Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

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beowuuf
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Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by beowuuf »

Given your current companion, and of course the previous tussel with the soldier Passin (that I really loved, we'll see if he comes bakc, and how all the actions of the party have altered his destiny there) I thought it better to introduce that wonderful subject that plagues any D&D game, or game where intellectual conceits have a mechanical application - good versus evil! :)

Usually I would just avoid the whole tussel with alignments, as it tends to be a headache, and let you just play your characters and have all the fun shades of grey in allies and villains.

However, it seemes to me important to keep this aspect alive for the DM game because, of course, the split of law and chaos was the central theme and twist of DM! And of course, given the fact that two fans of Dragonlance are playign the game, then I guess it won't come as such an awesome shift of perspective to know that the 'Balance in all we do' ethos can be tested just the same across the good - evil perspective. Well, anyone who loves the Star Trek TOS episode 'The Enemy Within' will also not blink either :)

And secondly, even before Aurek was created, I had decide paladins would be a part of the world. And hence of course, good and evil have to be tangible things for their mechanics to work!


Anyway, so of course using the D&D system and having the 'balance in all we do' ethos does dictate that, even in a complex universe, there have to be some tangible measures of good/evil. That puts this game firmly in the 'epic fantasy' sort of genre, where heroes are heroes and villains are villains, so grey areas need to be handled with care. It seems to me keeping in the ethos of the DM game, and a nice theme I like, that conscious choice plays an important part in good/evil in these circumstances. At some point, no matter the interenal conflicts, drives, etc, your actions matter. And of course, that fits in perfectly with roleplaying games in general - player choice must matter too!

The D&D system sort of indicates what 'evil' and 'good' are in the alignment descriptions here, through there is room to argue against those.

Personally, I think more of 'means' and 'ends', where means stretch from obeying laws of the land or external moralities and mores, and 'ends' stretch from selfless to selfish pursuits.

Anyway, in terms of mechanics, D&D seems pretty clear how good/evil is transposed - see the detect evil spell.

Under that mechanics, you can see that a basic 'evil' character actually barely registers. You need to be 10th level before you are anything other than a faint aura of evil! Only those actually aligned to evil religeons or the product of them - undead, magic items, outsiders (planes dwellers), clerics, paladins, etc actually ascend that scale swiftly.

As can be seen, it biases heavily towards external 'service' to 'evil'. To me, this is the idea of a personal choice to dedicate oneself to a selfish end, or an end on behalf of something harmful, knowing full well the suffering or harm it will cause. In D&D clerics are quite easy, for they do directly worship and draw power from dieties with very clear alignments.

I like how OB is playing the religeon, and it falls in line with how I would imagine the religeon to go, and how I suggest it goes.

It seems to me that the High Lords do not directy gift priest power. Infact, it would be an interesting debate to know if the High Lords even acknowledge the material plane. It seems to me (I had this discussion already with Ameena) that by the mechanics of DM, wizard and priest levels do not come from too different a source. Both invoke runes, and both draw their power from the same mana pool. To me, I think the difference comes from the 'mentality' needed to use the runes and mana to accomplish their effect. It seems to me that wizard spells are very 'selfish', requiring the caster to force the world to their will - especially then alot of the time seeking to harm others, or to alter themselves. And it seems to me that priest spells are very 'selfless', petitioning effects that can be used for others. It seems these are two interesting modes of though given the good/evil debate (we've already seen the effect of a good wizard using magic with the reactions to Falkor's actions, and on the flip side there will be some - hopefully - interesting questions about the nature of the niche 'evil' priests need to fill).

Anyway, it seems that out of that logical difference in the mindset required to cast spells of the wizard and priest variety, that it explains why people who get good at wizards spells are the 'lets poke holes in things and study' and the various religeons who put themselves in service to others, or at least to respecting an aspect of the external world, would be the ones that get good at priest spells.


Right, what was the point. Oh yeah, for the moment, I've played it (I hope) cannily with how the evil you have met are represented - that if you disagree with the D&D mechanical representation of 'evil', there's some easy retconning to explain why someone you might consider as more evil is only faintly evil.

