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I have an idea for a new PC, a LE Human (maybe Rogue or Rogue/Cleric)
Anyway, here's what makes him(her?) LE:
He believes in slavery, slavery of dwarves. The way a city should be run is with dwarf slaves. Dwarves should expect to be treated as property/tools for manual labor and city maintenance. The lord of a city would use his dwarf slaves to sweep streets & chimneys, light street lanterns, provide upkeep & maintenance (roads, buildings, gates) and the talented ones to do metalsmithing and architecture, not to mention mining.
That's just the natural way. That's what dwarves were created for, like a Succubus is created to corrupt souls and a Ghost is manifested only to haunt.
He doesn't hate or even dislike dwarves -- he'd be the first to say he "even has had a dwarf friend" -- he just believes their caste in life is to be slaves.
There's nothing wrong with other individuals, (bankrupt or destitute or convicted of crime), of other races, to be slaves as well.
....
Now, how does this LE world view affect the other PCs and the party as a whole?
Well, if one is a dwarf, it's simple: in the same way that a woman anthropologist is seen as something more than (above) female to a tribe of misogynists, and a racist sees an individual of an ethnicity as something other than a member of the ethnic group, my PC would view his fellow PC as "different from..." -- you know, "Bob's not like other dwarves.
And, in dwarven communities, he would be silent and quietly judgemental (occassionally whispering a "comment" to his friends), pretending like he's not there while grumbling in his mind and noticing every little problem in the society as proof that the community is faulty: "Oh, of course one of those dwarf kids got hurt playing, look at this place"; "Well, no wonder a Purple Worm attacked" and that kind of illogical, racist stuff.
But what about other stuff? What kind of non-dwarf roleplaying situations could be affected by my PC's LE beliefs?
Anyway, here's what makes him(her?) LE:
He believes in slavery, slavery of dwarves. The way a city should be run is with dwarf slaves. Dwarves should expect to be treated as property/tools for manual labor and city maintenance. The lord of a city would use his dwarf slaves to sweep streets & chimneys, light street lanterns, provide upkeep & maintenance (roads, buildings, gates) and the talented ones to do metalsmithing and architecture, not to mention mining.That's just the natural way. That's what dwarves were created for, like a Succubus is created to corrupt souls and a Ghost is manifested only to haunt.
As a player in the game, I wouldn't really buy that your character believed that to be the natural order of things unless he was raised in a region where that WAS the norm.
But other than that, it might be too close to walking a line too subjective and perhaps politically sensitive to really explore in gaming without going over the top. If he's truly convinced that this is the natural order of things and grew up conditioned to be convinced of it, does it really make him evil to be a product of his environment? And you've already said he doesn't even dislike dwarves, so I assume he doesn't actually express any cruelty to them, or attempt to perpetuate his societal expectations on the society he is visiting, so how evil can that be? And if we go that far, does that stand as a proclamation that a person who does nothing but BELIEVE in slavery itself isn't evil? Or of you keep him evil, and that's the only thing that defines his evil alignment, does that stand as a proclamation of the reverse? Is the average Chelaxian evil for coexisting functionally in the country of his birth?
Hmmm no, that way lies madness. All topics worthy of exploring in fiction and historical analysis (as has been done millions of times by now), but in a game? Not sure it's worth the trouble it could cause.
Being evil generally requires being malicious too. If the character were raised in an environment where slavery was the norm and he accepted it as just the way things are, then he would not be evil. But if he were educated on just how bad slavery is and still thought there was nothing wrong with it, then you are getting close to evil. If the character actively goes out to help capture new slaves or runaway slaves even though he knows slavery is wrong, then he could be called evil. The average person in the US South pre-Civil War who did not understand the evils of slavery was not evil, just like the average person in Nazi Germany who did not understand what was being done to Jews and other ethnicities was not evil.
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As mentioned above, some sort of catalyst for this odd belief should probably be worked into the backstory.
