Thoughts on removing morality from my campaigns

[HuManBing]

I've completely moved away from the implementation of "Good vs. Evil" in my campaigns, because moralistic debates are highly subjective, and players and GMs can get into very complex and emotional disputes over whether something is evil or not. (One of the longest threads on this forum, for example, was whether it's evil to kill juvenile werewolves.) Early in my 3.5 experience, when I'd just returned to D&D, I tried working out a system without a Good/Evil alignment - but it was too difficult, and would have required significant retooling of class abilities, spells, and magic items.

Instead of morality, I try to give my PCs rationales for opposing the main villains. They can oppose Azalin because he's a horror from beyond the grave. They can oppose Azalin because he's unfit to rule and ready to abandon his entire country for a shot at escaping. They can oppose Azalin because they have personal vendettas or friends/relatives whom he sent to the gulags. But there has to be a specific reason or philosophy behind it, and hiding behind "oh, he's just evil" is discouraged. When it comes down to it, in my experience calling somebody "evil" is basically a moralistic shorthand for saying "that person does stuff of which I personally disapprove strongly", without any further attempt at elaboration. Give them rationales for opposing them, and then let the PCs come up with their own responses as to how far they'd go for revenge or opposition.

This also allows for a PC to change their rationale in light of later discoveries. Say they're hunting a bandit who's wanted by the King of Darkon. Their rationale is he must pay for his crimes and they are upholding the law. At this point, from their subjective viewpoint, Azalin is "good" and the bandit is "evil". But once they catch up with him, he reveals that the King of Darkon is a monstrosity from beyond the grave and he's trying to help them overthrow Azalin. Now what?

If the PCs were motivated all along by a reason or a rationale, the player can then reassess or abandon the rationale in light of after-arising evidence. But if you threw the simplistic label of "evil" on the bandit to begin with, then you have to wrestle with that even as the PCs ponder their next action. Does the context suddenly make the bandit "not evil"? The only thing that has changed is the PCs' subjective understanding of the situation - and should that result in a bandit being relabeled as "good" just because the PCs got clued in as to his motives? By avoiding the good/evil label and focusing instead on motivations and rationales, the game allows for a much greater degree of roleplaying and analysis.

Nor is this an alien concept to the Ravenloft designers, who seem to have wanted to muddy the moral waters a bit, by installing a special limitation against Good-Evil detection spells from working. They may have done this just to stop the PCs from using a convenient shortcut and to rely more on roleplaying... or they may have wanted to allow GMs more latitude in redefining what "good" or "evil" mean. Or in my case, to reject those labels altogether.

This can get especially interesting with darklords, who are already defined from 2nd edition RL as beings with some spark of potential redemption in them.

My portrayal of Vlad Drakov and Azalin as competing opposites also provides PCs with an ideological conflict - rather like Stalin and Hitler from WWII. Both leaders have their obvious flaws and drawbacks. But both leaders serve a very real purpose for their nations in their competition (and to some degree, both leaders inadvertently helped to justify the other's heavy-handed rule to their own people). Not to say that either one is "more good" or "more evil" than the other - terms which I consider to be highly subjective and increasingly meaningless when used to apply RPG rules - but to say that they have distinct differences and it's up to the PCs which one they find less repulsive.

Drakov is hands-on, Azalin is aloof. Drakov personally intervenes in public affairs, Azalin acts through his barons and Kargat. Drakov favors public shows of punishment and force, Azalin's apparatus merely "disappears" troublesome people. Drakov prepares for war and agitates to overthrow his enemies, Azalin works behind the scenes and plays for the extremely long game. Drakov is human and passionate and emotional and depraved - Azalin is inhuman and resolute and neverending and utterly implacable.

Incorporate these elements, and then you give the players a fascinating and thought-provoking choice. It makes for a much richer ethical context than slapping the "evil" label on something and calling it sufficient grounds for a +5 holy smite every other round.

Just my two cents.

[Nathan of the FoS]

I dunno, this seems to me to be more like adding morality to your campaign, and removing "alignment". In general, I am in favor of reducing or eliminating the simplistic use of alignment in Ravenloft--not sure who said it first, but my favorite summation is "In Ravenloft the NPCs (and PCs) don't have alignments, they have personalities".

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

calling somebody "evil" is basically a moralistic shorthand for saying "that person does stuff of which I personally disapprove strongly",

I would replace "I personally" with "my society" but otherwise, that sums up moral relativism pretty well. That doesn't mean there isn't evil, just that the boundaries are blurry, IMHO, though.

