Where it's never evil to kill orks and goblins

[Chamomile]

That's part of where I'm coming from though, it's interesting for humans to fight humans. When I watched Lord of the Rings the Southrons and Easterlings really stood out, I wanted to find out more about why these humans marched alongside orcs under Sauron's banner.

You won't find any particular nuance in Tolkien, the Dunlanders follow Sauron "because they are bad."

This is actually not the case. Tolkien doesn't spend a whole lot of time on it (as is obvious from the way certain Stormfronters revere him, Tolkien was very bad at writing effective propaganda), but there are two different times when it is strongly suggested that the human nations following Sauron do so because they have been brainwashed by propaganda or misled by corrupt leaders, rather than because they are all evil to their very core. At the end of the Battle of Helm's Deep, Aragorn goes to the Dunlandings and basically says "you lose, we win, now gtfo back to Dunland" and the Dunlandings are all surprised because they expected to be executed en masse if they lost the battle, which suggests that Saruman has deceived them into fighting the war.

Later on, after Faramir kills a couple of Haradrim, he wonders aloud whether or not he's a marauder who's in it for the plunder or a good person who's been duped into thinking Gondor is trying to take over the world and Mordor is the beleaguered kingdom barely holding them back. Faramir in the books isn't the grey character he was in the movies, either, he is very clearly virtuous in a way that is actually kind of dull. Movie Faramir is way more interesting.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

/Godwin
no, i don't know why this does not work <.<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Godwin's Law was coined in 1990 on Usenet. Very few people were accessing Usenet back then that weren't doing it from a university terminal. Back then you could assume people were reasonably versed in history, which made it unreasonable to accuse them of sounding like famous mass murderers.

Nowadays, many people engaging in Internet discussions almost literally haven't bothered to learn anything because they can Google it if they need to. Someone could very much be saying something that sounds like it came from Mein Kampf, without irony, and without any awareness of the similarity.

I would say Godwin's Law went obsolete the moment it became a Wikipedia entry instead of a Geocities page cataloging all those funny terms.

[Stahlseele]

off topic:
i like both your avatar and your signature picture
/offtopic

[Whipstitch]

But nobody is using the real world. Its Fiction. Do you also get this frilled when you see other works of fiction containing genocide, rape and slavering like comics, movies, videogames, etc ? Being a slaver in Fallout 2 doesnt mean I condone the practice in real life. Being a corp in Netrunner doesnt mean I condone exploitation of fellow humans in real life. Playing Duke Nukem 3D doesnt mean I condone mass murdering because someone said your girlfriend is hot in real life.

If you have difficulty in separating reality from fiction, you shouldnt be engaging in any fictional recreation in the first place. YMMV and all that.

Here's the dealio: this thread isn't just about the morality of playing Let's Pretend. The thread is actually about under what conditions the hypothetical actions in a round of Let's Pretend can be considered morally just, which is waaaay fucking different. It's OK to put on the black hat when playing a role. Hell, sometimes the strongest argument against something is simply to depict it without comment. But when you start saying that stuff isn't actually evil with a straight face? Well, then you're just fuckin' wrong as a matter of course.

[Cyberzombie]

Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.

While many religions have used that exact excuse to condone mass murder, it's still repugnant. In fact, the very fact that it is literally exactly the excuse used to condone real mass murders in the real world is what makes it repugnant.

The difference in a fantasy world is that the excuse might actually be true and not just a claim. Remember you're playing in a world where demons, angels and devils actually exist. When you demonize your enemy, your enemy may literally be a demon.

[Schleiermacher]

Cyberzombie: Read Frank's next post.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.

While many religions have used that exact excuse to condone mass murder, it's still repugnant. In fact, the very fact that it is literally exactly the excuse used to condone real mass murders in the real world is what makes it repugnant.

The difference in a fantasy world is that the excuse might actually be true and not just a claim. Remember you're playing in a world where demons, angels and devils actually exist. When you demonize your enemy, your enemy may literally be a demon.

It's not really fantasy any more if evil can be empirically measured. These orcs are reading a magnitude 6 evil level... no choice but exterminatus! It all becomes dreadfully banal and pointless.

Take something like Verhoeven's version of Starship Troopers. In it, you have government propaganda depicting the zerg in a very deliberate fashion. Throughout the entire movie, you're getting the unreliable narrator's perspective on this multi-species horde. They're an unthinking tide, a force of nature that exists only to consume and reproduce. At the end, when the brain bug is captured alive, however, you're shown that their kind is capable of feeling emotion, and even something so loathsome as the brain bug can evoke some degree of sympathy.

