I think it is my fatal flaw, but every time in a dungeon when we get to the orc/goblin/whatever nursery, I tell everybody else, "okay, get out of here. I'll take care of this......"
and then everybody like is totally ready to kill my character.......
am I wicked?
I think it is my fatal flaw, but every time in a dungeon when we get to the orc/goblin/whatever nursery, I tell everybody else, "okay, get out of here. I'll take care of this......"
and then everybody like is totally ready to kill my character.......am I wicked?
So whats their plan then?
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Well, as dm, I did have a orphanage for the little bastiches, started by an adventurer who set up a trust fund for their care, out of the loot garnered from wiping out their tribe.
The prepubescent kobolds were little messagerunners, in smart blue tabards.
They'd bite the copperpiece that the receiver tipped them, and trot off merrily......
As long as they weren't planning on leaving them to fend for themselves or something easily as evil as outright killing them okay then. But i love when one player stops someone from killing a evil baby dragon cuz its a baby then explains that they will cage it up and leave it to starve. Always gets the best looks.
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Our evil fantasy races in literature are often just juiced up metaphors for those who would in the real world invade us, bully us, kill us, rape us... real people acting as basely as our animalistic potential allows. They are... the enemy. And yet we all know there are so many exceptions to every rule that real life is not the black and white of fantasy. So in game, must we play with black and whites as is the traditional standard, or are we allowed to meddle with the form and play with a wide range of grays of it suits us? Must I say this orc baby is a creature of pure that will never change, even if given proper nuturing to help reform its nature, or are we allowed, as game designers and roleplayers, to play whatever the hell we want to play based on our preferences?
You certainly can play whatever you want. All I want people to do is be honest about what they are doing.
And I get a bit insulted when people act like taking a game of heroic fantasy adventure and turning into a nihilistic moral quagmire somehow makes you more mature or more evolved as gamers. It really doesn't.
I personally find that style of gaming deeply, deeply depressing. What I want from gaming is a opportunity to escape reality and go into the fantasy where good and evil are objective and good can defeat evil through combat. I want to both play and run adventures for the good guys, not for the deluded imperialist dicks who think they're the good guys.
I also don't want to play or run adventures in a world where any course of action that will result in good ends is going to take a lifetime of hard work requiring soul-crushing compromises for almost no reward. If that's what I was looking for, I'd work for Doctors Without Borders or volunteer with the Peace Corps.
You'll notice that the D&D game 100% supports that style of play, and is built around supporting it. The alignment system is deeply integrated into the game, the good guys are all shining paragons of ass-kicking and the evil guys are all completely depraved black-clad nightmare things.
The style of play I prefer, Iomedae is the goddess of valiant heroes who resolutely commit themselves to battling the forces of evil to keep the world safe. In the style of play being contrasted against that, Iomedae is the zealot god of a bunch of Aryan Supermen out to conquer and destroy half of the universe because its ugly and the victim of bad parenting. Paladins aren't shining virtuous warriors, they're either fascistic zealots of the worst stripe - or worse, they're super social workers who have been granted a massive set of powers that mostly serve to get them stripped of their paladin status if they use them.
Hellboy made a DEMON friendly, and cat loving. And that's what made it fun for me.
Hellboy also made that demon the good guy.
There's at least a categorical difference between the question of killing evil infants and committing genocide against an evil race, but me saying that is just an excuse to say, "If eatin' babies is so wrong then why were they born so damn tasty?"
Yep gotta agree here Gail just think of how awesome LOTR would have been if we had stopped to try and reform the "Misguided" orcs and goblins.
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There's at least a categorical difference between the question of killing evil infants and committing genocide against an evil race, but me saying that is just an excuse to say, "If eatin' babies is so wrong then why were they born so damn tasty?"
Not really.
If it is acceptable to kill evil because it is evil, then it is equally acceptable no matter what its age is, or how many you kill of them. If killing one ogre is morally inconsequential, then so is killing one infant ogre or killing all ogres.