Nor is this an alien concept to the Ravenloft designers, who seem to have wanted to muddy the moral waters a bit, by installing a special limitation against Good-Evil detection spells from working. They may have done this just to stop the PCs from using a convenient shortcut and to rely more on roleplaying... or they may have wanted to allow GMs more latitude in redefining what "good" or "evil" mean. Or in my case, to reject those labels altogether.

Not being able to detect good and evil is not the same as good and evil not existing. It just means that PCs need to evaluate the situation before condemning someone as evil, and not just wave their evil detector around until it beeps.

As usual, YMMV, and "Whatever works for you" apply. But I would argue that Good vs Evil is a central struggle of Ravenloft's gothic roots. (Of course you are free to reject gothicism and still play Ravenloft, yes we've discussed that all before.) The very nature of darklords suggests that there is some sort of something that the Dark Powers select for. You can call it "evil" or you can call it "Quality X" or "je ne sais quoi," but there's something there, and it's not even just the same as (D&D alignment==evil), but that is certainly a part of it. Whether evil and good are neat little boxes or some sort of continuum, that's up for debate. And whether one agrees with the Dark Powers or not (see also: what's wrong with casting death ward?) is up for debate as well. But without evil existing at all, what's the point of the place?

[HuManBing]

Thanks for the input - good views all round!

But without evil existing at all, what's the point of the place?

If you go with the idea of Ravenloft exceptionalism and the concept of a "penitentiary for evil souls" as being essential to differentiate Ravenloft from any other campaign setting, then that definitely works. In my opinion, it leads to the same simplistic moral view as drawing a line under somebody you don't like and calling them "evil" and then saying they must be opposed at all costs - because you've just called them evil. The question of what actually defines evil is very hard to answer, and it tends to eventually boil down to what somebody personally dislikes. Other threads where the nature of evil has been discussed have usually devolved into minute discussions of definitions... which to me is a sign of how overgeneralized the term is.

(And concerning your earlier point about society's disapproval - my own understanding is that a society's view of conduct would more closely align to ethics, whereas the individual's view of conduct is what we mean by morality. So, a public defender may feel ethically fine with defending a known murderer in court, but he may certainly have personal moral objections to doing so. I don't know if my understanding of the terms is correct, though my views on this are already very close to your own in any case.)

You can have a clear, simple view of the world and of Ravenloft. Good is good and evil is evil, and evil must be stopped. However, this tends to lead to caricatures and oversimplifications, like Drakov being a grotesque ogre of a brute instead of a potentially inspiring leader (lately gone sour). If you're comfortable with portrayals of Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong as incompetent, brutal, and utterly without appeal or redemption, then that probably makes for a very easy history lesson. But if you're willing to dig deeper and recognize that they did in fact have a popular power base who thought highly of their merits, and their philosophies did actually seem like good ideas at the time, then you have a much fuller view of a person - even if, in your campaign (or in your history books, or in your nation's ideology) they were villains who had to be stopped at all costs.

Edit: breaking up the post so it's less of a huge wall of text!

[HuManBing]

In general, I am in favor of reducing or eliminating the simplistic use of alignment in Ravenloft--not sure who said it first, but my favorite summation is "In Ravenloft the NPCs (and PCs) don't have alignments, they have personalities".

Nathan's point about Ravenloft emphasizing personalities is one I had not heard before, but it does make perfect sense to me. Ravenloft is a small place, and the personalities that run the nations are even more obvious than they might be in Birthright, or Forgotten Realms, or Dark Sun. Each leader has sought power, and has found it doesn't grant happiness or fulfillment. But the demiplane can be a lesson about the dangers of power and ambition, and the harmful effects of intellectual, physical, and social corruption - without calling something "evil". Calling something "evil" is a mental shortcut that essentially says "I cannot or will not really articulate why I disapprove of this person, and so I'm going to use this moral/religious term". It's one of the few words left to opponents of various evolving social rights movements, such as those who oppose equal voting rights or equal marriage rights. It's ultimately a subjective term that does not give much indication as to the subject's actual criteria for awarding this status.

Consider the Third Reich, which most people can agree was a deeply negative form of government. There are plenty of reasons why one can oppose the Nazi party's policies: perhaps because they had scant regard for personal freedoms. Or because they oppressed minorities. Or because they were militants who invaded other countries. Or even (if you want to be completely dispassionate about it) because they were an unsustainable kleptocratic economy which would have eventually run out of disenfranchised demographics to steal from and someday collapsed under its own bureaucratic inefficiency. Those are reasons and rationales, and they can be objectively considered in a way that "Nazis were evil" cannot.