And the scene is played for laughs, a victory fanfare playing as torturous experimentation begins on the creature. Which is part of the point. The movie wouldn't have had nearly the bite it did if the zerg really was just a bunch of big ants. Yet, it neither managed to spoil the experience by having Rico come to the terrifying conclusion that humanity is the real monster. Similarly, no one shows up to an RPG to be the guy who puts on a jumpsuit and sprays poison on termites. People want to fight an enemy that thinks and feels and looks to its own self-preservation, and best them.

[silva]

The difference in a fantasy world is that the excuse might actually be true and not just a claim. Remember you're playing in a world where demons, angels and devils actually exist. When you demonize your enemy, your enemy may literally be a demon.

Exactly.

[hyzmarca]

Orcs are some sort of breed of demon.

That doesn't actually help. It just moves the goalposts where killing demons is bad.

The beings that I know of that most resemble the kind of despicable, kill-on-sight things you describe are Broos, the rapist chaos infecting beings from Glorantha. Their modus operandi is basically: get to a town, kill all the males, gather the females (from all species, not just humans), rape them all, kill half in the process, let the other half pregnant with their seeds to spawn new Broos in a couple months. More or less like this:

(warning - strong image)

And the women don't just get abortions, because?

That's not much of a reproductive strategy.

No matter how you try to demonize a certain race, if its capable of behaving in similar fashion to humans, thus eliciting some degree of empathy, its worth of forgiveness and another chance to live on. At least if we apply a contemporary social logic to the matter. Carry the issue to pre-modern settings and cultures and youre free to genocide any race you want. They are all barbarians anyway.

I've always felt a big mistake of modern RPG is that they humanize too many monsters. There's too much of a trend to make monster races feel like humans with a monstrous body. I'd like to see more focus on making non-human races feel more non-human.

Aliens mindsets and fuckstupid mindsets aren't the same thing. One can be alien and still be competent. The problem with evil for evil's sake is that it doesn't make sense. It's stupid. It's maladaptive. It's not a useful thing.

I totally understand if you have a problem with that and prefer to run a sanitisized version of middle ages. I totally respect that. I just dont like this sanitization myself.

I don't want to play games in the middle ages. I want to play games in fantasy worlds that have technology vaguely reminiscent of the middle ages. I'd like those worlds to make some amount of sense despite the magic and whatever other fantasy tropes, but I'll grant a lot of leeway for fun. And as far as I'm concerned, adding in dysentery, rape, and mass slaughter of orcs and justifying them as fine adds neither sense nor fun to the game.

I want to play games in fantasy worlds that have technologically vaguely reminiscent of the age of sail. But dysentery is good.

Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.

While many religions have used that exact excuse to condone mass murder, it's still repugnant. In fact, the very fact that it is literally exactly the excuse used to condone real mass murders in the real world is what makes it repugnant.

The difference in a fantasy world is that the excuse might actually be true and not just a claim. Remember you're playing in a world where demons, angels and devils actually exist. When you demonize your enemy, your enemy may literally be a demon.

The problem is that, in a setting with actual demons who are made out of actual pure evil, you're going to eventually have good demons. Because that's a common thing both in, modern fiction and historical, and you're players are probably going to want them. And you're probably going to want them, eventually, for that matter.

If you're on the Temple of Solomon work crew alongside Beelzebul and he starts showing you Polaroids of his spawn. Well, at that point killing demons isn't okay any more.


Which, by the way, is one of the reasons the Abyss and Baator are good places to have low-level adventures. You get to build these interesting alien civilizations.

[silva]

I think the discussion got to a futile point, because we have to distinct but totally valid preference groups: the ones that think pure evil massacre-permissive beings are bad and shouldnt exist in games, and the ones who thinks otherwise.

So I suggest we steer the discussion in a new direction or something. Because at this point we are just repeating our preferences over and over again like two childs.

[Avoraciopoctules]

A new direction? Okay. I really enjoy portraying fiends ranging from "actually pretty chill" to "punchclock dickishness, but horrified at mortals who get up to seriously Bad Stuff."

But I've never really gotten into Abyss or Baator adventures, and I'd love to run the kinds of low-level adventures hyzmarca alluded to. Any advice?

[Mistborn]

I think the discussion got to a futile point, because we have to distinct but totally valid preference groups: the ones that think pure evil massacre-permissive beings are bad and shouldnt exist in games, and the ones who thinks otherwise.

No some of us would prefer to avoid their fantasy heroes engaging in acts that even superficially resemble the worst sort of crimes against humanity and everyone else is being stupid.

Edit

A new direction? Okay. I really enjoy portraying fiends ranging from "actually pretty chill" to "punchclock dickishness, but horrified at mortals who get up to seriously Bad Stuff."?

