will follow the Law as much as he’s able, even when doing so would prevent him from achieving his short-term Good/Evil goals.
Furthermore, “Evil” is sometimes defined as something closer to “selfish”, whereas “Good” is something closer to “altruistic”. Under this model, an Evil character would seek to increase his own wealth and power, or possibly just sit in the tavern all day getting drunk and playing tricks on the other patrons—depending on what he’s into. A Good character, on the other hand, will seek to help the villagers to live better lives, according to his definition of “better”.
This makes “Chaotic Good” a truly terrifying combination (f.ex. see Planescape Torment), because a Chaotic Good character will seek to reshape the world in his own image regardless of whether anyone asked him to do it or not. If a few villages (or towns, or nations) need to be burned to the ground for the Greater Good, then so be it.
True. If the law took that into consideration, and precedent indicated that creatures that are most likely Evil are deserving of death unless evidence indicates that they are Neutral or Lawful or Good, then his actions would not have been justified. However, Larks indicated that that is not the case: goblins are considered innocent until proven guilty. Larks’ character thus, refusing to be an accessory to illegal vigilante justice, attacked their party in self-defense on the goblins’ behalf. In the long-term, successfully preventing the goblin’s deaths would cause more legal violations, yes, but legally, they’re not responsible for that. (I assumed the legal system is relatively similar to that of modern America, based on the “innocent until proven guilty” similarity and Conservation of Detail.)
Of course, if they assigned negative utility to all violations of law in proportion to severity and without respect for when they occur or who commits them, the best position would be as you described, and their actions were incorrect.
I got the impression that he assumed this was the “Lawful” attitude to take.
Goblins are “usually Neutral Evil”. What this means is up to the DM, but in my experience is generally taken to mean that, while they can of course be other alignments (perhaps if raised by humans or something) their “default” in this setting is Evil. In other words, killing them is OK as long as you don’t have reason to suspect they’re Good, but actual genocide is frowned upon. Remember, these are adventurers, killing monsters and taking their stuff is part of the job description.
A DM needs to improvise 95% of their session, I’ve found.
D&D rules are mostly combat rules. If somebody says they want to play D&D, most people assume they want to play in such a way that the D&D rules are relevant. This isn’t a safe assumption, because the name “Dungeons and Dragons” is famous enough that some people will claim they want to play it without knowing what it involves. DMs should clarify to new players that D&D is heavily combat focused, and point out more suitable systems if the player isn’t interested in that.
The DM could let the elves attack during plowing. Should be a strong incentive to get into a fight.
I may be an outiler here, but while combat being a minor part of the overall campaign I want to play I’m incredibly annoyed if its broken or simplistic.
Roleplay never struck me as the kind of thing that needed rules as detailed as combat. Say negotiating with someone in game is already complex enough since you can do nearly anything you can in a real conversation including optimizing body language or having other people to suggest the same idea as you have.
I disagree—up to a point.
Roleplaying is all about playing a character who is different from yourself. In real life, I can’t wield a two-handed battleaxe (or a shotgun, for that matter). Almost no one can. However, many people can do other things I can’t, such as seducing enemy spies, lying convincingly to a room full of people, or piecing together esoteric knowledge gleaned from ancient texts written in seven dead languages. Therefore, I cannot realistically roleplay a character who does these things.
This is where the rules come in. Instead of “optimizing body language”, which I can’t do in real life, I roll a d20 and add my Charisma modifier along with my Bluff rank. If the result is high enough, then everyone in the room is convinced that I am the Grand Vizier and they should do what I say. This includes the NPCs, who are controlled by the GM, as well as the PCs, who are not convinced in real life, but pretend to be for the purposes of the game.
This way, I can play the character I want to play, who is different than my real-world self—and I can do so fairly, because everyone follows the same rules.
Combat works the same way, except that it can be even more fun if done properly. Of course, if you aren’t a fan of turn-based strategy games such as X-Com or even chess, then you might want to stay away from detailed combat rules and stick to something more cinematic.
Of course, some combat (as well as social) systems are simply way too complicated (f.ex., Rifts and Earthdawn, IMO). I shouldn’t need to consult three different tables just to swing my sword or tell a convincing white lie. But that’s a problem with specific dice systems, not with dice systems as a general category.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I want to see a system that explicitly timeskips combat encounters. Like maybe do fights like Risk, with perhaps charts for who got injured and how badly. Ideally, fighting would be generally bad for all involved.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a timescaled combat system, where you spend as much time playing out combat vs simulated battle time as you would playing out “scenes” vs simulated scene time. Most battle systems work on some assumption that e.g. 1 turn = 3 seconds of “world time”. This system would have similar strategic conscious player-control over outcomes to that of a real fight: very little beyond shifts in intent and the rest just game-simulations of instinct, body movement, applications of martial training, etc.
Throw initial conditions (e.g. initial intent of first action, like “hold ground and overpower incoming enemies” vs “charge and slash at any opening in this enemy’s guard”), plug in training and reflexes and trained reactions for the combatants, compute results, wham, five or ten seconds of combat have elapsed and the computer tells you that you just broke your arm while killing two goblins (possibly generating an epic recounting of your spectacular exploits, à la Dwarf Fortress). Ideally a computer would be doing all the heavy lifting, of course, which implies making software on top of designing rules, which implies way more time and effort than I’ve ever been motivated to put into something like this.