Likewise, Drakov as written is nothing more than a blood-drenched madman. Opposing something like that is fairly easy, something which new or casual gamers might find useful. But if you add enough background to Drakov to make him a truly tragic character - one who, despite his flaws, had some faint redeeming qualities - then it gives the players more to think about. And if they do decide that he must be stopped anyway, at least they'll be taking the fight to a fuller, more detailed villain, and not some amalgam depraved boogeyman drawn from the most lurid of the Tepes legends.

The other problem with "evil" definitions in a campaign come about when the players themselves are forced into decisions that may harm others. A lot of spells and magical powers in the DnD universe assume that there is some objective measure of morality, and that casting a certain spell will always trigger a risk of a DP check, and so forth. How bad does a bad guy have to be, before you can steal his horse and ride back to civilization from the lethal wilderness? How badly hurt do you have to be before you can kill in self-defense? How many lives must you save before you can justify taking one? By assuming that some of these acts are "evil" and others are not, you're assuming an objective ranking system exists, when in reality it may vary drastically from person to person.

It's much more useful for the players to decide individually what their characters can (or cannot) bring themselves to do. The Hero, TriStat, and GURPS systems all use disadvantages to show how that person behaves, and this can include actions they won't take because of personal or moral forbiddances. This removes the sticky question of "which objective morality?" and instead goes for "my character holds these views, reliably".

If they want to roleplay a psychological punishment, let them (and this is entirely feasible, too - history and criminology reports are full of murderers who afterwards discovered they cannot live with the guilt). If the campaign would be better suited to an external punishment, there are plenty of ways to bring that about without resorting to an appeal to a divine interlocutor to slap a penalty for being "evil".

This does presuppose players who are experienced enough to distance themselves from min-maxing and optimal play. It does require that players are willing to be their characters' own Furies or Scourges if such psychological torment is warranted. But then again, Ravenloft has long held a reputation for being a complex setting that presumes players (and especially GMs) with greater dedication to the roleplaying elements and less focus on action and loot.

Personally, I see that judgment calls of "Good" and "Evil" are essentially derived from (and remain only one step removed from) the statement of: "You're going to hell and I'm going to heaven". In modern sensibilities, like most questions regarding largely religious factors, that's pretty much reduced to the province of pure individual subjectivity. An RPG can certainly work with them if all players and GM can agree, but there's no reason why Ravenloft can't be more sophisticated and complex than that. Indeed, the "there but for the grace of the gods go I" spiel in the Black Box shows even darklords are supposed to be something short of pure antagonists - people for whom a simplistic "Oh, he's just evil and that's all there is to it" explanation is something of a disservice.

[vipera aspis]

This is kinda like the paladin doing a detect evil on a cleric of an "evil" god/goddess(we'll say vecna). Would the cleric always radiate "evil"?
Or is it only during the act?

What if he's buying some pants at 2pm and is in the middle of getting sized by a local tailor, when the paladin struts in.

Paladin casts detect evil.

Stares at cleric who's facing the other direction, standing on a stool, in his black and red boxer shorts and with measuring tape around his waist.

Paladin shouts " answer for your crimes blasphemous dog!" And draws giant sword.

Cleric raises eyebrow dumbfounded and finishes mumbling something about the vertical pinstripes and "the ladies": while the also dumbfounded tailors' jaw drops.

Paladin proceeds to impale the vile cleric(adding a smite evil with a one-liner) and holds for applause.

[The Lesser Evil]

Since arguing the whole objective vs. subjective morality thing is a big can of worms that is beyond the purpose of this message board, I'm looking at this from a game perspective. This is just viewing what you're saying as general advice for gaming groups in general. If what you say works for your group, go with it.

I'm not really sure how removing an objective morality would solve dm/player arguments on what was just or intelligent to do given a situation. If it becomes a matter of what a given society enforces and a dm/player disagrees on what is merited by the society, there's still an argument on what's reasonable. That doesn't change anything, except with the dm slapping a player whom he perceives to step out of line with an external punishment (ie, a given society's moral guardians coming after you) instead of a dm slapping a player with an alignment change or loss of character abilities, etc. There still needs to be a mutual understanding of what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior between player and gm. All that removing objective morality would be doing is shifting the emphasis from what is objectively just to what is deemed subjectively just by the society the player is currently in.

You are also ignoring that there can be gradients or shades of good and evil, or that evil can oppose evil. In the example you've given, the bandit and Azalin could both be objectively evil. In this case, the players would have to either choose the lesser of the two evils, or pick a third option of their own on how to handle the situation. The existence of objective morality would not limit the dilemma they would have to face.