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Our evil fantasy races in literature are often just juiced up metaphors for those who would in the real world invade us, bully us, kill us, rape us... real people acting as basely as our animalistic potential allows. They are... the enemy. And yet we all know there are so many exceptions to every rule that real life is not the black and white of fantasy. So in game, must we play with black and whites as is the traditional standard, or are we allowed to meddle with the form and play with a wide range of grays of it suits us? Must I say this orc baby is a creature of pure that will never change, even if given proper nuturing to help reform its nature, or are we allowed, as game designers and roleplayers, to play whatever the hell we want to play based on our preferences?You certainly can play whatever you want. All I want people to do is be honest about what they are doing.
And I get a bit insulted when people act like taking a game of heroic fantasy adventure and turning into a nihilistic moral quagmire somehow makes you more mature or more evolved as gamers. It really doesn't.
I personally find that style of gaming deeply, deeply depressing. What I want from gaming is a opportunity to escape reality and go into the fantasy where good and evil are objective and good can defeat evil through combat. I want to both play and run adventures for the good guys, not for the deluded imperialist dicks who think they're the good guys.
I also don't want to play or run adventures in a world where any course of action that will result in good ends is going to take a lifetime of hard work requiring soul-crushing compromises for almost no reward. If that's what I was looking for, I'd work for Doctors Without Borders or volunteer with the Peace Corps.
You'll notice that the D&D game 100% supports that style of play, and is built around supporting it. The alignment system is deeply integrated into the game, the good guys are all shining...
Gallbraithe, I've dotted around people's responses to the OP and much of the subsequent conversations, but I haven't closely followed the dust up on this issue so I didn't understand the context of your mentioning folks being honest. My thesis, though as usual bloated in its delivery, only meant to say that in the games I play, even the white on black games, exterminating a race that doesn't pose a clear and imminent extermination risk for my own race or another race I believed needed to be saved strikes me as an evil act. I don't hold a strong soapbox opinion about this subject. I just haven't opened my mouth about anything remotely gaming theory on Paizo in many months and thought this was as good a topic as any to weigh in and share thoughts. Figures I'd pick a thread where people are angry.
Why no genocide in my games? Maybe it's cuz I'm Jewish on my mom's side and I bring that from real world history into my fantasy games like baggage. I dunno. But my fantasy doesn't involve genocide nor do I ever harbor a desire to kill off every single member of an evil race. If someone else wants to kill off all of an evil race, I assume they're acting out something that brings them pleasure and I don't judge them for it or think them intellectual inferiors. It's just too absolute and unsatisfying a broad stroke for my tastes.
You've laid out what you like in a game. Fine by me. All looks good. My gaming hails all the way back to the wood box D&D days, and playing good characters that often fight clearly bad creatures and people has always been a classic and natural fit. I like the white and black universe and doing good because it feels good just fine. Is it the only trope I enjoy exploring? No... 37 years since my first game and I love when a change up comes my way. I stopped caring about +5 this and that a long time ago. Not because I'm so evolved or in any way a better player, but because I don't enjoy playing the exact same adventure twice. That's probably why my game design is so many leveled/layered and ambitious, something that must really turn off those who want to pick up and adventure and run it without study... I just want to write the games I'd like to play.
If people think their game is more mature and evolved because they introduce moral quagmires and gray on gray, what of it? Who cares? Many people seem to hold their style of play and preferences in higher regard than those that differ and want to give complete strangers lecture about it. I'm a vegetarian, but when someone announces, "steak is the best, b!tches!" I don't consider their opinion something I need to battle for the holy name of all vegetabledom. ;)
About Hellboy being a good guy, I'm in no way arguing that point nor was his mention intended to address any of your points, I was saying that if a demon can be turned good in a universe where they tend to always be bad, and I enjoy that occurence, then I can certainly enjoy a world where evil races have exceptions. The existence of such exceptions would give me pause before considering genocide of an evil race, which is an absolute judgment of and punishment for all beings of a certain race.
There's at least a categorical difference between the question of killing evil infants and committing genocide against an evil race, but me saying that is just an excuse to say, "If eatin' babies is so wrong then why were they born so damn tasty?"Not really.
If it is acceptable to kill evil because it is evil, then it is equally acceptable no matter what its age is, or how many you kill of them. If killing one ogre is morally inconsequential, then so is killing one infant ogre or killing all ogres.