Perhaps his family worked near a dwarven mine, running a business that depended upon that mine (such as merchants who sold and / or transported the refined ore). He grew up seeing dirty rough-skinned dwarves working alongside some of his older family members, always treating them relatively deferentially (to get the best deals for their wares), and with the few dwarves who spent any time at all visiting the area of town devoted to the human traders being drunken louts who wandered out of the dwarf quarter to 'stir something up' and got escorted out by human authorities. His family (or at least the one's he respected enough to emulate) were racist enough to blame any fluctuation in the markets or shortage of supplies on 'lazy dwarves' or 'dwarven cheating,' adding to that notion that, even if the dwarves were free men, that "things would have been better if *we'd* been in charge, and they'd just done as they were told."
And then the mine played out or monsters were encountered, or whatever, and the little mini-town that had sprung up around the mine fell on hard times. The PC blames the dwarves on being too weak or too soft or too stupid to have dealt with whatever problem was happening with the mine, or even to have *deliberately* faked the problems to get the humans to move away, so that they could deal with fellow dwarves directly and not have to deal with human middle-men as merchants and caravan-leaders and whatnot.
To reinforce this notion, either the dwarves were utterly wiped out, according to rumor, after the humans left because the local economy had gone south, 'proving' that the dwarves couldn't hack it without human guidance and 'needed humans overseeing them,' or the dwarves struck a new vein or repelled the monster invasion with dwarven reinforcements and know had all the money to themselves, 'proving' that it was all a trick to get rid of the humans.
Naturally, the PCs own family fell on hard times, having had to borrow to maintain their business in the early lean years, before they gave up and left, leading to their utter ruin, and possibly the suicide of a beloved family member (or just that family member taking what little of value was left and abandoning the rest of the family, which the PC would rather not remember as anything other than 'papa's death').
He's constructed an elaborate rationale for how 'those filthy ingrateful dwarves!' are to blame for everything that went wrong in his early life, for the implosion of his family, for his fall from best-loved son of a wealthy merchant, to fatherless refugee of financial ruin, brought so low as to see his mother 'whoring herself out' by taking a new husband from a mere guardsman in a neighboring town.
But what about other stuff? What kind of non-dwarf roleplaying situations could be affected by my PC's LE beliefs?
Depending on his backstory (from a slaving nation? delusion? personal predjudice, as above?), he might have an elaborate ranking system for other races, regarding his own race (most likely) as the most perfect, and defer to / respect only the suggestions of fellow humans. Alternately, and more appropriate for the delusion situation, he might regard another race (such as elves) as *superior* to humans, and fawn over them, at first, growing disillusioned if they aren't 'perfect enough,' and perhaps, in the fashion of a jilted lover, becoming petty and spiteful to the 'perfect elf' who has failed to live up to his expectations (and, in a party of equals, everyone using the same point-buy, the elf *will* have a few lower stats than the human, and the human will have some class abilities that the elf does not, making this realization almost inevitable, unless the human goes so far as to paint the elf's weaknesses as further indication of it's 'special-ness,' as hemophilia was once proclaimed as a sign of rarified 'royal blood').
A ranking system like this might go so far as to regard some races, such as orcs and half-orcs, as less than animals, in the 'great chain of being.'
On the other hand, if it's *only* dwarves that he's got a specific thing about, other properties associated with dwarves could be regarded with a wary eye. He might find heavy armor to be 'suspicious,' or people who live underground, for whatever reason, or miners and craftsmen in general, considering it 'low' work, twisting things into other things. Not even a human blacksmith or weaponsmith or armorsmith will get more than a perfunctory payment for their services and perhaps a sour look, as he regards such things as beneath a human.
He'd be scornful of humans who don't keep their faces clean-shaven, as he associates beards with low class and low behavior. The smallest and neatest of goatees or mustaches would be acceptable, perhaps even encouraged, but he would have trouble taking seriously any human with a full or unruly beard. He might even have aphorisms that don't necessarily have anything to do with dwarves related to this dislike of full beards, saying that one should never trust a merchant who hides his face, because if he hides his face, it's because he has something to hide and is untrustworthy...
For weapons, he would prefer weapons that are not also *tools,* with the hammer and pick being the worst offenders, but also the axe. The pinnacle of perfection (should his class choice allow it) would be the sword, mace or crossbow, made only for use as a weapon. Daggers, axes, hammers, scythes, sickles, nets, whips, etc. all exist both as tools (if for hunting, if nothing else) and weapons, and, in his eyes, are 'slave weapons,' made for workers who have been pressed into the militia as peasant levies. Hunting weapons (bow, spear, sling) would avoid some of this stigma, but still, the crossbow, mace and sword would be preferred above them.
