Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Another point that the guy quoted in the OP overlooked in building up his straw man is that the evil humanoid races in AD&D aren't just arbitrarily labeled evil as an excuse for the good races to exterminate them as they abide peacefully within their abodes, they're labeled evil because they way they act is what the AD&D moral cosmology considers to be evil -- they lie and cheat and rape and steal and murder and exploit and enslave and raid and are aggressively expansionistic and if they aren't stopped they will continue doing all of those things and inevitably overrun civilization and rape, murder, or enslave all of the non-adventurers. Pretty much every AD&D game I've ever played in has had the good guys playing defense (and losing) in this existential struggle and the PC adventurers aren't colonial expansionists, they're desperate commandos venturing behind enemy lines, usually seeking revenge for a massacre or (as BPOM already mentioned) to rescue prisoners or recover stolen goods. And when they get to the evil monsters' lairs, the monsters are invariably in the midst of doing various evil things -- torturing prisoners and eating people and at least offstage hints of rape, and the non-combatant females and young are usually involved in it just as much as the adult males.

I remember the last time I designed a MM-style humanoid tribe I figured out what the females and young would be doing during raids and realized they'd be doing everything they could to make life difficult for the attackers -- raising alarms and setting traps and creating diversions and throwing waste pails and so on, and if the PCs were taken prisoner I imagined the females and young grotesquely torturing them -- pulling their hair and giving them tainted food and stealing their shoes and poking them with sticks and so on. The idea I was trying to convey was that these weren't just stand-ins for historical designated Others, they were an honest-to-goodness tribe of sociopaths. PCs who faced these creatures would probably want to slaughter every last one of them, not because they wear a particular label but because they've seen first-hand what they're like and know that they really are evil through and through (though even so there's no XP value in slaughtering them and good PCs may face alignment consequences for doing so, depending perhaps on how they go about it).

So, ironically, it's the Disneyfied sanitization of the game that occurred in the Basic editions and 2E that creates the so-called moral conundrum -- that we're no longer allowed to depict the evil creatures as actually being evil and doing evil things and are just expected to accept it on faith that they're evil. In such an arrangement yes it makes sense that people would start questioning what "evil" really means and whether or not it's just code for "other." But when evil is allowed to be evil -- to see the slave pens and torture chambers and flayed bodies and piles of skulls and the horrors floating in the cooking pot -- then those concerns melt away and it's clearly a case of kill or be killed (and likely enslaved, tortured, and raped first).

T. Foster wrote:Another point that the guy quoted in the OP overlooked in building up his straw man is that the evil humanoid races in AD&D aren't just arbitrarily labeled evil as an excuse for the good races to exterminate them as they abide peacefully within their abodes, they're labeled evil because they way they act is what the AD&D moral cosmology considers to be evil -- they lie and cheat and rape and steal and murder and exploit and enslave and raid and are aggressively expansionistic and if they aren't stopped they will continue doing all of those things and inevitably overrun civilization and rape, murder, or enslave all of the non-adventurers. Pretty much every AD&D game I've ever played in has had the good guys playing defense (and losing) in this existential struggle and the PC adventurers aren't colonial expansionists, they're desperate commandos venturing behind enemy lines, usually seeking revenge for a massacre or (as BPOM already mentioned) to rescue prisoners or recover stolen goods. And when they get to the evil monsters' lairs, the monsters are invariably in the midst of doing various evil things -- torturing prisoners and eating people and at least offstage hints of rape, and the non-combatant females and young are usually involved in it just as much as the adult males.

I remember the last time I designed a MM-style humanoid tribe I figured out what the females and young would be doing during raids and realized they'd be doing everything they could to make life difficult for the attackers -- raising alarms and setting traps and creating diversions and throwing waste pails and so on, and if the PCs were taken prisoner I imagined the females and young grotesquely torturing them -- pulling their hair and giving them tainted food and stealing their shoes and poking them with sticks and so on. The idea I was trying to convey was that these weren't just stand-ins for historical designated Others, they were an honest-to-goodness tribe of sociopaths. PCs who faced these creatures would probably want to slaughter every last one of them, not because they wear a particular label but because they've seen first-hand what they're like and know that they really are evil through and through (though even so there's no XP value in slaughtering them and good PCs may face alignment consequences for doing so, depending perhaps on how they go about it).

So, ironically, it's the Disneyfied sanitization of the game that occurred in the Basic editions and 2E that creates the so-called moral conundrum -- that we're no longer allowed to depict the evil creatures as actually being evil and doing evil things and are just expected to accept it on faith that they're evil. In such an arrangement yes it makes sense that people would start questioning what "evil" really means and whether or not it's just code for "other." But when evil is allowed to be evil -- to see the slave pens and torture chambers and flayed bodies and piles of skulls and the horrors floating in the cooking pot -- then those concerns melt away and it's clearly a case of kill or be killed (and likely enslaved, tortured, and raped first).

I seem to remember a Star Trek DS9 episode that tried to deal with evil is evil when using one of their orc-like enemies (orc-like to a point) but I can't remember what their name was.

One of the young orcs ends up on the station. One of the ensemble cast tries to raise it but it is geneticaly conditioned towards violence and obedience to the shapeshifters (must have been the good-guy shapeshifter who raised it). I may be misremembering the entire episode but they way I saw it the episode was a good way to explain the AD&D nature of evil monsters. They are inherently evil, not just evil by nurture, but evil by nature. (You can just say it, evil by nature, but sometimes pointing to a Star Trek episode is the quickest way to win a geek-fight).