I really wasn't kidding when I said it was all a set-up to a line of humor. I tried it without the set-up line and it just sat there. Let's not autopsy my failed joke cuz that would make me sad.
Jade, because they evolved that way, so you won't eat the adults. Or Desna decided they should be. Take your pick.
Thank you! Morality has no place in a discussion about evil baby cuisine.
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If people think their game is more mature and evolved because they introduce moral quagmires and gray on gray, what of it?
Because that implies that if undertake the herculean effort of constructing my game world so that it portrays a universe where Good and Evil are locked in a perpetual state of war, filling in all the blanks in D&D's implied cosmology in such a way that it all still holds together rationally, that I am somehow less mature and less evolved than people who have accidentally designed their world to be a nihilistic moral quagmire in which no side can ever truly be heroic, while deluding themselves into thinking that they have created a gray vs gray morality.
I started playing D&D when I was 11, running total mindless hack n slash for my eleven year old friends in the fourth grade. By the time I was in my late teens and early 20s, I was running what I thought was a sophisticated and far more evolved game of gray vs gray moral conflict.
Then I went to college and studied ethics and the law, read Kant and took philosophy courses. And you know what I realized? What people were calling gray on gray was actually a nihilistic moral quagmire, and that these people really had no idea what "gray vs gray" meant. And I was one of them.
So I went back to the drawing boards, and spent years working out how to get around the problem. For awhile I embraced the whole moral quagmire, and deliberately crafted worlds where "murderous hobos" was the point. I went straight into D&D Noir, even working up rules for post-traumatic stress and the slow corruption of violence and gore.
And eventually I realized that's just not fun for most people. It's depressing. But heroism is fun, and getting to be heroic is awesome, so I went back to the drawing board and decided to get to the basics of the game, embrace the alignment system, and make the game an experience that would give players a chance to feel genuinely heroic and good for using all of their optimized feats and combat abilities to totally whup ass from levels 1 - 20, and still leave room for actual moral gray areas.
And after that twenty+ year journey, I'll be ****** if I'm going to let anyone tell me that they are more mature and evolved a gamer than I am because they play in a style I abandoned seventeen years ago.
About Hellboy being a good guy, I'm in no way arguing that point nor was his mention intended to address any of your points, I was saying that if a demon can be turned good in a universe where they tend to always be bad, and I enjoy that occurence, then I can certainly enjoy a world where evil races have exceptions. The existence of such exceptions would give me pause before considering genocide of an evil race, which is an absolute judgment of and punishment for all beings of a certain race.
And I'm saying that the existence of such exceptions should give you pause before killing any member of that species. But if you read through this thread, very few people are taking the time to pause and work out the actual consequences of what the existence of such exceptions demonstrates.
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And I agree with TOZ that this thread is winding down, so I'll just throw out one more point to screw with everybody's head:
If exterminating every member of an evil species is evil, then is killing the Tarrasque evil?
Because if genocide of an evil species is evil itself, and the Tarrasque is a single example of a unique species, then killing the Tarrasque is genocide, and thus evil.
Which really makes no sense.
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Moot point, the Tarrasque cannot be killed, ever, cause Paizo said so. :)
::raise eyebrow:: Did they now?
No form of attack can suppress the tarrasque's regeneration—it regenerates even if disintegrated or slain by a death effect. If the tarrasque fails a save against an effect that would kill it instantly, it rises from death 3 rounds later with 1 hit point if no further damage is inflicted upon its remains. It can be banished or otherwise transported as a means to save a region, but the method to truly kill it has yet to be discovered.
Assume, for the sake of argument, the method has been discovered (I say "drop it into an active star").
In most fantasy books I've ever read, it's seldom been the forces of good saying, "We need to eradicate each and every one of these buggers from the world... bring me their wretched infants, my diregator ain't gonna feed himself!" so much as "We need to drive them back/seal them away/banish them to the dark plane of bloodpoo from whence they came."
On the other hand, that is done by evil quite often. Prophecy says child born before some celestial alignment will kill me, I order all women and children killed because this celestial alignment hasn't happened yet... in fact, kill the men too, cause the prophecy doesn't say how long before the celestial alignment the child was born.
