Making D&D morality less repulsive.

[kzt]

If you make that a standard policy then no one will surrender to you and your battles will all be that much harder. Sun Tzu figured this out 2500 year ago. Its not a difficult principle.

Not at all. We shot Germans who showed up in US uniforms driving US marked vehicles. That is a violation of the laws of war, perfidy is the technical term iirc. We also executed the ones who showed up in the US to launch a terror campaign, even though they were totally ineffective - it WAS the thought that really counted.

We didn't shoot ALL the Germans, just the ones who did things proscribed by the laws of war. And we did that because it is strongly in the interests of civilization that gross and deliberate violations of the laws of war be rapidly and decisively punished. War when conducted by the laws of warfare is ugly and cruel, but it gets much, much worse when you ignore them.

We took huge numbers of other Germans as POWs and released them when the shooting was over.

Heck, we didn't shoot out of hand the guys who ordered and carried out the Malmedy massacure, we accepted their surrender and then tried them after the war was over. Though the process fell rather short of the ideal and resulted in all sorts of further legal stuff that eventually led to them all being at most imprisoned for years.

[Winnah]

How does the geneva convention relate to D&D or Iron Age warfare?

Civilizations divided by more than cultural differences into actual racial differences are ulikely to have agreed to any kind of international legislation...Especially in racist D&D land.

Sure, I can see longstanding allies such as 2 human nations or elves and dwarves having some kind of established rules for warfare, but a marauding tribe of troglodytes are unlikely to give a fuck about human conventions.

[Fuchs]

Heck, we didn't shoot out of hand the guys who ordered and carried out the Malmedy massacure, we accepted their surrender and then tried them after the war was over. Though the process fell rather short of the ideal and resulted in all sorts of further legal stuff that eventually led to them all being at most imprisoned for years.

Not that anyone learned anything from it - see how the My Lai massacre was handled?

[DSMatticus]

but a marauding tribe of troglodytes are unlikely to give a fuck about human conventions.

The point they're making is that paying attention to those conventions can make your enemies your friends. If you offer unconditional surrender opportunities, people will stop, mid-combat, and ask, "what the hell am I dying for?" and throw down their gun. Now, this is sort of an unheard of concept in D&D, but it would work. It's just nobody thinks it would work, because they think troglodytes are heathen savages who eat flesh for fun. The cultures are just too radically different for that connect.

But if you go back to the period of say, Greece, or Rome... You surrendered and you got to be a slave. if you were important, you got to be a slave in a noble household. If people cared about you, they would ransom you back. This is something that has persisted throughout time, into the age of knights and D&D land's rough comparisons.

Unfortunately, again, there's a too big culture disconnect to understand that you could do this with orcs or troglodytes and vice versa. They assume they have to kill eachother because the only context they have for eachother is at the end of something sharp.

D&D land is horribly backwards because the people are horribly backwards and horribly dumb. And implying that evil is genetic is just a way to take that horribly backwards, horribly dumb medieval set-up and make it 'morally okay.' Which is really weird. And kind of creepy.

[Fuchs]

Even so there were many cases where the enemy was massacred after surrendering, such as garrisons of castles or towns who held out too long.

Also on the scale we're talking about with adventurers many of the fights might be for retaliation. Orcs raided the country, raped and pillaged, and now they'll be killed as retaliation.

If you've got the death penalty for rape, murder (and maybe theft), then killing orcs that raided your land is not that more morally repulsive than the death penalty itself. "Oh, but I only killed the guards and stole the cattle" is not really a defense there.

[Maxus]

-Sort of- like that with Rome.

The Romans could totally understand wanting to defend your town. It spoke well of you. If you held out for too long and didn't surrender when it was obvious you couldn't win, they could get nasty. But mainly, the Romans would put a garrison and governor in there, take up taxes and as long as you didn't fuck with roman citizens or rebel and your taxes came in on time, they were cool with you.

There WERE slaves as trophies of war (among other things), but I'd much rather be a slave in Rome than a slave in the early U.S. Much fairer treatment, you got some respect, and there was a good chance you'd be used your skills/knowledge--teaching Greek or any handiworks you could make or something--than for straight-up backbreaking labor.