Anyway, so that explains what's going on in my head, and also highlights the thought in D&D behind the mechanics. My questions are now this:

1) Is everyone happy enough to keep having 'shades of grey' in the roleplaying and characters, while having 'black and white' in the game mechanics? If not:
- would you prefer a more classic good = good, evil = evil feel to those you encounter?
- would you prefer a better shades of grey reflection of the mechanics?
- would you prefer the good/evil mechanics are not based around religeon, but some other aspect - perhaps a sliding scale on alignment as a whole, or
- would you prefer the whole good/evil ting to jsut go away? Detect evil = detect 'evil' intent to the party directly?

2) Those playing the religeous classes (OB and LB for now), do you want to actually write down a moral code for your order? I suggested it, especially for LB, because as seen a person's active choice makes a difference mechanically to the game, in regards to religeous decisions above all others. A paladin is assumed to be held as an unbending paragon of his religeon, and there is always the nebulous threat of losing some of his divine abilities if he strays. And of course, things like detect good/evil etc rely on these most of all. Since I am trying to provide interesting challenges and rewards for mechanics and roleplaying, this one seems especially contentious if my idea of whre the lines are drawn don't match the players.

3) Is everyone happy enough with where their characters are positioned on the scale given above? Do any of you feel you are playing someone shifted in alignment? Or more interestingly, does anyone forsee that their character was naturally going to develop along certain paths and so might slip alignment grades in the future?


Umm, I think that's it for now!
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by Ameena »

Urgh...I have some thoughts on this, I think, but I'm not sure quite what I want to say or how I want to say it. Umm...I can say something with regards to your mention of "Good" and "Evil" being based off religion though - not all the races have a religion, so the idea that their chosen god/High Lord determines whether they're a good guy or a bad guy doesn't always work. I'm sure plenty of creatures haven't even heard of most of these High Lord chaps. Well, in fact I know of one person who is definitely unfamiliar with most of it ;).
Anyway...yeah, the mechanics of "Good and "Evil" in DnD always seemed a bit sort of weird to me in that the concepts of both those things are only relative to each other and are entirely based on opinion - someone who goes round killing every child above the age of five in order to stop them possibly growing up into horrible killers would, in their own mind, be doing the world a service, but I'm pretty sure quite a few people would disagree with it ;). Okay so that was a bit of a silly example but I hope you can see what I mean. Some people might consider an individual to be evil just because they belong to a certain race or something - I imagine if Aurek (or Haynuus, come to think of it) met a goblin he'd probably give a fairly negative reaction because he probably considers goblins to be horrible, dirty little creatures who like nothing better than a good punch-up and to steal stuff off people, or whatever. But that particular goblin might have been brought up by some random village of sympathetic humans and have a vastly different outlook on life to his "fellow" goblins and prefer sitting down for a nice little chat to ripping out someone's eyeballs and gnawing them as a bit of a snack ;).
Tra la la, I think I'm waffling now...eek I have so many other posts to check and 10 minutes in which to do it. damn, this forum always takes up so much of my time ;).
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by beowuuf »

Well, the conceit is that someone who is dedicated to an evil religeon in fantasy is usually directly tied in harming many, many people systematically. Otherwise, a person who is evil is just small fish, unless they gain so much power or experience that they must have had a greater influence on the world and left many, many bodies or much unhappiness behind them.

For example, if a murafu is evil they probably get left alone, and are only mean to small animals. Really, althoug hthey are dyed in the wool evil, they have only harmed or hurt a small amount of people. If Ameena the murafu is evil, and reaches 10th level, then she has probably in her rise to experience affected many more people and so will be a little more evil.

Whereas is a little murafu went insane and decided to join an evil cult, they would instantly be all in with their sacrificing of people, probably burning other murafu out of their homes because that area is required by a demon, etc :)

So that's where the D&D scale is coming from, the idea is not the depth of the evil, but it appears either the bredth as it affects others.
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by ian_scho »

I reckon Haynuus has it easy with this one. His live-and-let-live attitude doesn't normally follow the use-and-abuse ethos of his orcish kin yet due to his... Simplistic view of the world he errs on letting others get on with their own lives, no matter how distasteful, as long is it doesn't destroy others around them.
Still a few thoughts:

1) We've already experienced the classic extremes of roleplay with Ameena horrified by the actions of Falkor et al. and made up part of her choice to leave the party! While Haynuus assumes fighting is a natural part of life, she's played out very well how averse she is to violence :)
It's interesting bringing in the DM story in here because lets face it - 'twas a fun and violent game where EVERY monster in the dungeon domain needed a jolly good smacking. Now that humanoids inhabit Mount Anais it throws in some interesting conundrums that make you have to question not only what side of the coin you prefer, but it's currency as well.
Personally, I'll let others do the smiting :)