As for the Tarrasque, the pre-Paizo way IIRC to kill it was a carefully worded Wish or Miracle spell. Me personally, I think that's a cop out. Make it unknown. Sure, that MIGHT be the way to kill it, but don't spell it out so easily in the Bestiary.
My Ma was a kender.Would killing ALL Kender be less than totally good?
Is that a yes or no?
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And I get a bit insulted when people act like taking a game of heroic fantasy adventure and turning into a nihilistic moral quagmire somehow makes you more mature or more evolved as gamers. It really doesn't.
I'm going to take a break from my usual gadflian fun to say I really sympathize with your comment here. I don't feel insulted exactly, but insistence on this sure wears. Some folks have posted some pleas for more heroic stuff in Pathfinder. I want to say Jason Nelson was one of the folks leading the pack on this, but my memory is not going to be able to say who all and where all this was on the boards.
Oh, and Hellboy is awesome. He's an Origenist's dream come true.
PS Origen is also awesome.
PPS Rone, if your mom was Jewish, according to the 1948 Law of Return, you are also Jewish. You probably knew this already, but I didn't (about you). Halakhic issues aside.
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Assume, for the sake of argument, the method has been discovered (I say "drop it into an active star").
Then absolutely. (That method would render it pretty harmless, but I doubt it would kill it. Might even be considered Evil since you're subjecting it to an eternity of constant pain.) But yes, then you would have a weird moral situtation.
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If people think their game is more mature and evolved because they introduce moral quagmires and gray on gray, what of it?Because that implies that if undertake the herculean effort of constructing my game world so that it portrays a universe where Good and Evil are locked in a perpetual state of war, filling in all the blanks in D&D's implied cosmology in such a way that it all still holds together rationally, that I am somehow less mature and less evolved than people who have accidentally designed their world to be a nihilistic moral quagmire in which no side can ever truly be heroic, while deluding themselves into thinking that they have created a gray vs gray morality.
But people in this world are all deluded into thinking their positions correct. Even those thinking themselves armed with cold hard facts and the power of irrefutable and dispassionate logic often have barrels full of baseless propaganda masking itself as verity. This leads to bigger troubles and questions than I personally feel the need to call out specifically as they pertain to gaming. But sure, people telling me that my ideas and what I enjoy is juvenile would certainly suck and hurt my feelings. Not because of being looked down on; rather, the fact that they'd dare show such disrespectful temerity in expressing it. Is that happening to you often? <--I'm not baiting. I'm really just asking because you seem really peeved about this.
Some people confuse opinion with fact. If it matters, I in no way think you're a trog for devising and enjoying a universe that's completely us vs them that reach a nuclear option boiling point. It just may not be my cup of tea. I don't like Big Bang Theory though everyone else seems to. I'm quite certain that I'm not a stupid person, and I know that the people who enjoy the show aren't stupid either. And comedy is my favorite art form and I have broad taste. So where does that leave us but the old maxim there's no accounting for taste. And it's true, there really isn't.
Gray on gray is actually satisfying for a good few people I knew, and is certainly the basis of many lasting, quality films, but sure, I do prefer heroism to profiteering myself, but only because that reflects where my fantasies aim, not because that sort of heroism tale is inherently better than a different kind of story with grittier characters and shifty agendas. My friend Lou is always trying to backstab in games. His characters are almost purely larcenous. But in real life, he's a saint. Salt of the earth. He just likes going different places than I do in game. But he's never called my good guys Pollyana. However, if he had, whatever. I can't worry about failing the expectations of others, I choose to worry about failing my expectations of self. But again, that's just my own strategy for self, not my advice to the world. As you've seen, I look under my own hood in public. I've been arrested for it five times, but that was during a snorkeling vacation in South Carolina. Those people just don't seem to like me.