The existence of objective evil does not preclude a range of responses to it: strategic alliance, guile, or even redemptive compassion. Because evil comes in many forms and many strengths, players must often choose how to address these multiple forms of evil and where to place their battles. Just because a creature is evil does not mean it can't be redeemed, nor that you can't ally with it temporarily to address a greater evil. Or to trick it into undoing itself.

Basically, the objective existence of good and evil in the game does not preclude rationale or reason (in fact, the search for what is morally right in a difficult situation can provide for it). Nor does it preclude characterization. The examples you site for people labeling something as evil and that's that is a problem of weak characterization, not a flaw in the in-game existence of good and evil itself. I applaud your injection of providing concrete motivations for your characters, however removing morality from the game is a wholely separate endeavor altogether.

[Jimsolo]

The length of time and thought you've put into this makes me think that you have more than a passing interest in this. It seems like you have some very dim views on organized religion, simplified histories, and what you see as the standard D&D take on morality. I get the distinct impression that you're a little burned out when it comes to one or more of these topics, am I right? I'm not saying you aren't making legitimate points (you are making legitimate points!) just that you seem to be almost taking this personally. I've had issues like this come up before, and sometimes found that just taking a step back to get some perspective (and a break) helps quite a bit.

But, on to your quandry.

I'm bang alongside the idea of subjective morality, but I don't think you can remove good and evil from the game entirely. I don't think that the label of 'evil' needs to always be a "mental shortcut." To use your example, the statement that "Nazis are evil" doesn't have to be a moralistic shortcut that sidesteps the consideration of the points you made (the abbrogation of freedoms, the oppresion of minorites, the invasions, or the kleptocracy). Instead, I think that "Nazis are evil" is a rather good summation of those points. (Plus the attempted genocide.)

Morality is usually considered, especially in a game world, in shades of grey. But grey is by definition a combination (in some proportion) of both black and white. Without the existence of both, grey is meaningless. And you can always get a grey so dark (or so light) that it is almost indistinguishable from the ends of the spectrum.

To bring that back to a D&D (and Ravenloft specific) situation: Azalin is a good example of a villainous madman. However, when you examine his rule and his realm more closely, things get much more complex. Without him, his country is much worse off. He brings a great stability to the nation, and by and large the people of Darkon are happy. Azalin himself fits very well into the mold of the "villain who sacrifices his morality to provide for those around him," which is a time honored character archetype, especially amongst masculine literature. He is a fairly competent leader, and a his decisions are frequently pragmatic, if callous.

But underneath that, he IS a villainous madman! He became a lich, a process which is defined as being "unspeakably evil," the list of atrocities committed at his hands is too long to measure, he's gathered some convincing evidence that Darkon will descend into anarchy and self-destruction if he ever DOES manage to escape, and yet he continues to try. "Evil" is not a pigeon-hole into which he has been shoe-horned, it is the inescapable verdict that his actions (and most importantly, the motivations behind them) add up to.

Which brings me to a good point. The action is not nearly as important, I think, as the intent. Nearly every action that Azalin undertakes has a malicious intent, even the ones which could be perceived as good. Even when he turns his hand to something pure, his selfish motives pervert the act.

Don't get me wrong, I always think that evil and good should be displayed as a continuum. I don't think any of my Ravenloft plots are complete unless at least one of the PCs is having a crisis of conscience over the group's actions. Just because someone is evil (or good) doesn't mean that they don't undertake an action against their normal character.

I think, unless I miss my guess, that one of your main points has been that you don't like your villains to be one-dimensional. (Like Drakov is usually portrayed.) And I agree. If I ever ran a game in Falkovnia, I think I would up-play the brutality of the rebels, and try to give the impression that the people of the land are just as scared of them as they are of the Talons. If you make his enemies seem just as bad as him, it muddies the waters enough so that the PCs don't know which way to turn.

The balance of mortal being is a combination of the good and the evil that they have done (and tried to do). I think it's perfectly acceptable to spurn characters (player and non-player alike) which are 'pure' good or evil. But to deny that they exist at all is, I think, a great disservice to the game. To me, Ravenloft is all about the morality. It's the central issue to the game, in my mind.

The stories where good and evil don't exist are much better suited to a Call of Cthulu game. Extreme moral relativism is right at home there, because if good and evil don't exist (except as artificial concepts) then they both become completely meaningless. And THAT sort of bleak, hopeless outlook is the exact kind of tone a good Cthulu game should have.

Now, ALL that being said, the MOST important part of the game is whether or not your players enjoy it. Do your players get more out of the game when you remove good and evil in their entirety? If so, then rock on. It seems like you put a LOT of thought into the construction of your narratives, so I have no doubt that you run a dynamite game.