3) There is no way that Haynuus could ever be a paladin of virtue as his is a path to one of mental madness!.. If he doesn't change his job soon.
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by oh_brother »

1. Yes, personally I am in favour of shades of grey but with some cold hard mechanics underlying the whole thing. That said it should not be too restrictive (and indeed it is not in this game). LB is unfortunately less free in this regard as a paladin, but every non-paladin can act out of alignment occasionally (though perhaps with some penalty if it is too flagrant or opportunistic?)

2. LB and I exchanged a few messages about this but never actually got down to doing it. As I said to LB there will have to be a wide interpretation of the rules since Aurek is lawful good (and a holy warrior) whereas Westian is neutral good (and a diplomat - I have never known a politician who could survive without the ability to bend the truth to the point of breaking and beyond). But then again don't all religions have a wide variety of interpretations?!

I was thinking about priest power and runes...it does seem that mana is used to cast them, so a big difference to clerics in D&D. Although if powers did not come directly from the High Lords we would have to explain away prayers, paladin abilities and other non-rune based magic. Perhaps each High Lord has a communal "well" of mana that can be tapped into by the faithful even without the HIgh Lords conscious knowledge?

3. I think Westian is still on a neutral good track. He is basically a good guy, but willing to bend the truth/rules if necessary. And he does accept that the ends justify the means (within reason). As for slipping in the future, Westian is fundamentally a politician. He will try to say the right things to the right people, and would be willing to tell outright lies if it led to good ends. So I cannot foresee him becoming lawful unless he has a big change. Also unless something terrible happens I cannot imagine him becoming non-good. So that only leaves chaotic good...not very likely for someone in a regimented order.
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by beowuuf »

Yeah Ian, the joys of an RP game are being able to have more complex intereactions with your surroundings. NPCs are part of that, but even typical monsters hopefully can have more complex motivations... well, sometimes. Sometimes it's just which species is their favourite :D


To the nature of paladin/cleric relations and the church, and exactly what lawful means, are an interesting question.

To me, I imagine that priests and shcolars of the church would hold the greatest power in the church, intepreting the will of he High Lords and leading. Next would be the clerics, trusted to be the mouth of the church. They would have a certain autonomy of thought, providing they still work in the framework of the church. And then there are the paladins, who are the militant arm and defenders of the church. They work in the rigid structure of the church.

To me, this sort of mirrors the queen/house of lords/house of commons set up in Britain. The house of commons is the lowest 'ranked' tier, yet has all the power. The house of lords has the abiltiy to delay anything the hosue of commons do, but is ultimately not able to ever fully block. And the queen at the top seems a figurehead, but technically she can veto anything.

To me the priests and scholars would be the 'commons' with less divine power and yet their knowledge and dedication allows them to lead. However, the clerics - with their divine gifts and readier access to the people - can slow the direction of the order and even resist it should the leadership of the order ever seem to falter. And finally, the paladins are of course the divine tools of the High Lords and the order, and part of thir make up is to remain true to the order. However, being so directly touched by the High Lords, they also would also keep the rest honest one would assume. So basically, to get back to the original comment, Westian can be as neutral as he likes, and flirt with the edges (which I love about his charatcer) but if he forced the paladin too far into his situational ethics territory.... well, now that would be interesting...

But for practical purposes, the dictates of the priests and the autonomous actions of the clerics would usually be seen as the mysterious workings of the High Lords as long as they never directly came into conflict with basic 'goodness' Eg kill that small child please mr aurek. :D

Interestingly, something I was listening to in an RPG podcast was in line with something I've always thought whn doing anything fantasy. The idea that just because in a high fantasty work there seems to be no mythology and superstition. Strange fantastic things actually happen, and the gods are actually alive. Makes it much harder to have unproveable believes. And the RPG system itself dictates that there is no superstition, since as a player you know how things mechanically work in the background.

I think keeping the High Lords out of the mechnics as an explanation (not denying that's what happens, but agreeing for now what happens) makes for that superstition and mythology to still exist. People use runes, have mana, and cast spells. How exactly - when analysed - does that work? That's the interesting question...