Now as for Hellboy, his existence is why I wouldn't commit genocide on an allegedly absolute evil race such as demons, because his existence suggests they may not actually all be purely evil. But in a RPG all about chop chop, go get your head b!tch, I don't have a problem spilling the blood of those who charge at me with spears. Violence in a game is fun. That said, I try not to stab people in real life and I'm getting much better at it since I started with the new pills. True to form, I can't seem to bring myself to slit throats while evil NPC guards sleep. I guess my roleplay skills are a bit limited by my personal morality seeping through. Author Nick Logue once said of me, "I don't think Rone (That's my name) can betray others or be a bad guy in a game." Well listen, I prefer Mariana Trench deep roleplay to combat oriented wargaming. I played a game of Sorceror as a Dominican tranny whose missing phantom penis was her talking demon (In case you don't, you'd have to know the game for that to make any sense) and I didn't break character for eight hours, torturing everyone around me with a poor Rosie Perez accent. Despite a fight or two, I didn't have to kill anything that day and it was still a blast. My character really was a well meaning, stick up for her friends sort, so even my phantom penis demon characters are do rights. If I had a point to any of this I lost it, and looking back at that teetering stack of text is far too intimidating for me to fish it for a conclusive theme. Me go sleep now. Me tired.
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In most fantasy books I've ever read, it's seldom been the forces of good saying, "We need to eradicate each and every one of these buggers from the world... bring me their wretched infants, my diregator ain't gonna feed himself!" so much as "We need to drive them back/seal them away/banish them to the dark plane of bloodpoo from whence they came."
On the other hand, that is done by evil quite often. Prophecy says child born before some celestial alignment will kill me, I order all women and children killed because this celestial alignment hasn't happened yet... in fact, kill the men too, cause the prophecy doesn't say how long before the celestial alignment the child was born.
Yeah, I think evil goblin children are sung grating genocidal lullabies at night before their parents punch them to sleep.
My Ma was a kender.Would killing ALL Kender be less than totally good?
Is that a yes or no?
Dude, it's my MA! Don't make me answer that question in public.
PPS Rone, if your mom was Jewish, according to the 1948 Law of Return, you are also Jewish. You probably knew this already, but I didn't (about you). Halakhic issues aside.
I did know that, but thanks for taking the time to teach me, my friend. I'm sure it's news to someone reading along.
It's a tricky thing. I've seen people distinguish themselves as half-Jewish as a way of deflecting anti-semitism they feared might be lodged at them, but I've never experienced it, with the exception of people expressing "positive" stereotypes such as smarts and money-sense. Annoyingly smallminded but far short of a feelings hurter.
I never mean to insult my Jewish blood when I say "Jewish on my mother's side," but if I say I'm just Jewish then I'm failing the mention the Dutch Prussian, English, Irish and Scottish on my father's side. Not to mention this freakish Nigerian protuberance down below that no one can explain. Not doctors, clergy, or poets.
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But people in this world are all deluded into thinking their positions correct. Even those thinking themselves armed with cold hard facts and the power of irrefutable and dispassionate logic often have barrels full of baseless propaganda masking itself as verity. This leads to bigger troubles and questions than I personally feel the need to call out specifically as they pertain to gaming.
Sure, and if you read back over my posts you'll see that I use a two tiered alignment system. People in my world are deluded into thinking they are good. Even evil people in my world have a conscience that yearns to be clear, and that can be appealed to.
And I often use my game for exploring real world issues - the campaign I discussed in this thread has a major conflict between Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral forces that is entirely gray vs gray.
There's also the issue of a tribe of lizardmen (Neutral!) who have lived in a nearby swamp for millenia. They're very unfriendly and xenophobic, and if their land was drained it would be great farmland, but they aren't evil and all they want is to be left alone. That's gray vs gray, you can't solve that problem by beating it to death.
But the monsters in my world aren't people. The orcs aren't some horribly racist analog to troubled minority groups (which is how a lot of "good orcs" come off), they're anti-people. They are what the evil side has instead of humans. They all think they are good too, but their concept of "good" involves a lot of pain, suffering and ultimately the destruction of the universe - which is why they worship foul and hideous alien forces that are seeking to blow up reality. Orcs have a conscience to, and it cries out in pain when they pass up an opportunity to inflict pain and misery on the weak and helpless. A happy, well-adjusted orc with healthy self-esteem is a nearly unstoppable berzerker that will decorate the walls with your innards for a laugh.