There's a reason the Romans hung on for the better part of a millenium despite all the other cultures they warred with.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Heck, we didn't shoot out of hand the guys who ordered and carried out the Malmedy massacure, we accepted their surrender and then tried them after the war was over. Though the process fell rather short of the ideal and resulted in all sorts of further legal stuff that eventually led to them all being at most imprisoned for years.

Not that anyone learned anything from it - see how the My Lai massacre was handled?

It's ok when America commits war atrocities, duh.

[FatR]

-Sort of- like that with Rome.

The Romans could totally understand wanting to defend your town. It spoke well of you. If you held out for too long and didn't surrender when it was obvious you couldn't win, they could get nasty.

The general rule was: surrender before siege machines reach the walls (at which point the usual most difficult part of the siege was finished) or have your entire population massacred/sold as slaves.

But mainly, the Romans would put a garrison and governor in there, take up taxes and as long as you didn't fuck with roman citizens or rebel and your taxes came in on time, they were cool with you.

In pre-Imperial age conquered territories outside of Italy literally were considered property of the Roman nation. Shameless plunder and extortion were considered standard operating procedure for republican Roman governors, with those few who didn't use their position to rob the locals blind being considered exceptional paragons of virtue by contemporaries. The fact that Roman occupation still was mild by comparision probably should telly you something of those times.

There WERE slaves as trophies of war (among other things), but I'd much rather be a slave in Rome than a slave in the early U.S. Much fairer treatment, you got some respect, and there was a good chance you'd be used your skills/knowledge--teaching Greek or any handiworks you could make or something--than for straight-up backbreaking labor.

If you was lucky enough to actually have enough useful skills, or to get into the small percentage of household slaves for other reason. While the unlucky majority of slaves were swiftly worked to death in latifundies and mines. Normal practices of slave treatment during the period of the main Roman conquests relied on constant influx of cheap slaves, and only when their long-term unsustainability after the stop of expansion became clear, slaves in general started getting some legal rights.

[FatR]

There's no denying that the vampire is a hypocrite, but actually feeling bad about being forced to kill other people to stay alive, and then doing it anyway because you're more of a selfish dick than you are a good person, makes for a more satisfying villain than a kitten-huffing madman.

To whom? Being a whiny bitch, who only does evil because of weakness, generally does not look good on a villain's resume. I mean, if characters like them actually become popular, it's almost a given that their fans will ignore how pathetic they actually are (and probably will imagine them as hardcorely evil too).

More importantly, characters probably ain't going to give a fuck about inner angst of a creature which existence poses unavoidable threat to their kin. There are plenty of creatures in fiction which nature makes peaceful coexistence with humans and human-compatible species completely impossible, and very idea of such insane. Having humanoids as an irreplaceable part of your species' diet or breeding cycle puts your species firmly in this category. It might still be possible to personally switch sides, of course, but you'll probably have to accept your own untimely death, and certainly the necessity of your species' extinction.

You've set up a lot of assumption to defend the notion of Orc genocide.

I don't care about the necessity of Orc genocide either way, at least within the bounds of a theoretical dicsussion. I just find the idea that extermination of a race (for a loose enough definition of a race) can't be justified absolutely idiotic, in the face of multitude of fictional examples to the contrary.

You assume they were directly created by an Evil god to do Evil things.

Gee, I wonder why anyone can ever assume that about orcs.

You assume this Evil god was heavily invested in making sure that all of them remain Evil, instead of just allowing the forces of peer pressure and society work their magic.

Because he bears unyielding malice to everything, or at least everything not subjugated to his will? And he is a vast and superhumanly intelligent entity, that can easily cook up a way to keep his servants following his agenda? Without them having thought police or other inefficient institutions? It is better to have your creatures feel actual pleasure when they cause pain to beings you want to destroy, than to make continual investment into oppression and conditioning.

About the only reason such an entity might have to not hardwire his goon-race to be entirely irredeemable it to additionally torture his enemies by having them destroy creatures that might, theoretically, be rehabilitated into not being murderous sadists.

You assume that hardwiring a race to be Evil is even possible when there's no reason to believe it is.

There is no reason to believe otherwise. You are indirectly assuming that the Universe is actually ruled by Good so free will of sapient creatures actually exist and cannot be overridden on racial scale by tinkering with their brains (by installing a direct link to Satan or something). But in DnDverse Good and Evil have equal rights. And you are assuming that any given race must be fully sapient, instead of being organic killbots. Well never mind the stuff about objective propertives of a race lifecycle, covered above.

