Oh noes, not that debate - good vs evil
Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:21 pm
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!
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!