And its not because they were raised wrong, its because every living thing really does have a soul (it's a fantasy world!) and some things have dark souls that are bound for Hell from the moment of their conception.
And you don't have to worry about killing things with dark souls. Most of them don't have young, they don't form societies, they exist entirely as marauding bands of nastiness that tend to multiply in the summer months and make life hell on the borderlands, where they haven't been exterminated and their birthing grounds have been blessed, purified and destroyed.
But sure, people telling me that my ideas and what I enjoy is juvenile would certainly suck and hurt my feelings. Is that happening to you often? <--I'm not baiting. I'm really just asking because you seem really peeved about this.
It's been a constant trend in discussions of gaming since the early 90's when White Wolf and storyteller games became popular, and pretentiousness became the new thing in gaming. Most people don't even realize they are doing it.
Well listen, I prefer Mariana Trench deep roleplay to combat oriented wargaming.
Like see, you just did it there. My campaigns are not "combat oriented wargaming." I play Warhammer (beastmen, brentonians, dark elves) and Warhammer 40K (orks, space marines). If I want wargaming, I've got wargames. The campaign I've been describing is about exploration, colonization and nation building. It has deep political struggles brewing under the surface, scores of NPCs going about their lives to interact with, and it also happens to have wild lands full of slavering beasts to fight.
Because, you know, I'm playing Pathfinder. I assume when I put together a gaming group to play Pathfinder, I will get at least a few guys who want to have some high combat sessions. I assume I'll get some role-players. And I can easily accommodate both without having to throw the combat players into a moral quagmire to satisfy the role-playing interests of the role-players.
I played a game of Sorceror...
I've got a copy of Sorceror. Its a cool game. Much better for pure role-playing purposes than Pathfinder, which - as you might notice - a very combat oriented game, with lots of combat abilities to take advantage of all the combat maps and miniatures.
Playing Sorceror with Pathfinder is kind of silly when you think about it, because the rules for Pathfinder minimally support that kind of play, and the vast majority of the rules support a far more simulationist/gamist style of play.
Also, I once played a Mexican house-cleaner named Jaunita who had discovered healing powers in a six hour game of Don't Rest Your Head, so hah.
I started playing in the usual style, heroes able to bash their way through sentient Monster/Non-humanised treasure bags, without any need for self justification. Treasure and glory were the reward.
Gradually, as a player, I needed to feel that there was more to the game world than US and THEM. I enjoyed beleiving that every sentient creature has its own motivation. If their motivation harmed the ones my character loved, jeapordised his village or threatened his way of life then he would feel justified in ending the threat. The exploration of means both violent and diplomatic has, for me, been a large part of the fun. I am playing Pathfinder at the moment because the ruleset and game world support an excellent balance for either avenue.
I have travelled the road of Orcslaying Hero, Weary Footsoldier of the Empire, Guilt-wracked Monster, (and, along the way lost a clone or two to a mad computers whims) each game has it's own inbuilt ethics to explore. I play, and run, Pathfinder with a pseudo medieval outlook. Might is often seen as Right, but your adventurer can think outside the box if they wish, and buck against it (save monsterous children, persuade a tribe of kobolds to become a trade nation) it can create memorable role-play moments.
I found, as a GM, for the group I run, that they actively enjoy a little moral debate in character and in game. Setting their moral compass, within the alignment guidlines, is a natural part of their character creation. "And after that twenty+ year journey, I'll be ****** if I'm going to let anyone tell me that they are more mature and evolved a gamer than I am because they play in a style I abandoned seventeen years ago."
Should we all put up a list of our educational achievements before we post so everyone will know if we have a right to an opinion or not? (new to posts so an honest question......really.......)
Surely a lot of what makes an act good or evil in the game setting is to do with intent? If, as a good character, i kill the one good goblin in a group that has been slaughtering villagers, i would feel a bit bad after that if i knew, but next time i would still attack such group in the same way (think slaughtering Drizzt when he came up on the Drow surface raid vs the elves).