A race that's always Evil because shut up is not.

To you. Not to the most readers of fantasy genre and players of fantasy games, apparently. Because always evil antagonists remain quite common.

[DSMatticus]

Because always evil antagonists remain quite common.

What? No.

Okay, look; orcs are always the bad guys, because the PC's are on the other side of the war. Yet at the same time, orc is a potential PC race with a level adjustment that isn't even impressive and completely playable, and the second someone says, "I want to play them," they don't start talking about how they're a miswired 'organic kill bot,' they start talking about how they're an orc with a different culture.

The reason the antagonist is always evil is because this is D&D and nobody wants to make the uncomfortable adventures where you go out and stab not-evil things. "Grog the Skullraping Barbarian is a bad guy. He eats infants. You should have an adventure about him," is something you should actually hear. "Grog the Ordinary Berry-Picker is a normal guy. He eats berries. You should have an adventure about him," is never, ever, ever, ever going to come up, even if your world actually has orcs that are ordinary berry-pickers. What the PC's stab in the face is a very, very bad sample of what is and isn't always evil. If you're playing a good party, the things you stab in the face are going to be heavily skewed towards the evil side. So when you keep stabbing evil orc after evil orc after evil orc, the conclusion should not be, "all orcs are evil," because your experience with orcs has been to hunt down the evil ones and kill them and it should not surprise you at all that you've met so few not-evil orcs.

But both of these are polar extremes. The orcs you would actually be likely to meet in a semi-realistic D&D campaign setting are "Grog the Hungry with a Sword. He leads raids on human villages to keep his tribe from starving. He dislikes humans because growing up, adventurers kept coming into his home and stabbing his tribemembers to death, including the women and children, and he doesn't understand why. He is not a particularly merciful raider for this reason, and doesn't feel bad about using brutal, violent tactics in retaliation for the wrongs he feels humans did him."

[Chamomile]

To whom?

It's a fundamental trope of the modern vampire genre. See: Every White Wolf game ever.

I mean, if characters like them actually become popular, it's almost a given that their fans will ignore how pathetic they actually are (and probably will imagine them as hardcorely evil too).

No, actually, the opposite happens. People rush to give sympathetic motivations to characters who bald-facedly have none. It's called Draco in Leather Pants. This is why Sephiroth, a twisted, homicidal madman with plans to extinguish all life on the planet, is constantly painted in a better light by his absurd legion of fans.

I don't care about the necessity of Orc genocide either way, at least within the bounds of a theoretical dicsussion. I just find the idea that extermination of a race (for a loose enough definition of a race) can't be justified absolutely idiotic, in the face of multitude of fictional examples to the contrary.

Oh, sure, it can be justified, but why would you want to?

Gee, I wonder why anyone can ever assume that about orcs.

Yeah, actually, so do I. Were the Mongols necessarily created by Satan because they played rough?

Because he bears unyielding malice to everything, or at least everything not subjugated to his will? And he is a vast and superhumanly intelligent entity, that can easily cook up a way to keep his servants following his agenda?

You assume he can easily cook up a way to keep his servants following his agenda. There is no reason to believe that it isn't much, much harder, or even impossible.

There is no reason to believe otherwise. You are indirectly assuming that the Universe is actually ruled by Good

That's a funny way to spell Neutral.

To you. Not to the most readers of fantasy genre and players of fantasy games, apparently. Because always evil antagonists remain quite common.

Yeah, which is why Azeroth is crawling with-Wait, no, the main villain for years was a tragic fallen hero and their Orcs have been sympathetic villains for decades. But Order of the Stick, the most popular webcomic on the internet portrays monster races as soulless, sadistic creatures of the-Oh, no, that's the opposite of true.

When you do see a creature made of pure evil in a work of popular (and recent) fantasy, like the Others, they are more reminiscent of Nazgul than Orcs, creatures of nightmare and otherworldly power, not the dull and tired "humans but with less depth" shtick that Orcs get tossed by hacks who can't be bothered to come up with something better. That is why the trope is common, because it's easy.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Fuck, even Tolkien hated this trope. Sure, he did make his orcs always evil, but I recall reading that to the end of his life he was trying to come up with a way out of it.