I never got this attitude, the point of fiends it that they are the incarnations of pure evil.

[Avoraciopoctules]

A new direction? Okay. I really enjoy portraying fiends ranging from "actually pretty chill" to "punchclock dickishness, but horrified at mortals who get up to seriously Bad Stuff."?

I never got this attitude, the point of fiends it that they are the incarnations of pure evil.

According to who? If I was doing a game based on Egyptian mythology, a demon that was just a muscly guy with an axe for a head who made relentless lumberjack puns would be totally legit.

Besides, even if you throw everything in the Disgaea camp by the wayside, there's still stuff like Overlord where your primary premise is held to but Evil and evil are totally different things.

[Dulon]

I'm not sure they really qualify as demons if they aren't evil though; they just become some kinda extra-planar alien things. Being the embodiment of pure evil and corruption is kind of the definition of being called a demon.

[Chamomile]

I'm not sure they really qualify as demons if they aren't evil though; they just become some kinda extra-planar alien things. Being the embodiment of pure evil and corruption is kind of the definition of being called a demon.

No, it isn't. Demons cover an extremely broad and wide-ranging number of supernatural creatures some of which are not even particularly malicious. It's only Christian demons that are ubiquitously pure evil.

[Midnight_v]

I'm not sure they really qualify as demons if they aren't evil though; they just become some kinda extra-planar alien things. Being the embodiment of pure evil and corruption is kind of the definition of being called a demon.

No, it isn't. Demons cover an extremely broad and wide-ranging number of supernatural creatures some of which are not even particularly malicious. It's only Christian demons that are ubiquitously pure evil.

Yeeeeaaah, but in Rpg'ing Demons generally ARE just he embodiment of Evil(chaos?, Assholery) so that shits not really even relevant. No one gives a shit for our definitions if there were cool as demons of song that hung out with Bacchus or whatever. Picking that type of nit adds little what where talking about.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Abrahamic lore doesn't have Goetic demons as being personifications of Evil, or Vice, or Sin. They're just a species of creature from another plane.

Yes, you can look up a demon in a monster manual and see that it says "Alignment: Evil", but that's not player-facing information. As far as you as a PC are concerned, the priesthood that says demons are pure evil, beyond reason and redemption, could be unreliable narrators.

[Dulon]

This is exactly why D&D has a ton of outsider types (Archons, Djinn, etc.), to separate the outright evil ones ie. Demons and Devils, from the myriad of other mythological and vaguely spiritual things. As soon as we bring real world religion into things then it becomes a clusterfuck of alternate meanings and confusion.

[momothefiddler]

I totally understand if you have a problem with that and prefer to run a sanitisized version of middle ages. I totally respect that. I just dont like this sanitization myself.

I don't want to play games in the middle ages. I want to play games in fantasy worlds that have technology vaguely reminiscent of the middle ages. I'd like those worlds to make some amount of sense despite the magic and whatever other fantasy tropes, but I'll grant a lot of leeway for fun. And as far as I'm concerned, adding in dysentery, rape, and mass slaughter of orcs and justifying them as fine adds neither sense nor fun to the game.

I want to play games in fantasy worlds that have technologically vaguely reminiscent of the age of sail. But dysentery is good.

Age of sail tech is also fun. Ancient tech is also fun. Futuristic tech is also fun. My point was just that even when my desired game looks superficially kind of like the middle ages, it most certainly isn't the middle ages. I don't want to play a game in the middle ages.

How is dysentery good, though? I can't imagine a fantasy gaming situation where it wouldn't be better to 1) just not have a disease pointlessly and disgustingly killing vast swathes of underprivileged children, or 2) have it at least be a cool magical disease that the PCs can cure with their stabbing-things-in-the-face skills.

Edit: and in an attempt to keep this vaguely on topic, I feel very similarly about mindlessly evil enemies as I do about diseases. Because there's no thought whatsoever in choosing whether to kill them, the only non-combat issue is figuring out how. If you don't want many non-combat dilemmas in your game, stabbing is fine, but otherwise there needs to be some larger quest for a cure, to extend the analogy.

...Which leads me to the idea of treating orcs/goblins as a disease of the land. This resembles OgreBattle's mention of spontaneous generation in the original post, I guess, but either they make more of themselves that are battle-ready and cannot be reasoned with (bacteria - goblins reproduce via splitting after reaching a certain size) or they take over existing mechanisms to reproduce (viruses - orcs... have to take over civilized settlements to make more of themselves? Rape fits the analogy quite nicely but I don't like it. A swarm of iron golems that occupies mines and workshops and forges to make more of themselves is intriguing though...)

