Gaming Philosophy: Dungeons And Dragons, Morality, And You
When it comes to the concepts of good and evil, there has been an eternal conflict of opinions and thoughts concerning their uses. The muddiest of uses of course being the 9-part morality system as popular in the Dungeons and Dragons series that is composed of the concepts of Lawfulness and Chaos in various degrees of Good or Evil (IE: Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral) and like any other concept of morality, you can practically expect that pretty much nobody truly understands it. I was sent into this rant by Spoony’s “So you want to be Evil” video (posted yesterday) that begins with “don’t do it”, and is just him sitting infront of a camera explaining his rampant generalizations and misunderstanding of gaming morality.
Good and Evil, as many know, is the philosophical concept that all actions are either “good” or “evil” where the positive actions that the people like are branded as “good” and things people do not like are called “evil”. This matter gets more complicated in Dungeons and Dragons because of the very true presence of gods, angels, and demons in most normal settings as well as the presence of death, true death, and resurrection. In particular the confusion comes from the DnD interpretation of morality, where Evil just means you kill people and Lawful just implies a moral code or respect of law.
The common interpretation is that the two states of Good and Evil are directly opposing entities, and that by being one you act a very specific way. That is to say Orcs kill on sight because they are evil rather than any real personal philosophies they may have. “Heroes” kill “Monsters” on sight because they are Evil and thus should not feel bad about the lives they extinguish because our culture says killing monsters is “good” . Good or Evil aside, the Paladin that speaks to god still sliced the heads off three Orcs for just being in his way.
As written by Gygax himself in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook:
Chaotic Evil: The major precepts of this alignment are freedom, randomness, and woe. Laws and Order, Kindness, and Good deeds are disdained. Life has no value. By promoting Chaos and Evil, those of this alignment hope to bring themselves to positions of power, glory, and prestige in a system ruled by individual caprices and their own whims.
-ADnD PHB
Chaos and Law in DnD are as simple as it sounds, the character either adheres to a code of conduct or instead values the freedom and liquidity of life. These are philosophical states often polarized just like Good and Evil, while they are more accurately states of being as real as ourselves. While as written Good and Evil are mentioned to be a polarized struggle as well, but in truth the only clause that Gygax seems to attribute to an Evil character is having no inherent reverence to the sanctity of life, implying that the Paladin that runs around the countryside mowing down Orcs is “good” because they would never slay a rational being that surrenders before them. In moral terms, the Paladin would be committing an Evil action if he were to take the life of an Orc that surrenders regardless of the Orcs alignment, while the Orc if Chaotic Evil may very well surrender without moral issue and attempt to kill the Paladin in betrayal, though he may not just to keep you guessing as is implied by his random, Chaotic nature.
Let’s look at Batman and Superman, who represent Chaotic and Lawful Good. Both do “good” things, they save the day, stop the villains, but no matter how VERY evil their opponents are, they cherish life (which seems to be the only tangible point to being “Good”), and if given the choice would rather spare lives then extinguish them. Even though Batman is chaotic and will do pretty much anything he can to get it done that may or may not cause suffering, he won’t kill. The Joker does not, being Chaotic Evil, cherish life at all and will kill when he feels like it. On the flip side, he may not because he feels like it.
That being established, now to the task at hand. People like to blame morality rather than the actual player’s actions themselves, or use morality as an excuse to do whatever they want. Honestly though, its a game foremost and the simple “Black and White” morality was there just to give an arbitrary excuse for Orcslaughter. Not knowing that years down the road and after Gygax’s death there would be people using mortality as an excuse to slice people’s heads off because they are Good (Something a truely “Good” character would not do) while Evil characters take this as an excuse to go around town murdering willy-nilly just because they are Evil. This is the aspect of morality people usually have a hard time with, the idea of being evil and then the actual practice of being evil.
Granted, as you have noticed Gygax’s view of Evil is very polarized in a fashion that taken literally and morally incorrectly deems all Evil characters to be wanton killing machines with no possible remorse or redemption, nor a tangible reason for their murder as is the ideal of “Evil is just Evil” while Good characters sort of get off scott free with their murder because of their “just cause”. However, until now I have refrained from the second part of the Good versus Evil morality system, the gods themselves. Unlike life as we know it, gods in DnD actually exist. They appear on the planet, walk around, talk to people, and grant spells to their loyal clerics. The “big” gods such as Bahamut, Lolth, and the rest have entire metaphysical planes they live inside populated with outsiders of their alignment as well as the means of directly communicating with living people.