Given time to evaluate a situation I'll generally go for the solution that provides the most favourable solution for the greatest number but i'm not going to do that if a man runs out of a bar and starts hitting me with a sword- i'd hit him back, kill him if i had to, then worry about the fact that he was under an enchantment and was really a saint, and if my GM said i'd moved towards evil for doing it we'd be on que for a domestic.
My intent wouldn't have been to kill a good person in either case, guilt and possible recompense might be appropriate, navel gazing and refusing to do anything ever again wouldn't be, in the context of an action based game.
Morality needs to be somewhat individually based, if we go global we could go with total genocide all around thus reducing the total sum of human/sentient misery and achieving the optimum moral outcome based on negative utilitarian principles. (didn't elric end up doing that with stormbringer????- huh been done)
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I'm going to take a break from my usual gadflian fun to say I really sympathize with your comment here. I don't feel insulted exactly, but insistence on this sure wears. Some folks have posted some pleas for more heroic stuff in Pathfinder. I want to say Jason Nelson was one of the folks leading the pack on this, but my memory is not going to be able to say who all and where all this was on the boards.
Oh, and Hellboy is awesome. He's an Origenist's dream come true.
PS Origen is also awesome.
On the flipside though, a lot of other people are really tired of having their different but equally legitimate approach to the game knocked as well for...hell, two decades for me personally but I'm sure older gamers have been catching it for longer. "gb2wow" seems to be the common sentiment in those complaints in recent years when someone wants to have non-evil goblins/orcs/whatever.
There would be a lot less grief period if gamers weren't so quick to make value judgments on other peoples' fun and try to sell it as Truth. That whole One True Way nonsense again.
And hells yes, Origen is #$%@ing Awesome. He's been a huge influence on my homebrew cosmology. :)
A Hellboy is fine too.
Yep gotta agree here Gail just think of how awesome LOTR would have been if we had stopped to try and reform the "Misguided" orcs and goblins.And yet even Tolkien himself wasn't really comfortable with Always Chaotic Evil orcs. ;) Dude was big on the possibility of redemption.
Pardon my cynisism on this just kinda get tired of being told im actually evil because i did slaughter every goblin in the tribe that was raiding the local farm not just kill the ones in the raid and question the rest to see how they felt about it.
That's a pretty extreme example there. I'm not sure it accurately represents our side. You may want to work on that.
Oh thats a RL example not a generalzation of your side plz forgive i should have made that clear.
Pardon my cynisism on this just kinda get tired of being told im actually evil because i did slaughter every goblin in the tribe that was raiding the local farm not just kill the ones in the raid and question the rest to see how they felt about it.
Who is telling you that you are evil?
If it is the farm owners and local villagers then you should have talked over what they wanted doing before setting out on a killing spree...maybe they had a deal with the tribe and this was a one off transgression from a minority: perhaps the Goblin leader has been usurped and needs your help to fight the antisocial usurpers.
If it's a local Druid/Cleric/Moral Bigwig then argue your case in character, you may be able to convince them.
If it's the GM or other players in your game, and you are trying to play a "good" character, then communication is needed. What sort of game world morality is the GM expecting, does this mesh with the players?
If it's Players from another game...or worse...Forum users who have never even experienced your game, then ignore them.
On the flipside though, a lot of other people are really tired of having their different but equally legitimate approach to the game knocked as well for...hell, two decades for me personally but I'm sure older gamers have been catching it for longer. "gb2wow" seems to be the common sentiment in those complaints in recent years when someone wants to have non-evil goblins/orcs/whatever.
There would be a lot less grief period if gamers weren't so quick to make value judgments on other peoples' fun and try to sell it as Truth. That whole One True Way nonsense again.
Here, here. And judging by your write-ups of your groups, be it now with you as a GM or player, it works out pretty awesomely for you. Don't let some dude talking smack about your way of playing get you down.
Also, I played a session with a guy like the Simpsons Comic Book Guy brought to life.
It was horrible.
That the story you posted on the Den, with the email exchange? Otherwise, spill! :p
That's the one. A friend began reading the DMs email out loud in that voice, and it fit soooo well.