Why should even the most ecology minded gamer feel that all humanoid sentient monsters should follow the pattern of humanity? Why think that orcs should merely be humans with pig faces (or however you see them, greenskins, etc...) and not monsters that act in completely inhuman ways, such as being evil from birth to grisly death? That's racism, that is. Orcs have a perfect right to embrace their evilness without a bunch of humanocentric cultural relativism labeled on them. My campaign's orcs are poster boys for evil, and that's the way I likes'em.

mjudge55 wrote:As far as I can tell there are just certain folks who enjoy considering the symbolic implications of even trivial subjects (like inherently expendable races in D&D), and there are certain people who are more practical. Fortunately D&D works on both levels, so there's room for us all.

If that were all the original article and Bargle were suggesting, I don't think you would see this kind of response. The reason the conversation degenerated is that both are essentially saying 1) D&D is and always has been about the deepest negative tendencies of humanity; 2) People who claim that D&D isn't about those things are either shallow and ignorant or purposely denying it because they have something (negative) to hide. Both of those points deserve to be called out as the bullshit that they are.

I made no such point, made emphatic points to the contrary.

All I've ever said is that we are playing with stories thousands of years old which come from experiences millions of years in the making and that they have allegorical and metaphorical meaning to this day.

It is beyond good and evil, as nietzche said. The article and the posters here are the ones arguing morality. Not me. It's no more evil to kill an orc than for you to act the part of macbeth in a play. The tactic many of you are taking, is that macbeth or the orc doesn't have any meaning other than the superficial. This is silliness. The article states that masturbation is a sin and this board flares up with vigorous voices stating that they don't masturbate. The orc is older than gygax, and killing one in a game doesn't say anything about you.

As a futher analogy, Mishappen, stunted, and crippled characters are often portrayed as evil--it's ok to use that as a device, but be aware of why a physical deformity--in terms of human psychology, is used as a universal sign.

Bargle wrote:It is beyond good and evil, as nietzche said.

Überyrch. Like Techoviking with a pig-nose.

We're not saying we don't masturbate. We're saying masturbation isn't a sin.

actually, what the guy in the OP is saying is that masturbation is the same thing as rape and therefore when you masturbate you are commiting rape. Now you can go ahead and masturbate if you want to becuase thats up to you but you should understand that if you do you are a no good dirty rapist.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the originally quoted article is asserting that X is morally objectionable and X is an inherent part of D&D; therefore everyone who plays a game of D&D is wallowing in that particular morally objectionable tendency. My response to that is 1) X is not an inherent part of the D&D that I play; 2) I don't give a fuck if X is or is not morally objectionable when explored in the context of D&D; and 3) people who explore whether X is or is not morally objectionable in the context of a D&D game are people whose games I would not enjoy.

Good gawd, Bargle. If you want to understand foreign cultures and even D&D, how's about actually going there sans Lonely Planet guide and playing some D&D. It's called field research, something Joe Campbell knew nothing about.

Ahhkk!! Too many 25-cent words! My thesaurus is on fire!

(Sorry... it's late, and I'm a little tippsy... and this thread is WAAAAY to serious. )

This thread is epic. It even has people actually defending the position of the OP quote.

Bargle, you do have a set of balls, I'll give you that.

blackprinceofmuncie wrote:

T. Foster wrote:In my games PCs are never encouraged or expected to "leave no survivors" or wantonly slaughter non-combatants (and doing so is considered an Evil act), and avoiding combat (while still accomplishing your goals) is usually a better path to success than deliberately seeking it out, and as far as I can tell both of those are exactly what was intended all along. The quoted poster is setting up an artificially simplistic straw man misreading of D&D and then acting like he's uniquely morally and intellectually superior by knocking it down, which means his big essay is more just a waste of time than anything else.

You know, the more I think about this, the more I realize how true it is. I don't recall ever playing a PC that specifically sought out a humanoid settlement for the purposes of exterminating everything there. Rescue prisoners taken in raids? Yes. Recover some stolen treasure? Yes. But for the most part, my PCs interactions with humanoids have been... 1) Explore abandoned dungeon. 2) Encounter group of humanoids unexpectedly in room. 3) Kill humanoids in self-defense as they attempt to kill my PC and take his stuff. So, yeah, I think this guy is either playing D&D very differently than everyone I've ever played with or is setting up a major strawman.

Thats just it. Nobody ever did this in a game....genocide?...its made up, has to be. Who the hell would waste there time even thinking about this?

Even if you wanted to, 1E isn't the sort of game designed for this. You control a few PCs in a world filled with monsters and NPCs far more powerful then you -behind every tree and rock could be death waiting. You think you have time to worry about killing a race? Better worry about not being bitten by a giant spider or falling in a pit trap filled with spikes dabbed in poison. Nah, better find something designed for a macro level rather then micro. You are bugs crawling around in some DMs aquarium. Only a DM is at the level of playing with such concepts, and why the hell would he?

Late to the thread and I must add, screw the genocide someone isn't playing D&D right.

"there's this growing expectation that the player characters (PCs) have a bit of script immunity and a certain amount of protagonism"

Really? 1- there is no script. 2- no one is immune to hazardsof the game and 3- PCs are only protagonists if their players have them act as such.

capitalbill wrote:

Ghul wrote:Orc babies.

I like orc babies. They taste like chicken.

You've been inhaling too many fireball fumes, they taste like unwashed-mushrooms and pork gristle.

Odhanan wrote:This thread is epic. It even has people actually defending the position of the OP quote.

Damn enabler, that's what you are!

francisca wrote:Damn enabler, that's what you are!

Damn straight! That's what DMs do!