[Chamomile]

Fuck, even Tolkien hated this trope. Sure, he did make his orcs always evil, but I recall reading that to the end of his life he was trying to come up with a way out of it.

I was going to mention this, but my only citation is "I read it somewhere on I think TVTropes," so I decided it wasn't exactly strong evidence against Tolkien favoring ACE monsters.

[tzor]

Fuck, even Tolkien hated this trope. Sure, he did make his orcs always evil, but I recall reading that to the end of his life he was trying to come up with a way out of it.

I've only seen indirect evidence for this, but Tolkien had a different angle on orcs than in most fantasy literature in which they were false creations of Morgoth. and thus are generally corrupt and vile because of this. (Actually the cretion story of the dwarves had a similiar attempt of Aninu attempting to mimic creation but in this story the creatures are redeemed through the begging of the Aninu who "created" them. ... Back to orcs ...) But this generally makes them vile, corrupt, canon fodder and doers of generally disgusting things.

[sabs]

I thought that Orcs are elves corrupted by Sauron?

[Maxus]

I thought that Orcs are elves corrupted by Sauron?

Well, Sauron's boss, technically. Sauron helped things along (when I picture Morgoth and Sauron during a day at work, Morgoth shows up as the guy who goes on huge rants and grandiose displays while Sauron is nodding and making agreeing noises and doing the real work done whole Morgoth's too busy worshipping himself).

[tzor]

I thought that Orcs are elves corrupted by Sauron?

No. The Uruk-hai were created by Sauron and Saruman modified them.

The Uruk-hai of Isengard were the tallest of these orcs, and had large hands and thick, straight legs, while the orcs of Mordor are described as bow-legged. Although the Isengarders still did not like the light of the sun, they could withstand it, unlike other orcs. The orcs of Mordor were all long-armed and crook-legged, not as tall as the Isengarders but larger and more powerful than the orcs from Moria. The orcs of Moria in turn could see better in the dark than the Isengarders. Grishnákh from Mordor is described as very broad but shorter than Uglúk. In The Return of the King, the orcs Shagrat and Gorbag are identified as Uruk-hai of Mordor and are described in terms similar to Grishnákh and his troops.

[CapnTthePirateG]

No they weren't. Tolkien was big on "evil cannot create, only corrupt." Morgoth just corrupted elves.

[sabs]

I'm sorry, you're right. The GOBLINS were Tainted/Corrupted Elves.

the Uruk-hai are a goblin/human alchemy mix.

[FatR]

What? No.

Yes. Just look at the fantasy genre. Tad Williams: at least three races that can't be reasoned with and can be only stabbed. George Martin: the Others can't be reasoned with and are going to exterminate humanity unless held back. Robin Hobb: no nonhuman races but magic that makes people chaotic evil en masse is a plot point in one of the series (they can't form a coherent threat, but the bad guys use them as a terror weapon). Steven Donaldson: monstrous opponents that can't be reasoned with in abundance, and only one race of their spectrum is shown as not irretrievably corrupted. I'm deliberately picking the authors that do not write straightforward hack&slash here, if you haven't noticed.

However you look at it, races that can never be coexisted with, and can only be killed (or they will kill you), are incredibly commonplace in fantasy. Why tagging likes of them as "Evil" is unacceptable is beyond me. Someone here stated that orcs from WoW not being one of such races somehow disproves this point. He somehow forgot that WoW is chock-full of implacably hostile creatures, including a whole extradimensional army of them that rampaged across the multiverse burning world after world simply because they are insane genocidal monsters.

Okay, look; orcs are always the bad guys, because the PC's are on the other side of the war. Yet at the same time, orc is a potential PC race with a level adjustment that isn't even impressive and completely playable, and the second someone says, "I want to play them," they don't start talking about how they're a miswired 'organic kill bot,' they start talking about how they're an orc with a different culture.

You've missed the memo that DnD orcs aren't supposed to always be bad guys officially issued with 3.0? Of course, there are many versions of DnD and quasi-DnD orks by now. Some, like Pathfinder orcs, are not really supposed to be playable or have any decency in them.