Thanks, this matches my impressions of D&D perfectly but I haven’t actually been able to articulate it before.
In general, a system needs rules for resolving disputes about what is going to happen, and that’s mostly combat. The roleplaying part doesn’t need a ‘system’ at all.
It bloody well does need a system! It’s just that often the “system” doesn’t take pages of rules, it may be “the Dungeon Master has the last say on everything”, or even not be an implicit assumption.
Some roleplaying systems are made to encourage the players to take a major hand in the world building, especially their character’s relationship to it. Not only “what town does my guy come from”, but also things like “is the mayor of that town a villain?”, “Why did the Gods abandon the world?”, etc. Those aspects are important, especially when you have creative players that want to do that kind of stuff—good rules around that can prevent it from getting out of hand. Check out this for more specific examples.
It doesn’t sound like you’re actually disagreeing with me. I said:
The concept of the Dungeon Master having “last say” doesn’t even come into question until there’s a dispute.
See also SpookyBeans, which nicely refines all dispute resolution into a single mechanism.
I may not be disagreeing with you! More like, bouncing off your comment to go on a rant!
But I am disagreeing with the notion that game rules should be essentially about determining the success of the players’ actions (combat, picking locks, climbing walls, seducing the guard); they can also be about collaborative world building and storytelling—not only “what happens?”, but also “what kind of world are we living in?”, “what kind of story is this?”, “What are this guy’s dreams and weaknesses?”.
Framing things as “dispute resolution” may carry the implication that the rules are mostly about disputes between characters (playing and non-playing) - for example, “My guy thinks the Sheriff should publicly resign now that his sins have been brought to light; he thinks he’s not taking any bullshit from nosy strangers”—wham, dispute! You’re going to need rules to handle intimidation, wit, maybe fistfights or gunfights, and maybe even escalation. But a dispute can also be “Bob wants the story to be about a band of outcasts going from town to town looking for thrill and adventure; Joe wants the story to be about the guilt and redemption of a pastor who made some mistakes”—often the “game rules” may not even frame that as a dispute and the resolution will be “The Dungeon master says fuck’em, today’s story is about killing dark elves in the forest and if you try to go muckin’ around the fields you’ll be fighting dark elves anyway!”.
(I checked out SpookyBeans, but didn’t see much in terms of rules, I guess you have to buy it :P)
Aha. SpookyBeans used to be a 1-page download. The dispute resolution mechanism is extremely simplistic and flexible, and is more about disputes between players rather than characters, like the kind you mentioned. Basically, anything can happen if anyone says it happens, and then the rules come into play when people disagree about what happens.
I agree that meta-level disputes about “what the story should be about” and such are outside the scope of the D&D rules. But I still haven’t seen anything that addresses those better than “have the players work that out somehow”.
THANK you. Role-playing theory is awesome.
It’s not really about combat, but rather about the GM’s narrative. In any game, the GM usually has some story designed, with pre-determined events, locations, characters, etc. When the players deviate too far from the plot, the GM is in trouble, because he’s got nothing prepared. He can improvise up to a point, but the overall gaming experience will suffer.
A good GM will gracefully handle whatever crazy thing the players want to do, and channel them back toward the prepared plot tree in a way that feels seamless. A bad GM (such as, sadly, myself) will flail around for a while, employing increasingly desperate measures to get the players back on track. A truly terrible GM will flat out tell his players, “no, you can’t do this, for no better reason other than that I told you so”.
Sometimes players like to feel they’ve stymied the DM, for instance by using a loophole to bypass a whole series of obstacles and jump straight to the win. As DM I would sometimes set up situations like that, hoping that they would think of the loophole, and then acting all chagrined when they did. :) But of course the win came with complications of its own, which led to the main plot I was actually trying to get to. (Or if they don’t win, I’d have another way to get them there.) Anyway, the point is that it can be fun for the players to feel like they have a big impact on the plot. And hey, sometimes they actually do—players going off on tangents has led to some really cool plots that I had not planned for. Like when my plan was for them to defeat some druglords, but the swordmage decided to get addicted to the drug instead.
There’s a delicate tradeoff on the effect on the experience—on the one hand, the players will feel more involved in a story that goes the direction they want it to go, but on the other hand there will have been less preparation for the content they encounter—so the result can be an improvement in the gaming experience.
Which effect is stronger can depend of whether the rules covert he desired action with an interesting mechanic, whether the DM planned for diversions (through world building, lists of things that can be injected in to get things back on a track), and how good at improvisation the DM is.
I played an excellent game that was all about improvisation and going off tangents, but it was with a pretty good DM who could handle whatever we sent his way. I’m much worse at that (I’m a bad DM and haven’t DMed for a few years now).
Agreed, though again, the rules are a secondary problem at best. Almost every game has catch-all rules that can be applied to any situation, even D&D. For example, if my players wanted to plow the field successfully, I’d have them roll “Knowledge: Nature” or, if they don’t have it, “Knowledge: Local”. If they just want to fix the plow, it’d be a “Craft” check… etc. The problem is not with the rules, but with the plot and the setting. As the GM, I probably have a detailed map of the Drow caves and an org chart of their social structure; but I know squat about growing wheat. I could find out on Wikipedia, of course, but taking the time to do so would break the flow of the game.
Aren’t the rules of enough generality that they can be applied the difficulty in non-combat situations?
“Try to use the fence pikes as a plow.”
--> Checking Wisdom saving throw … fails, any other ideas?