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Is this set in Golarion? Religion is always an easy reason for fantasy racism. If so, I could see some of twisted logic involving the Starstone, or the death of Aroden. Maybe its the dwarves' fault. Or they're to be blamed for prophecies no longer being accurate. Maybe the cosmos is punishing everyone on Golarion with the Eye of Abendego because of the dwarves' Quest for the Sky? If the Sky Citadels didnt exist, Aroden would come back...
I'd make him a "true believer" of Aroden, from a fairly remote and xenophobic human settlement which has distorted and corrupted the memory of their fallen god.
I've been wrestling with "where is this guy from?" with regards to Golarion as well, and the "backwards-ass village run by an extremist Aroden cult" is what came to mind here too, with a bit of flavoring from Zarus from Races of Destiny and the Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40k(both of whom colored my early perception of Aroden perhaps unfairly as a racist god, before it was shown that he was still more forward thinking than Findellendara).
His parents or a close relative could be a Druid.Why Druids hate Dwarves
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His parents or a close relative could be a Druid.Why Druids hate Dwarves
But...but... Pikel!! DOO-DAD!!!!!!
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Thanks guys.
"Why dwarves?"
Hmmm, I dunno, it just seems to click for me thinking about this PC; probably because I really like dwarves in D&D. As opposed to Elves (which, as you may remember from other Threads, like all D&D players with a SOUL, I hate D&D elves. And gnomes, nah, just doesn't fit. Yeah, gotta be Dwarves.
What is his rationale for dwarven-slavery?
At first, this didn't seem at all important to me. I couldn't really come up with a rationale for this -- How does any racist rationalize? I dunno, it just didn't seem that the cause was important, just the symptom. In fact, it's even better if he can't rationalize his antisocial views. Think about it, if I realy could come up with justifications for in-game roleplaying, it might lead to table friction.
But...."You want proof that Dwarves are less intelligent than other races? Dwarves just aren't smart enough to handle magic. That takes a higher level of Intelligence that only Humans and Elves have.
This is really good. I have to use it. Thanks.
In fact, that whole list of slurs will make a nice copy/paste sheet that I can use in-game, occassionally going to it for a "comment."
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As a player in the game, I wouldn't really buy that your character believed that to be the natural order of things unless he was raised in a region where that WAS the norm.
I'll have to take this into consideration with the other Players. Typically, though, Players (in my groups) think about only their own PC background with detail; most of their energy is focused on the Campaign details (of course, those are my campaigns). And Players really only "browse" the other PCs' backgrounds.
But other than that, it might be too close to walking a line too subjective and perhaps politically sensitive to really explore in gaming without going over the top.
Nah, we're all good and mature roleplayers. And if I say something from Rez's sheet that appears to make someone uncomfortable then I have no problem breaking character and stepping outside of the game to apoligize and not use remarks like that again. But, again, I don't think that'll happen.
Does it really make him evil to be a product of his environment?
Well, attempts to fit the D&D "game" alignments to real life, and vice/versa, while it's my absolutely favorite part of D&D, doesn't really work well. Suffice it to say that I think if a PC (or NPC) believes in slavery, oppression and caste systems, he's LE.
(The PC) doesn't even dislike dwarves, so... he doesn't actually express any cruelty to them
True but he wouldn't be disturbed, or even bothered, when seeing slaves treated badly. If he owned dwarves he'd be rather benevolent toward them. But other slave owners are different. Anyway, it's still LE.
....or attempt to perpetuate his societal expectations on the society he is visiting, so how evil can that be? And if we go that far, does that stand as a proclamation that a person who does nothing but BELIEVE in slavery itself isn't evil?
See, I think this is where real life morality, when mixed with D&D alignment, gets a little too dynamic to make absolute RAW interpretations (which is why it's my favorite part of D&D). For the record, though, what you're describing is a branch of Ethics called Relativism, which is a proven "bust" as a moral system. Relativism is accepted as "hogwash" in Ethics.
Does (his view of Dwarves) stand as a proclamation of the reverse? Is the average Chelaxian evil for coexisting functionally in the country of his birth?
