Lago_AM3P at [unixtime wrote:1188024587[/unixtime]]
But as Frank pointed out, being 'good' in that sense is pretty much impossible. It's not completely impossible, I understand, but the struggle is just ridiculously hard. If you want to play a real hero and not some amoral ass-kicker then it's just IMO completely freaking unfair. It shouldn't be that way; this game is to some extent about heroes and making the world a better place. And believe it or not, some people want to play that. It shouldn't be just some DM-included thing like gunpowder weapons or psionics. Being heroic is just as much of a staple of fiction as undead and demons (if not moreso) and I bet I'm not alone for wanting some freaking support for it.
Its because being 'good' in that sense
doesn't exist in the setting. It isn't a set of values that people have. As mainstream thought, its a construct of the 20th century, and without the historical and cultural patterns that brought it about, it doesn't make any sense. Specifically, it took roughly 2000 fvcking years for Christians to even start to take those 'turn the other cheek' and 'thou shall not kill' things at all seriously. Its mostly been 'kill the nonbeliever'. Back to D&D, it has to be a DM-included thing, just like gunpowder weapons, because it isn't part of the fvcking genre. It isn't part of the classical definition of hero, its the new, media created 'everyday hero' bullshit that pisses me right off.
Good in that sense
is impossible. It isn't a definition of good that
anyone has. Societies don't think of conversion as a good thing. And this is seriously an bronze/iron age thing. Conversion wasn't something people did, by and large. You didn't want those filthy strangers worshipping your god. They had theirs, you had yours, and getting them to believe differently was just a complete waste of time, particularly since they all probably existed. Yours was just better. Thats a real part of the problem here. D&D gods don't act like real religions. Its the *need* for believers. The Greek gods didn't try to steal followers from each other, they just happened to be dicks. And they damn well didn't go around telling people to feed the poor and telling folks to help the Persians see the light.
As for the missionaries bit- here's why they are worse. When people come to kill, raid and enslave you, and essentially doing just that. In whole or in part, they're destroying your culture. When missionaries do their thing, they're destroying your culture just the same... but they are firmly convinced (and make every attempt to convince you) that they're doing you a fvcking
favor.
And even if genocide isn't the goal, this is war. The losers live life worse than they did prior to the war and the winners may or may not be better off than they were before. With every defeat, every generation of orcs are going to live life worse than they did before and perform worse in battle; this cycle is going to continue until the orcs become a marginalized starving loser race like the sea elves.
Hmm. You're missing a couple pieces of the problem here. A war doesn't affect orcdom as a whole. It affects the particular tribe of orcs that was involved- they're pushed back and have a couple of bad generations. (And are probably absorbed or enslaved by a stronger tribe of orcs). Wars also aren't on the same scale- you are losing a big chunk of the young males, which is bad, but it isn't utterly devastating, intermarriage with others will help alleviate the problem. They certainly aren't the devastating thing that wars became in the late middle ages (or worse, later).
Interestingly, this finally gives us a point to half-orcs. They help to alleviate the losses the orcs suffer when they come into conflict with the better organized races- the orcs are stealing women and raping them to build their numbers back up.
By your logic, the Celtic and Germanic tribes would have died off several thousand years ago, and there wouldn't be any humans *anywhere*
Right, that's why D&D, especially 3rd Edition, has given a lot more support for roleplaying.
The current alignment system, as shirak pointed out, is a post hoc band-aid for people who try to reconcile the fact that they're supposedly playing a hero even though they kill and loot.
It may not support a particular kind of roleplaying that isn't (and hasn't been) a part of the game, but... on the face of it, your sarcasm is a little absurd. There is a lot more RP than there used to be, when advancing through a series of 10x10 rooms, killing things and taking their stuff was the whole of the game.
And yeah, the alignment system is fvcked up. Of course it is- its shoving an absolute in the place of something thats completely point of view. But it isn't a band aid- there isn't a need to justify killing and looting. Thats what heroes do.
I can understand the desire to play something else. But to do it believably, you need actually, require, a different setting with different default assumptions, if not different rules for the game. The normal D&D setting doesn't support this sort of thing, any more than it supports guns. Actually, the rules aren't as important. You can just toss in some diplomacy DCs, maybe work in some Will saves against boring-ass kindness gibber-jabber. But the setting... that you need to rebuild from the ground up.
No; a thousand times no; a million times no even.