Well, drat, and I was getting geared up to hear another "bad player" horror story. There should be more of those, they are entertaining. :p
PPS Rone, if your mom was Jewish, according to the 1948 Law of Return, you are also Jewish. You probably knew this already, but I didn't (about you). Halakhic issues aside.I did know that, but thanks for taking the time to teach me, my friend. I'm sure it's news to someone reading along.
It's a tricky thing. I've seen people distinguish themselves as half-Jewish as a way of deflecting anti-semitism they feared might be lodged at them, but I've never experienced it, with the exception of people expressing "positive" stereotypes such as smarts and money-sense. Annoyingly smallminded but far short of a feelings hurter.
I never mean to insult my Jewish blood when I say "Jewish on my mother's side," but if I say I'm just Jewish then I'm failing the mention the Dutch Prussian, English, Irish and Scottish on my father's side. Not to mention this freakish Nigerian protuberance down below that no one can explain. Not doctors, clergy, or poets.
Ser gut. Vee vill only persecute zee Jewish half! Sheesh. This is the world where 92 people were killed by a nut in Norway. Okay, I'm checked back in. Sadly. I was enjoying killing goblins.
In my weekly campaign we came across a clan of ogres. Exploring the house led to a scene from a horror film with skin couches, lamps, etc. These Ogres were a pretty sick bunch. Now, my dwarves are considering killing every single ogre we come across, no quarter. They are Lawful Neutral, would this affect their alignment?
No it shouldnt effect their alignment but if they extend their actions to killing non-combatants it would be a perfect opportunity to sick a Zelekhut on the party to dole out some justice and push them back toward neutrality
Sitting during the sermon at Mass today, I thought of a paladin who would refuse to take any rational life intentionally, on the conviction that only the divine could rightly take life. Man, how the party would love that guy.
Sitting during the sermon at Mass today, I thought of a paladin who would refuse to take any rational life intentionally, on the conviction that only the divine could rightly take life. Man, how the party would love that guy.
Actually, I could really enjoy that kind of Paladin. Walk around with a leather wrapped cudgel to do non-lethal damage. If I detect evil, use my smite evil (which is the divine god doing the damage). Otherwise, I beat things into submission, and then let the law do it's job and punish them. I'm still just as effective at knocking things out of a fight, I just don't slaughter everything I fight.
I would carry a great sword, though, for evil outsiders. :)
Sitting during the sermon at Mass today, I thought of a paladin who would refuse to take any rational life intentionally, on the conviction that only the divine could rightly take life. Man, how the party would love that guy.Actually, I could really enjoy that kind of Paladin. Walk around with a leather wrapped cudgel to do non-lethal damage. If I detect evil, use my smite evil (which is the divine god doing the damage). Otherwise, I beat things into submission, and then let the law do it's job and punish them. I'm still just as effective at knocking things out of a fight, I just don't slaughter everything I fight.
I would carry a great sword, though, for evil outsiders. :)
:)
I'd like to think this is how Cuthbert the Cudgel got his start.
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Sitting during the sermon at Mass today, I thought of a paladin who would refuse to take any rational life intentionally, on the conviction that only the divine could rightly take life. Man, how the party would love that guy.Actually, I could really enjoy that kind of Paladin. Walk around with a leather wrapped cudgel to do non-lethal damage. If I detect evil, use my smite evil (which is the divine god doing the damage). Otherwise, I beat things into submission, and then let the law do it's job and punish them. I'm still just as effective at knocking things out of a fight, I just don't slaughter everything I fight.
That's a cop-out though, because the Paladin in your example is the one deciding whether he detects evil and uses his smite. The power may come from the divine, but the choice in how he uses that power is still his. And it still doesn't deal with the issue of creatures who are evil by happenstance rather than informed choice.
What Mairkurion is talking about is a Paladin following the example of Christ. You know, Christ, the guy who let the bad guys nail him to a cross just to prove how morally superior he was? The guy whose most devout followers in the medieval era chose martyrdom over resistance to evil?
That's really not a workable paradigm in a game of fantasy action/adventure.
Furthermore, a paladin is expected to keep his party on the straight and narrow. If he defines the straight and narrow as only using nonlethal attacks, he's going to demand the rest of the party follow suite...or he has to part company with them. Which I think is what Maikurion was getting at with "Man, how the party would love that guy."