AWESOME!!! This is a great question. Worthy of much discourse. Just not in this Thread where I'm trying to figure out how to play this PC concept.
Not sure it's worth the trouble it could cause.
LOL!
Yes, I am often very alone in my enthusiasm for taking on alignment issues in-game.
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Being evil generally requires being malicious too.
Interesting word there, "generally."
If the character were raised in an environment where slavery was the norm and he accepted it as just the way things are, then he would not be evil.
Wow. As much as want to stick to my OP, this is too good.
Let me throw out a scenario.
In a civilization where wife-beating is acceptable, is it wrong for a man to merely hit his wife occassionally because "everyone else does it" because it's the norm?
See, this is why Relativism is hogwash. When in Rome do as the Romans do... but what if they are cannibals, or wife-beaters, or ethnic cleansers who believe in genocide? Relativism falls in the face of Deontology (the final word in Ethics).
In real life we don't have evil. We have "permissable" and "not permissable." We have "social" and "antisocial" behavior. That's how come fitting real life morality in the D&D alignment system can get too complicated.
Not that I'm saying your wrong in this case, it's pretty interesting. Just that, good or bad, it's not a Relative argument that makes it such.
The average person in (antibellum US) who did not understand the evils of slavery was not evil, just like the average person in Nazi Germany who did not understand what was being done to Jews and other ethnicities was not evil.
So if I'm raised in a society that deems incest permissable it's okay to sleep with my parents, or my children?
I think you may be trying to say that, living in that society doesn't make one bad, only if one participates, even with clear conscience, is one bad.
I agree with this.
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As mentioned above, some sort of catalyst for this odd belief should probably be worked into the backstory.
Perhaps...
This is an attempt to try and justify the unjustifiable. I think it lessens the fact that he's evil. A bad person who is bad just because is more dispicable than a bad person with a sad story.
(Other cool stuff)
I like the idea of casting all the common races in a certain caste. It just takes time to picture the whole PC, part of which may take actual game play.
Thanks.
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I've been wrestling with "where is this guy from?"
Cool, but I think that trying to come up with a backstory to explain his view lessens the "evilness" of his view.
For the record, the original concept for this character was an NPC concept in a comunity in the "Near" Underdark (close to the surface), a community of Duergar and Humans (all LE) with slaves, mostly Duergar but also some Humans and captured Dwarves.
The concept was pretty quickly deteriorating into a stereotypical, lame cliche. Until I thought maybe at a young age he leaves the Near-Underdark and becomes a PC.
Then he's interesting.
Thus the OP.
Okay, I think you need to flesh this guy out a little bit more.
He hates dwarves and thinks they should be slaves. Awesome. But how does this fall in with the rest of his character?
Is his main goal to see the enslavement of dwarves? As in, he is actively pursuing this ideal? If a dwarf has "risen above his proper place" (ie he becomes the mayor of a multi-race town), will he try to "fix" the situation? If so, how does he usually do this? Murder? Spreading lies? Or simply by whatever means necessary?
Or is he a passive racist? Is he simply staunch in his beliefs, but won't go any further than voicing his opinions out loud?
And how does he act when he's not doing something concerned with dwarfs? Obviously he's not always around them. So is he a nice and fun companion if you aren't a dwarf? Or is he still a self-centered jerk, who is only really looking out for himself?
Personally, I think it would be awesome to see a character who is extremely LG (saves kittens from burning buildings, helps innocents for free, donates any extra money to charity, etc), but is secretly and extremely LE when it comes to dwarves. And he will go out of his way whenever possible to sabotage any dwarf that goes above his station- so long as he doesn't think he will be caught.
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Okay, I think you need to flesh this guy out a little bit more.
Yes, very much.
He hates dwarves and thinks they should be slaves. Awesome. But how does this fall in with the rest of his character?
Well he doesn't hate dwarves. He just thinks their appropriate lot in life is to be slaves.
As far as the "rest of his character," yeah, there's nothing else at this point. Nothing.
Excepth the inkling that whatever this character becomes it will likely fit with the Rogue class or Rogue/Cleric.
And, strictly speaking, since I rarely get to run PCs, he may never even see game play.
Or is he a passive racist? Is he simply staunch in his beliefs, but won't go any further than voicing his opinions out loud?