Did I even address the issue correctly? I'll be honest, at some points in the train of thoughts, I wasn't sure if we agreed or disagreed. In any event, I hope this helps, and sorry if I offend.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

If you go with the idea of Ravenloft exceptionalism and the concept of a "penitentiary for evil souls" as being essential to differentiate Ravenloft from any other campaign setting, then that definitely works. In my opinion, it leads to the same simplistic moral view as drawing a line under somebody you don't like and calling them "evil" and then saying they must be opposed at all costs - because you've just called them evil.

Here's the thing though, I haven't called them evil, the Dark Powers have called them evil. My point, perhaps ill-articulated, was that in a typical Ravenloft game, you've got several definitions of evil flying around:

* The personal beliefs of each player, including the DM
* The personal beliefs of each PC and NPC
* The opinions (whims?) of the Dark Powers
* The decrees of the various Ravenloft deities (should they truly exist apart from the Dark Powers)
* The D&D alignment labels

You can take away some of these, but others will always be there. If you, HuManBing don't believe in good/evil, that's fine. If you take away the D&D alignments, saying that good and evil are more complicated than that, sure. You can consider the Ravenloft gods and the Dark Powers as just more powerful NPCs, or as extensions of the DM. But then what? You can't take away your players' ideas of good/evil. You can't force them to play PCs that agree with you. And if you make every NPC in the setting agree with you, your setting will be unrealistic at best and dare I say, boring at worst. So what does it mean to remove morality?

But it goes beyond internal beliefs. You've got a world whose planar nature is founded on what one of those groups considers good and evil. In a Ravenloft without good and evil, what are the Dark Powers doing? Why are they choosing Azalin and Strahd et al to form domains around and not Van Richten and Gondegal, or Symbuk Torul and Joan Secousse? Or do you dump the whole shebang of darklords, domains and Dark Powers and make Ravenloft just a naturally formed world? And here's what I meant by "what's the point": If you go that far, why play Ravenloft and not some other setting? (one that doesn't have such a mishmash of history and geography, etc.)

Every one of us is here because there's something about Ravenloft that grabbed us. If it's not the good vs evil aspect, what is it? The designers of Ravenloft used the conceit of the Dark Powers' judgement to bring together the tropes of horror in one place. If it's the trappings of gothic horror (moonlit moors, abandoned estates, vamps, weres, etc) that you want, but not the core tenets (evil is punished, good is rewarded), what is the conceit that you use to justify the existence of a place like the demiplane of dread? I would argue that gothic horror is founded on someone making that call, (God, the Dark Powers, what have you...) whether or not you personally as DM agree with it.

(And concerning your earlier point about society's disapproval - my own understanding is that a society's view of conduct would more closely align to ethics, whereas the individual's view of conduct is what we mean by morality.

To some extent, yes, but then you have cases like graverobbing, which ranges from no big deal, to distasteful, to a mortal sin, depending on culture. Or on the real world side, "honor killing" or FGM or the eating of animal meat. Some cultures find each of those perfectly right and normal, and some find them evil. Some individuals in those cultures may disagree with the culture's stance, true, but the culture's stance reinforces the belief in those that agree that the stance is based on moral truth. There are very very few things that every culture would agree is evil. I dare say there's not a single thing that everyone in the world would agree is evil.

I don't think that belief in good and evil requires everything to be black and white and easy. You can still have characters who are mostly good but do some evil things or mostly evil but do some good things. You can motivate the characters in other ways, personal ways. But with that said, making every adventure personal all the time has got to be exhausting. Sometimes there's just a necromancer killing children and animating them as zombies to work in his textile factory. Does he need stopping? If I'm not a child and don't have children I care about and don't have a competing textile firm, do I care? Does it matter if I call him evil as shorthand or say "I disapprove of his actions for these reasons"?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Personally, I see that judgment calls of "Good" and "Evil" are essentially derived from (and remain only one step removed from) the statement of: "You're going to hell and I'm going to heaven".

I object to this conclusion on the grounds that not every system of morality involves a heaven and hell. If you extend it to "God will punish you and reward me" to include stuff like reincarnation, etc, I still object on the grounds that it presupposes that atheists can't have morality, a stance which I reject. I grant that the existence and definition of good and evil are subjective, but I don't think they need to be linked to religion.

(I suppose I should mention that it's my subjective view that objective good and evil exist, outside of the subjective views of humans, while accepting that my view is subjective, if that makes any sense. But as DM, it's up to me to adjudicate the moral views of the setting (i.e. the Dark Powers, in Ravenloft's case), not my own.)