But both of these are polar extremes. The orcs you would actually be likely to meet in a semi-realistic D&D campaign setting are "Grog the Hungry with a Sword. He leads raids on human villages to keep his tribe from starving. He dislikes humans because growing up, adventurers kept coming into his home and stabbing his tribemembers to death, including the women and children, and he doesn't understand why. He is not a particularly merciful raider for this reason, and doesn't feel bad about using brutal, violent tactics in retaliation for the wrongs he feels humans did him."

No, in an actually semi-realistic setting you'll meet Grog the Slaver who goes on raids every year because that's what his father did, but mostly because he's stronger and meaner than an average human, therefore their stuff (including women and able-bodied youths) justly belongs to true warriors like him. Well, and their have more stuff than orcs from the neighboring tribes, although Grog will raid and fight the latter too, in absence of other targets, as war is the best (and the only truly respectable) way for a worthy orc man to become rich and famous.
Well, and if you are less lucky, you can meet Grog Commander of a hundred in the horde of Morg the Worldshaker. He serves Morg in part because that way he can get far more and better stuff, even richer human lands, once they are cleaned of humans, and in part because Morg has a habit of boiling every orc who tries to oppose him alive, or giving women from tribes he doesn't have a high opinion of to his elite warriors. I goes without saying that Grog enjoys raping and pillaging, and he got used to wholesale butchery of orcs, humans and whatever, who have little worth as slaves too.

And that's just straightforward projection of actual, real-world tribal raiders behavior. Without taking into account any possible influence of malevolent superpowerful entities. DnD tones the brutality the fuck down, and "Evil" races, save for competely inhuman things, like mindflayers, often are no exception. If you are pretending to be closer to realism, be closer to realism, not to the unicorn fairyland, where warlike tribes are actually composed of misunderstood fluffy bunnies that only do anything remotely shady when directly forced by circumstances.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I'm pretty sure Sauron got the orcs from Melkor/Morgoth (I think Morgoth did, in fact, get them by corrupting elves), and that goblins were just a smaller variety of orcs.

[hyzmarca]

However you look at it, races that can never be coexisted with, and can only be killed (or they will kill you), are incredibly commonplace in fantasy. Why tagging likes of them as "Evil" is unacceptable is beyond me.

1)Because it's lazy.

2)Because it overlaps with real-world racism more often than not, whether by intent or by accident.

3)Because the very concept is abhorrent. Even when it doesn't directly support real-world racism it falls far too close to Nazi ideology for comfort. See The Iron Dream by Normal Spinrad for elaboration.

4)Because it places unnecessary restrictions on both the players and the GMs.

5)Because it makes absolutely no sense. Basic empathy is necessary for any social species and while it can be suppressed doing so inevitably has psychological repercussions. An entire race of total assholes just doesn't work. Their civilization would tear itself apart immediately. Really, they wouldn't be able to develop any sort of civilization in the first place.

Three is the big one, I think. Condoning genocide, even genocide against always evil inhumans that can't be reasoned with, is a bad thing. One of the reasons it is a bad thing is that every genocide instigator in the history of the world has straw-maned his targets as always evil inhumans that can't be reasoned with.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So the question is then just, which do you want to do for your game? And I don't think anyone who looks at D&D is looking for that grim moral perspective on their actions. There is no 'objective' which is better, but there is a potential objective alienation of consumers.

This got buried earlier in the thread, but I'll repeat it again. I don't have problems with brutally sociopathic entertainment. Punisher MAX is still my favorite comic series (at least until about Bullseye Max #11 where it just slowed down too much for my liking, but whatever) and the protagonist in that is an out-and-out bastard. I mean even worse than his mainstream incarnation.

The problem I have is that:

A) D&D defaults to brutally sociopathic entertainment. It's all in text, sure, but it definitely and repeatedly crosses the line from 'superhero violence' to 'killing spree'. It's not just the violence in itself, but the very system that delivers the violence. The demonization of faceless sapient obstacles, the ongoing punishment for not defaulting to violence both in mechanics and story, the lack of alternative solutions even if you want to take the hit. Again, this is not a problem except for caveat B:

B) D&D also bills itself as a (relatively) family-friendly morality play of heroes. Despite the fervent denials of people in this thread, it is. Except for one or two unfortunate instances, this game is very politically correct and the promotional materials tend to emphasize the whole 'be an awesome hero' aspect. So you're faced with three options.