[Chamomile]

This is exactly why D&D has a ton of outsider types (Archons, Djinn, etc.), to separate the outright evil ones ie. Demons and Devils, from the myriad of other mythological and vaguely spiritual things.

The trouble is, D&D's "Evil acts" includes things like:

-Cannibalism, independent of whether you had any hand in killing the poor bastard.
-Raising undead, even when they are mindless and do nothing unless commanded to and therefore are basically just robots.
-Using your own fingerbones as projectile weapons, regardless of who the target is.
-Having kinky sex.
-Dressing up like you might consider having kinky sex.

And meanwhile their "Good acts" includes stuff like burning to death all non-Good creatures within a few dozen feet of you. Including Neutral creatures.

That the Monster Manual says Demons and Devils are always Evil doesn't really tell us anything at all about whether Demons and Devils are always evil.

[silva]

As Chamo say, the exact nature of each demon (and angel) will vary from mythology to mythology. In d&d though, it will depend on eacb edition cosomology. Up until 3e, demons. are physical manifestatio s of their home plane. So a baatezu is indeed a being of pure lawful evil. But you know whats really scary ? The fact that angels are so much alien and inhuman as demons. And the more angelicly pure a celestial being is, the more uncapable of humanly reasoning and empathy he is.

Cenobytes from hellraiser could be as much demons as angels, depending on how you look at it.

[Wiseman]

DnD outsiders are literally made of their alignment, Archons are made of pure law-goodium, demons are pure chaos-evilite. Thus, killing a demon reduces the total amount of evil in the multiverse.

Of course tiefling and aasimar are a diferent story, being part mortal, and thus having more free will to choose their own path ect.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Okay, if we're going to talk about D&D specifically I'm fairly sure it has both celestials who got booted out of team Good for being jerks and demons who the other demons thought were too horrible not to get sent to demon jail.

I want to run some low-level adventures in the DemonRealm, and if everything's a bland harmonious collective that's gonna be difficult.

[Cyberzombie]

The problem is that, in a setting with actual demons who are made out of actual pure evil, you're going to eventually have good demons. Because that's a common thing both in, modern fiction and historical, and you're players are probably going to want them. And you're probably going to want them, eventually, for that matter.

In the D&D-verse, you get to be a demon by giving yourself over to evil and accepting that as your philosophy. Good demons don't necessarily need to exist, unless you want them to, and not everyone does. A lot of people may find demon = evil to be boring, and I don't argue with that statement, but the OP actually wanted a situation where you can have irredeemably evil monsters that PCs don't have to feel guilty about wiping out. And to achieve that goal, you are going to end up with something that looks very black and white. And that's intentional, because anything that isn't black and white will start to raise moral arguments. So we just spare ourselves that and not have good demons. Demons are made of chaotic evil, and that's that.

If you're on the Temple of Solomon work crew alongside Beelzebul and he starts showing you Polaroids of his spawn. Well, at that point killing demons isn't okay any more.

Sure it is. Assuming his spawn are going to be just as evil as he is, then it's fine to kill them. You're not talking about some innocent child that gets corrupted as he grows up, you're talking about a creature made genetically evil from conception. It will never have sympathy, kindness, conscience, or any of the mental traits needed to be a good person. It will derive pleasure through hurting others and performing acts of evil. And this isn't because of how it's taught, this is because of its base nature. At its core, the child is an irredeemable bastard. No amount of kindness, moral lessons or religious teaching is going to show it the light. This is a twisted psychopath child who only smiles when its torturing small animals.

It's not really fantasy any more if evil can be empirically measured. These orcs are reading a magnitude 6 evil level... no choice but exterminatus! It all becomes dreadfully banal and pointless.

Actually, having measurable evil is fantasy, because it's something that can't be done in the real world, though one day through genetics we might be able to detect problematic genetic sequences that are destined for evil. In fact, it's a fairly common trope in fantasy that evil (especially when you're talking about demons) is something tangible. Sometimes it's a priest or a wizard feeling a sense of wrongness, or sometimes nature itself is corrupted from being in close proximity to evil beings. D&D has included Detect Evil as a spell since 1st edition.

Now I'm not saying that there's not a lot of interesting things you can do to deconstruct the black-and-white morality, but the OP in this thread wanted to know how to create a black-and-white world, presumably because he group doesn't want to have to think too deeply about killing some orcs.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Whoops, I suppose I should have accounted for spells like Detect Evil.

I'm curious, though, does Protection From Evil work against, say, Bernie Madoff, or is it simply for the powers of the lower planes, and those that align themselves with them?