[Bluebomber4evr]

calling somebody "evil" is basically a moralistic shorthand for saying "that person does stuff of which I personally disapprove strongly",

I would replace "I personally" with "my society" but otherwise, that sums up moral relativism pretty well. That doesn't mean there isn't evil, just that the boundaries are blurry, IMHO, though.

Nor is this an alien concept to the Ravenloft designers, who seem to have wanted to muddy the moral waters a bit, by installing a special limitation against Good-Evil detection spells from working. They may have done this just to stop the PCs from using a convenient shortcut and to rely more on roleplaying... or they may have wanted to allow GMs more latitude in redefining what "good" or "evil" mean. Or in my case, to reject those labels altogether.

Not being able to detect good and evil is not the same as good and evil not existing. It just means that PCs need to evaluate the situation before condemning someone as evil, and not just wave their evil detector around until it beeps.

This. A lot of people make this mistake. The point of not being able to detect evil is so that PCs use their own judgment on determining who is or isn't evil, but Good and Evil most definitely exist in Ravenloft.

As usual, YMMV, and "Whatever works for you" apply. But I would argue that Good vs Evil is a central struggle of Ravenloft's gothic roots. (Of course you are free to reject gothicism and still play Ravenloft, yes we've discussed that all before.) The very nature of darklords suggests that there is some sort of something that the Dark Powers select for. You can call it "evil" or you can call it "Quality X" or "je ne sais quoi," but there's something there, and it's not even just the same as (D&D alignment==evil), but that is certainly a part of it. Whether evil and good are neat little boxes or some sort of continuum, that's up for debate. And whether one agrees with the Dark Powers or not (see also: what's wrong with casting death ward?) is up for debate as well. But without evil existing at all, what's the point of the place?

Agreed, moral relativism is really at odds with gothicism, and removing morality defeats the whole point of the setting as it's written, and for me would remove a lot of what is fun and unique about the setting. Without morality, the Darklord's curses don't matter--why are they even cursed in the first place? This also means that Powers checks are pointless, because every Evil character has a ready-made excuse to explain away whatever horrible thing they do.

[Ryan Naylor]

This is kinda like the paladin doing a detect evil on a cleric of an "evil" god/goddess(we'll say vecna). Would the cleric always radiate "evil"?

If you're asking whether someone who has devoted their life to destruction, malice, black magic and extortion--devoted to the point of manifesting supernatural powers because they have pleased their unholy patron--consorts with demons and the undead, brutally sacrifices unwilling victims on their altar to gain more personal power and influence, and so on, is only evil when they have their pants on, then I would have to say no.

As Rudolph van Richten said, "I have dipped my hands into blood whose taint will never leave me."



I agree with Gonzoron and Bluebomber. The conflict between Good and Evil is intrinsic to Gothic horror. However, since we live in an imperfect world, that will always be with a nuanced, poorly understood spectrum of good and evil. The moral aspect, and the moral quandries, are what I find compelling.

If you don't want to play that way and it works for your game, go for it though.

[HuManBing]

If you extend it to "God will punish you and reward me" to include stuff like reincarnation, etc, I still object on the grounds that it presupposes that atheists can't have morality, a stance which I reject. I grant that the existence and definition of good and evil are subjective, but I don't think they need to be linked to religion.

Oh, definitely. As an atheist myself, I get this argument thrown at me occasionally, usually by people who argue that religion has a monopoly on defining ethical behavior. Or moral behavior. Basically, the argument is that a person cannot differentiate positive from negative behavior unless they follow some sort of doctrine laid out by a religious source. Like you, I don't buy that argument either.

I suppose I should have defined a few terms more clearly, as they seem to mean different things according to different people. (Like most language!)