B1) Be an unironic hero like the game tells you you are. Because the world of D&D is really shitty there will be some times when you have to do gutwrenching things like laying a prolonged siege to a city, but the game also emphasizes that when you do these things you should do so with a sober mind. The typical D&D hero is sort of in the grey zone for this (sure, I killed over 1,000 orcs, but all of them were grown men and I've never taken any slaves) but the game has been abusing this leeway for so long to the point where it's unbelievable and frankly hypocritical.

So the game needs to be retooled to make being an unironic hero easier. Making 'mandatory evil' alignments rarer is a step in that direction. Fixing social combat rules will be a huge help. So will implementing punishments for excessive violence. So will meaningful reputation decreases. I still stand by my convention that damage needs to default to non-lethal or at least not immediately fatal. Killing requires a command input into the game, making it much more likely it'll be done as a 'Johan really had this coming and it'll make the world better off' or 'if Medieval Lex Luthor is spared he'll cheat the courts and build another nuclear bomb' decision rather than a 'fuck it, I just want to get this combat over before the Library kicks us out' one.

B2) Gleefully engage in the bloodfest. Your code is honor is mostly a mockery in the same way that the Punisher's is if you even bother to have one and in-game limits are mostly done for the sake of the players/DM who for some reason don't mind describing the slow roasting of mook #3 with a fireball won't stand for child slavery or rape for some silly reason. This has no moral dissonance in it, but it's done with the express knowledge that you have signed up to be a bastard. If you still want to be an unironic hero with modern sensibilities then let the buyer beware, that's not what the game is for.

B3) Indulge in the violence and hate but then do a deathbed conversion every battle where you angst about feeling really bad before doing it again. Don't change your behavior however. I think that this is the WoD approach and what you accused me of wanting the game to be like. Far from it. They're really just characters of B2.

D&D pretending to be B1 but actually being B2 needs to stop. If you want B1 to happen at all then the game needs to be retooled for it with B2 being an option, because while it's easy being a kill-crazy bastard in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon getting a meaningful and uncorrupted play experience as Silver Age Batman in Sin City is pretty much impossible. And if people really do want D&D to be like B2 then the themes and settings of the game should reflect that. D&D is already firmly in the 'thousand years of grimdark, Space Marine40K would be proud' category, it just doesn't realize this except on rare occasions.

And no, I don't feel nor think that 'well, do enough cognitive dissonance and rationalization so that it feels like a B1 anyway' is a solution. Doing that requires you not to think about what you're doing really hard, which leads to shitty stories. We pillory books like Harry Potter and Eragon when the protagonists (unknowing to the author) do evil things, why should we as the D&D population get a pass? Because it makes us feel bad? Instead of doing that, why not change the fucking game so that, you know, you don't risking getting a Standford Prison Experiment-ish calling out if you describe your gameplay experience to people who don't buy the PG-13 Swordly Killfest gospel?

[fectin]

You assume that hardwiring a race to be Evil is even possible when there's no reason to believe it is.

There is no reason to believe otherwise. You are indirectly assuming that the Universe is actually ruled by Good so free will of sapient creatures actually exist and cannot be overridden on racial scale by tinkering with their brains (by installing a direct link to Satan or something). But in DnDverse Good and Evil have equal rights. And you are assuming that any given race must be fully sapient, instead of being organic killbots. Well never mind the stuff about objective propertives of a race lifecycle, covered above.

Look at Clockwork Horrors (MM2) or Kythons (BoVD) for examples.

[souran]

Hmm,

If you ever wanted to see what a work of fiction that really put real people into a world with near D&D-eque level morality then try
"The Prince of Nothing/The Judging Eye"

The author wanted a world where good and evil are known quantiies (at least to some people.)

That world has an "our Orcs are different" race. It is indeed a product of advanced genetic engineering with its brain wired to recieve pleasure from giving or reciveing pain and otherwise doing chaotic evil shit.

They are ruled over by a race that while not evil by their own standards is irredemably evil because they are alien to human morality and so cannot fit their minds around how to be anything other than what humans and the "our elves are different" race consider evil. They are so evil that they (this is conjecture because the story has not given us a full reveal) created an evil god to protect them from real and existing good gods who were going to damn them for enternity when they died because they were evil.

Also, the "hero" acts like a sort of power tripping D&D gamer who finds out his character is 10 levels higher than the adventure is meant for.