Yeah, this is more like it. Whatever campaign the DM runs would take the place here, anyway.
And how does he act when he's not doing something concerned with dwarfs?
This is exactly what I asked in the OP. That is the question.
Personally, I think....
This is what I'm looking for.
And I think you hit the nail on the head. I think a usually LG personality and rescuer of kittens, etc., who feels that Dwarves are a "sub" race, a race intended only as slaves for labor and as war-fodder foot soldiers, as being intrinsically less than the other standard races, really works.
It would be awesome.
But I disagree that his view of Dwarves would be secret. By being secret, it's like he really knows it's wrong. Thus he keeps it to himself. He would tell his friends his beliefs (just like Republicans, do)
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"These native peoples (of Africa/the Americas) have darker skin than (we). That makes them look like monkeys.
LOL. This makes me laugh.
"These people run around naked in the jungles like animals. .... We shall domesticate them."
(my bold)
LMAO!
Dude, this is priceless, how do you come up with this?
"Slavery is in the Bible and Jesus didn't speak against it. When asked, he said something about how the servant should be faithful to the master and the wife be faithful to the husband and all that. Preacher says so every Sunday after some Abolitionist comes to town, so it must be right. Jesus said slavery is fine and that's fine by me."
OMG!
ROTHLMAO, literally. This wins. You gotta love those Christians.|
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"These people run around naked in the jungles like animals. .... We shall domesticate them."(my bold)
LMAO!
Dude, this is priceless, how do you come up with this?
Lot's of people still have this sort of mentality today, that we should go over to foreign countries and teach them how to live right, 'cause they can't be trusted to make their own decisions or choose their own governments.
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Ah, The American Hegemonic Empire at its best.
I love my country but damn, for quite a few years now I've seriously considered becoming an ExPat.
... About 6 months ago one of my good buddies (from London) and I were having a "lets domesticate the animals" conversation. One of his friends had accepted a position with UN or something whereupon she would spend her summer (she was a Grad student) handing out laptops to village children in Africa, "making them better." She would be paid $30K to give laptops to 3rd World kids.
This sounded reasonable to me, Humanitarian and all.
But I guess that's why my PHD is in Literature and not Anthropology, right?!
My buddy ripped into me about how horrible it was. From his experiences (he's a MA in Cult. ANTH and 3rd World Geography) in Africa all these kids that get things like a laptop or tv or whatever are A) universally ostracized by the other kids because they're different, B) more likely to get mugged by military or gov't folks looking for an American laptop and occassionally C) resentful of Western society because they wern't sooo thankful to their Western "heros."
I tried to argue that, despite that (problems that could be fixed), the ideal of doing this was still great. Make the world better.
He ripped into me again.
This time because How dare I say what's good for their society. (What can I say, I'm an American, raised and educated on our views).
I said, Wait, Self Actualization is the goal for every person!! How can some 3rd World rancher/farmer help his kids Self Actualize when they grow up with no education, etc.
Ayup, American bred, all the way, I was.
Who are we to say one can't find Self Actualization unless one is educated, etc.?
I didn't like the sound of it. I still felt I was right and my buddy was at least somewhat wrong. I still believe very strongly in education. Moreso, I believe in growing up with opportunities -- having the chance to be something other than what one's parents are.
But, in thinking about it, I do teach a story called "The Son from America" and occassionally "Another April." I occassionally teach Mukherjee, Jen and Achebe. When you look at much of this, especially "The Son from America," you do see that people can Self Actualize without education.
Heck, even we have said this. Many of the Romantics argued this. It's what Transcendentalism is all about. And even though I'm not a big critic of Wordsworth, much of his poetry really hits this point.("Another April" is American, BTW)
So, I have to admit, my buddy is right.
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Dude, this is priceless, how do you come up with this?
Much as I hate to have to say this ... all of these are genuine, historical rationalizations for the practice of slavery and racism over the millennia.
Oh, I know all that. It was just hysterical to see it all in one place. It's like that Thread in the Off-Topic Forumn where a non-American asks what could possibly be the argument against Health Care. And the very next post someone gives a top ten list of reasons, including remarking that those people only watch Fox "News."
It's just funny seeing it all in one place like that.