• Morality I define as being an internalized code of behavior. A person may decide not to eat meat or use animal products, because they believe that doing so would cause suffering to a sentient being, which they consider bad. Under my definition, morality is a personal issue and in an ideal environment is limited solely to one's own life (plus the lives of one's wards, e.g. minor children, etc.). Approximated to the DnD alignment system, morality would be "Good" vs. "Evil", and they depend largely on the individual's internal mindset.
• Ethics I define as being an externalized code of behavior. A lawyer is appointed as a public defender, and his duty is to vigorously and zealously defend anybody who lacks a lawyer of their own. This extends even to hardened criminals - the justice system demands that every accused defendant be entitled to competent legal representation. The lawyer himself may have grave doubts about the defendant's innocence, but the ethics of his profession (and by extension of society) require that the lawyer works hard to represent the defendant. The lawyer's misgivings are a moral issue. The lawyer's professional and zealous representation of the defendant notwithstanding the above doubts, are ethical issues. Approximated to the DnD alignment system, ethics would be "Law" vs. "Chaos", and they depend in much larger part on what society around you thinks is acceptable behavior.
• Good is a fairly vague term with at least two dimensions, which confuses the issue significantly. "Good" can be used in objectively meaningful contexts to indicate a positive outcome, without any judgment of morality or ethicality. You can have a "good game of baseball" with somebody. Education can give you a "good future". A government can have "good policies" (although this then approaches the same sort of overgeneralization that I dislike about the word "evil"). The inverse of "good", in the sense of this potentially objective context, is "bad". This does not indicate an especial moral stance - a person who is enrolled in a course, for example, can legitimately conclude that a failing grade is bad and a passing grade is good. Or a person competing in a ball game can conclude that a loss is a bad outcome, and a win is a good one.
• Evil is the problem word here, and why I think the morality alignment dimension of DnD fails at high resolution. The other sense of "good" in common language is a clear moral judgment, and it can be quite independent of ethics - whereas "evil" is almost entirely a personal call dealing with a conscious moral choice. For example, a lawyer who refuses to represent a defendant because of his moral reservations may be called a "good person" (in the moral sense) but simultaneously be held up to be a "bad lawyer" (in the ethical sense, for failing to carry out his duty). "Evil", however, carries a clear sense of moral judgment to it. A "bad lawyer" can be many things, including one who is merely incompetent - but an "evil lawyer" is something much more specific. You almost never get an "evil game of baseball" in the same way you get a "bad game" from time to time.

Ethics and morality are both, in my view, highly subjective. Ethics are drawn from a much larger populational sampling frame, with all the attendant strengths and weaknesses that attend any pure numbers-game outlook. Morals are formulated by the individual. Both are prone to change and shift, but ethics by definition admit their anchor is changeable - it's just whatever the general immediate society happens to hold as acceptable at this point in time. Depending on where and when you lived, you could be in legal trouble (or exonerated as merely exercising your legal rights) by marrying somebody of a different race, or owning another human as property, or becoming physically involved with a minor student under your care.

My problem with morals is that they often are presented in a universalist way that does not admit of this: something that is "evil" is "evil" in an absolute sense. The examples of harming others is an illustration of this - one person is vegan, another is vegetarian, another will eat the flesh of an animal, and another will eat the flesh of a human (anthropologically quite common in protein-poor environments, and still a culturally significant practice in some parts of the world). The broader a cultural view you are willing to take, the harder it becomes to admit universal rules of moral behavior that hold true in all situations and all times. In my experience, a more metropolitan or multicultural sampling frame usually makes for a greater tendency towards a "moral relativistic" viewpoint, whereas a homogenous background usually makes it easier for an individual to assume that the familiar is "morally good" and anything unfamiliar is "aberrant" (and it's a short step away from condemning it on moral grounds).

There could definitely be merit to a parochial, provincial, insular Ravenloft - much of the setting is backwater rural areas with strong religious (or superstitious) cultural roots, and folks are often portrayed as mistrustful of outsiders. Whether the GM needs to actually adopt such a worldview in order to merely portray it in NPCs is another question though.

Just some thoughts zooming around. I'll dedicate full posts in response to other posters' thoughts, for easier readability. Thanks, as always, to you all for contributing!

(EDIT: I missed Gonzoron's earlier post, about Dark Powers and the plight of the darklords. I will respond to that later when I have time to give it full and proper thought, rather than a bedtime rush-through.)

[Zilfer]

Just want to chime in here and say awesome topic with no flames! Good job everyone involved I've had many discussions like this with a specific player in my group because what he perceives as Evil must be Evil to him. I put a quandary upon my group when a woman running away from a n orc is caught and held to a tree. Well the woman destroyed this Orc's village.

What the players didn't know this or that they had asked to see an artifact of the village and left only to return with a barrage of fireballs to thin out the warriors and he promised the Shaman to hunt her down. The party had found members of this woman's party killed at different parts while traveling and they caught up. Well said player immediately suspected Orc was evil so did the rest and threatened the orc to drop her.

The orc surprisingly complies and then conflicting stories begin to take shape, and the group begins to argue. AT a good moment when it is getting a little more heated the woman books it and the orc tries to go after her. The player 'ron' (sorry other ron in this topic) decided to stop the orc! Not wanting to let him go cus he is EVILZ?!?!?!1+shift!?!1 Needless to say the party talked him into letting the orc go and the orc wasn't happy that she had a lead on them, however they had pressing matters for their quest.