Again, it's like the six alcove story. In a fantasy game, it's easier for a player to assume this is exactly the history of wthe world, no matter how fantastical it seems. Whereas it's always more interesting to keep a mystery.

It's just a thought on how do deal with the lack of much source canon to go with - to treat alot of things as superstition and mythology, and keep it nebulous.

In the end, since it's the Dm world and we're all players, I will be swayed by the thoughts of everyone about how the world actually works. If the High Lords do directly hold sway still, the communal mana pool that priests access with their own mana (as if throwing their chips into the poker game, or something!) it sounds good to me.


Good to see everyone so far still feels aligned to their alignment choices, and has interesting intepretatiosn for them :D I like Westian = politician. I hadn't thought of him in those terms, but I can see it perfectly!
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by Ameena »

Regarding priests/clerics and their use of magic-via-a-High-Lord...Wuffy and I were talking about this a little while ago ourselves with regard to how the murafu use magic. Since they all have the same kind of mentality (every other murafu is both family and friend, everyone of every other species has the potential to be so, hurting people is generally a bad thing, killing is even worse, etc), those who use magic wouldn't ever touch any of the offensive spells. There aren't a huge number of murafy casters, but there are some (and they're not treated with any greater or lesser amount of respect or whatever than any other murafu - their magic is just seen as another skill they can use). But murafu aren't religious - they're barely aware of these "High Lord" people that members of other species seem so familiar with. So their power can't come from there, though it would be rather unlikely to find a murafu who didn't know, say, the heal spell.
So I came up with the thought that, with no belief that their powers come from a High Lord, and no flasks or any other kind of glassware at their disposal, how would a murafu cast, say, a healing potion? Well, I thought that maybe since in this game, the potion is formed by the air mixing with the magic somehow and condensing against the sides of the glass, maybe the murafu, unaware that this is how other people do it, would put their hands (forepaws, whatever) against/close to a wound and concentrate on making the magic work, and the potion would form in the air around it and immediately "connect" with the wound and cure it that way. So while it'd look like some kind of "Lay on Hands" trick (haha, a murafu Paladin, that's never gonna happen :P), it would in fact be a normal ol' Vi potion, just cast in a different way.
As for runes...well, I think me and Wuffy came up with the thought that maybe a travelling murafu or two, at some point, came across and managed to befriend/get on the good side of a caster from another species, who explained/showed them the runes. Or maybe a murafu just found a piece of paper lying around, a page torn from a book or maybe a carving on a wall or something, depicting the runes and picked 'em up from there. At some point anyway, a murafu in possession of magic (some murafu, like any other species I presume, are born with a certain amount of magic inside them, but wouldn't know how to ap it with no runes to give it form or whatever) would have come across a rune or two and found some weird kind of tingly feeling inside them as the magic "woke up" or whatever. Or having seen, say, the Vi rune somewhere, they might have then seen someone get hurt and, in wanting to help them, accidentally triggered a spell and healed them. I suppose this discovery of magic in these apparently random symbols would have then led to murafu eagerly scrawling any kind of symbol they could think of all over the place in the hopes that it might turn out to be magic as well. I wonder if that would have worked...
Anyway...I suppose technically this is all irrelevant since we only have one murafu in the story and she's not a caster ;). I suppose technically she could have mana, just she's never even considered the fact and has never tried tapping into it. I just thought maybe I should point out that some races could use priestly spells but with none of the deity-oriented beliefs that usually seem to go with them ;).
Oh, and what's wrong with Westian possibly being Chaotic Good? Just because his order orients toward the Lawful/Neutral Good doesn't mean that his personal opinion has to permanently match with that ;). He's an individual, is he not? So he doesn't have to agree with what his order does all the time, or what they think. So he can be of a slightly different alignment as circumstances veer him into it, like, you know, being stuck in some scary dungeon with nasty monsters and blokes in black, skull-covered armour, forced to rely on his wits and bunch of people he barely knows and with no assistance or any kind of input from the people he's supposed to be working for ;).
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by beowuuf »

Remember games mechanics wise I did say 'laying on hands' as a rain summoning thing was a one step removed from the established canon and a little game breaking as something anyone could do.

There are canon means of doing similar stuff, and of course the conceit is that somehow a paladin as the closest and most subservient to his faith has certain divine attributes.