This is where the already very muddy moral politics get even muddier. We know that Evil simply means having no moral issue with taking lives, while Good will only take lives in self defense and that law and chaos are the primary means to which those morals are taken lawfully or randomly. The issue arises when you have the god king of dragons telling you to smite evil in the name of Bahamut, or when Lolth the spider queen of the Drow urges you to sacrifice the young in her name. Lolths existence and policies directly contradict the laws of a God like Bahamut, which drives the Lawful Good followers to kill Evil things in his name and the name of Goodness. Lolth’s followers are urged to spread Lolth’s corrupting influence and kill those that get in their way. We have labelled Bahamut as Good and Lolth as Evil, The former cares about life while the latter does not. The point being that religious characters have a very real god in this world telling them what is good and what is evil, and to an extent most characters know they exist while nowhere near all have had the chance of actually meeting a god. While their actions are not excused, there reaches a point where individual morality is very separated by what god tells them, that just happens to be morally aligned.
As a general rules of thumb, humans are social creatures and are hardwired to listen to the person in charge, if not obey them. When the entity that gives you the ability to heal and call lightning down from the heavens tells you to smite Evil in his name, most are pretty willing to do so. Conversely, without the prior knowledge that the entity is “Evil”, there is little stopping most from obeying them either as without knowing of both Good and Evil, it is impossible to grasp either individually. What does this mean in a gaming context? Essentially that a Chaotic Evil character does not rampantly run around stabbing people because they are Chaotic Evil, they do so because they have a personal reason of doing so. DnD character morality is often played for laughs because of how initially wild the concepts look when in fact the moral alignments presented in DnD are things that we witness and watch every day, especially knowing now that Good and Evil as defined is a stance on the sanctity of life rather than a polarized mindset or specifically the means rather than the end.
It only stands to reason, to realize that while alignment determines a good bit about the individual philosophies and thoughts a character may contain, there is nothing about the system that absolutely determines how a character *should* act. All evil characters do not like the color black, just as all evil characters are not rampaging lunatics in the same manner that all Good characters are bible thumping fanatics that ceaselessly preach about the joys of Pelor. It’s an arbitrary system developed to make players feel better about slaying the various monsters of the world taken far more seriously than it should be.
Take for example the Orc baby “Dilemma” as posed by Spoony, where a traditionally good party wipes out a Orc encampment and finds women and children, who immediately surrender. The Good decision is to spare them, with the Evil to be killing them despite the prisoners being of Evil alignment themselves. Of course, the metagaming argument of “they are evil” is moot since that is not roleplaying, and not a proper justification of murdering women and children. Then we are introduced to the concept of Evil characters in the party arguing *for* the murder. The most common ignorant thought is that Good and Evil cannot co-exist, and thus a party must be either all Good or all Evil, despite the hundreds of examples of parties with a mixed ratios of alignments in popular media. A common argument against a mixed party is that there will be conflict and thus it is impossible for them to be in the same party together. Any professional writer can tell you all good stories *require* conflict, and the same is true of a DnD party.
People are under the impression that if a Good and Evil character, meet they are required by the games rules to do combat to the death, which is false as evidenced by what we know Good and Evil stand for, and where they divide. The cause of this incorrect assumption are the cases of “controlled” monsters that are in league with whatever Big Bad is looming beyond the Gates of Extremely Evil Evilness at the end of the campaign. These creatures include Outsiders (Creatures from other planes), mind-controlled or otherwise malcontent goblinoids, and other various ill-willed monsters and are the common things you will be fighting so its only natural to assume they are completely unfeeling in their attacks. In most cases these creatures are either genuinely “Evil” homicidal bastards or directly being controlled by the higher powers just as the heroes are doing the dirty work of the good higher powers in most cases. What most don’t realize is there is a very vast difference between a Good creature and a Cleric of Pelor just as there is a difference between a Chaotic Evil Orc tribesman and Saruman’s Uruk-Hai, and thats where people get confused. A Witch is not bad because she is evil, its more of the whole poisoning and cursing people thing, which is a personal choice made by that witch.
-Necroscourge 5/1/13