I've found that Good vs Evil topics will generally always happen at one point or another in groups no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Also people's views will be different than yours because hey they aren't you and grew up with different world views. Sitting down and discussing things will help to an extent but there will always be something that crops up in the game that they won't agree with you on down the road that you didn't think of!

I think you should leave Good Evil spectrum in your game Bing but remember it's not always your morals that your upholding in the game. The Dark Powers say it's bad to it's bad according to them.

I mean i'm pretty sure Hitler didn't think he himself was Evil. A lot of other people now adays do. The best you can do is to discuss it with the group and once a decision is made either by you the DM or a consensus is made by the group that you STICK WITH IT. Don't have it be evil act this time but when someone does it down the line change it.

Remember Good/Evil is all an opinion and the goal is to have fun with the game not convert people over to your view of good and evil and which i know you would never do Bing cus hey! your just too funny

[HuManBing]

I'm not really sure how removing an objective morality would solve dm/player arguments on what was just or intelligent to do given a situation. If it becomes a matter of what a given society enforces and a dm/player disagrees on what is merited by the society, there's still an argument on what's reasonable.

True, but the players are usually more comfortable with the GM setting rules for the society ("ethics", in my rubric above) than they are with the GM telling them what's moral or not. People in real life often stumble into unfamiliar social settings, and part of the experience is in learning new ethical norms. The GM is there to help create the fictitious society around the players, so this falls under the GM's role as referee. You can make a mistake and have the society come after you to correct it or to punish you - that happens relatively frequently with newcomers (e.g. Chinese parents getting hit with a child abuse accusation after their child's teacher discovered bruises on the kid's back - caused by massage therapy and heat-cupping, which are acceptable traditional medicinal practices in China). It's not pleasant, but it's a perfectly valid source of drama, tension, and plot complications which occur in the real world.

Morals, however, are much more personal to the PCs and their players. Your stated viewpoint equates the two factors, and I think that's simply not accurate. An ethical mismatch comes out as "you made a social misjudgment", which typically implies a mismatch in understanding and expectations. But a moral mistake comes out as "your personal balance is lacking" and if the player is surprised by that, it's usually a much deeper issue between GM and player.

Consider the likely PC response if the local constables are coming after them for a presumed legal violation. Then consider the likely PC response if the GM says "your tongue is starting to fork and your eyes have become snakelike slits". One definitely hits home much harder than the other, and a player who disagrees with the GM's call on one will likely be much less happy than a PC disagreement over the other.

You are also ignoring that there can be gradients or shades of good and evil, or that evil can oppose evil. In the example you've given, the bandit and Azalin could both be objectively evil.

I personally love the "shades of grey" mentality with regards to characters, so the idea of gradients is perfectly familiar to me (and much supported!). But the main problem I have with your model is that it presumes at some point that somebody crossed a threshold, going from good into evil. Who makes that call? And what can they do to him? My response is that each PC may have a different response (some might shoot him between the eyes and sleep like a baby afterwards, others might be compelled to provide a fair trial or even to help him escape capture). And then there's the GM's responsibility of determining how society in general would have dealt with him - which again can vary from authority to authority.

Just because a creature is evil does not mean it can't be redeemed, nor that you can't ally with it temporarily to address a greater evil. Or to trick it into undoing itself.

Again, I strongly support the flexible plot structure you're describing here - I'm a big fan of writing in multiple methods of dealing with a threat or challenge. I also encourage my players to consider different methods of solving problems, even those that trouble them. However, I know for a fact that many people for whom "evil" is a meaningful and objective value judgment do not share your flexibility, and many of them will argue long and hard over whether any of the above statements are in fact permissible. Redemption and temporary alliances are proposals that do not meet with universal acceptance among people, even those who consider themselves very moral, for precisely the reasons I've outlined above: every person is responding by an own internal code and there is no guarantee they will output the same result when presented with any given dilemma. It's quite conceivable that a person with a strong sense of "good" or "evil" will look at your sentence and say "everything in it is false and flat-out impossible when dealing with evil".

Basically, the objective existence of good and evil in the game does not preclude rationale or reason (in fact, the search for what is morally right in a difficult situation can provide for it). Nor does it preclude characterization.

No, but it does require that every player essentially submit to the GM's objective definition of such. For simple reasons of psychology and more complex reasons of philosophy, I maintain that a GM is going to get a lot more traction and much less resistance, if they limit themselves to dictating the fictitious society around them, than trying to do the same with a moral code. (Now, you may get players who are completely fine with that. Experienced players may very well relish the chance to expand their role-playing experience to include play-acting a different moral code, in addition to the usual suite of acting a different persona and laws of nature, etc.)