Chaotic is quite far off the track from neutral in a lawful order - after all, chaotics are much, much less likely to be banding to an establish external ethos to start with! Alignment is a backbone of your character and shifting it, just like chafting characteristics, should be a telegraphed wellplayed trend - there is subtle wiggle room obviously, but it's a way to ensure you stay true to a character concept. That's the difference between saying Ameena the character is against violence but will attack someone who attacks her firends if all else fails, and she's against violence except for that times she gets bored and tortures then kills the innocent. :D

For example, I imagine Haynuus might have been more chaotic neutral, and what we're coming in on is a culmination of his early life that's lead him to become chaotic good withthis party - a significant event in his life. Whether it sticks will be interesting to see :)
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by oh_brother »

Yes, Westian could go to chaotic good I suppose. We are all individuals, so he could stray from the orders teaching. But that would be a big change as beo says, if his opinions changed that much he would have to re-think his whole membership of the order. Maybe become a hermit monk or something. So possible, but it would take a big shock to cause that change (as you say being chased by scary men with swords might ultimately be enough for that! :) )

As for the High Lords, I like the idea of them being very removed from the world, therefore allowing a wide variety of beliefs (including atheism, which is not a believable option in a regular fantasy world). The whole "mana pool" thing was just a thought for how to explain the existence of non-rune based magic...I am open to any other suggestions!
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by beowuuf »

Actually, funnily enough thinking on it, and not to spoil something I was going to float in the main game later, but I guess I was thinking of some form of 'communal' pool in the form of drawing power from the world.

My idea in the DM story was the idea that normal magic was where you put forth energy - mana - and through the mechanics of the runes the world will shape your energy to those concepts. The reverse would be drawing energy from the world, and through the mechanics of runes shaping this energy to your imagination - High Lord magic.

So for example if you drop the power runes, and just try to invoke 'YA', you would actually pull mana from the world (limited to your own abilities to channel mana though) and could therefore form anything to do with earth. So a stone, a wall, encasing something in stone, etc. Hence Chaos can alter a dungeon. However, the trick there would be that a mortal mind is, of course, very fleeting, and a mortal has much less capacity to channel mana. So a low level spellcaster would take a long time to channel sufficient mana to create a rock, and of course things could go badly wrong if he were disracted, or could not hold the though. Now imagine how much more fun that would be invoking 'FUL' :D

Anyway, to me it seemed a fun way to reason a) how Chaos can create and summon things when the party cannot do anything more than a few spells (answer - they cannot drop runes and only cast three or two or one out of the sequence of four), b) also ave the answer of how the Grey Lord created the cataclysm-style thing if he had the bloody correct formula in his lab - answer, the ZOKATHRA spell is exactly what he would have cast - drawing energy from the world, and shaping the energy to his expectation of an unstable plasma - hence BOOM! Whereas the part cast from their own energy, and the world naturally inteprets the runes to a stable plasma.

Umm, yeah, I've realised that flirts with the 'communal mana pool' idea, exacept in this case the mana pool comes form the natural world :D

It also gives a possible explaination to the 0-level spells I've let you spellcasters have. It's like the ultimate in High Lord magic - no runes at all - and yet without at least utilising one rune, the effects are very benign and minimal. And yet still have the effect of 'anything the caster can imagine'.

Which, to not go off topic...would be.... chaotic neutral?
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by Ameena »

Maybe that's what murafu magic is, then - 0-level spells which use no runes but just the murafu's intention/will and internal mana store. I'm still not sure how a murafu would conjure up a potion if they don't use flasks and the lay-on-hands-style thing is a bit too far out to be allowed, but meh - I don't imagine it's something that'll be coming up in-game anyway ;).
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by beowuuf »

If you check out the canon sources, you might spot another way...

Murafu are only ickle, so I guess a 1hp restoration from a 0-level effect would be a decent heal. Especially if many murafu did it at once.
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Re: Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil

Post by Ameena »

A tribe (or whatever word is suitable) of murafu would probably be unlikely to have more than one caster present at a time - like I've mentioned, they're not particularly common. There are a lot of murafu in the world, but a lot of groups of them living all over the place as well, so there will be plenty that don't have magic-users living amongst them. But yeah, one little heal would certainly help - I imagine it could definitely prevent a life-threatening wound from being so, and then other murafu could move in with their standard healy-stuff (herbs and whatever) and fix the rest :).
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