Quote from: jibbajibba;478068that is where absolute truth gets ya.

I guess you're one of those moral relativists RPGPundit was talking about, then?  

Quote from: S'mon;478066Funny rant - Although I think it's mostly Latinos working for the fruit companies in slave labour conditions these days.  

Remember that in the USA, Latin Americans are considered "non-white." Even pasty-faced red-headed Jews are borderline.

So when a US citizen is talking about racial issues, they're using definitions that make the civilised world scratch its head.

Quote from: jibbajibba;478068just about everybody in the west using it to describe the 100,000 people killed in Iraq as revenge for an act of terrorism they had absolutely nothing to do with.....

I guess I must live in the one part of the West where nobody said those 100,000+ Iraqis deserved to be killed on account of 9/11.   Although my American wife worked for the British government, and she did hear a lot from her co-workers (who included a former Red Brigade terrorist) about how US soldiers deserved to be killed.  That was during the start of the invasion, too, not during the occupation after it had become clear to everyone* just how fucked up the US  was.

*By London standards I'm way right-of-centre; in March 2003 while my co-workers were off marching and wearing the badges for "Stop the War/Freedom for Palestine", I was ambivalent about the Iraq war, much as I'd felt about Kosovo in 1998/9, but "Surely Bush/Blair know what they're doing, right?"  In this case of course my commie pinko liberal traitor co-workers (and the BBC) were right, and I was wrong.  OTOH most of them (aside from the pro-Milosevic Hard Left) also supported Clinton/Blair's Kosovo War, and I realised that that had been equally wrong too, and equally built on a pack of lies, albeit the dead there numbered a few thousand Serbs, not a few hundred thousand Iraqis.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;478071Remember that in the USA, Latin Americans are considered "non-white." Even pasty-faced red-headed Jews are borderline.

So when a US citizen is talking about racial issues, they're using definitions that make the civilised world scratch its head.

I think they started off with "Mexicans are mostly Mestizo" - ie most have a good chunk of pre-Colonial indigenous ancestry - and using their 'one drop rule' went from there to "Mexicans are non-White".  Nixon invented the Hispanic/Latino census category as some weird fucked up Republican ploy to split the Democratic base, and now they have a culture where Antonio Banderas becomes non-white the moment he steps off the plane from Spain.

Quote from: jibbajibba;478069Great example. Did you make the guy doing the killing make a sanity check? I would have. To be honest because I am a bit of a bastard I would have run a follow up dream sequence where that guy is strangling him and he wakes up in a cold sweat...

Everyone made a SAN check, the strangler's being hardest. I got some suggestions on how to handle it in DG: Countdown or Eyes Only, can't remember which. So even if he passed it, he lost a small amount of SAN. No one can do or watch such a thing and remain unchanged, I think.

Again, it's totally OK to declare that there are absolute Evil in the game world and that the only way of dealing with them is to kill them all. It can be fun, and I've had and still have fun playing in that conditions. It's just that I usually prefer the gray areas, as they make the situation more believable to me.

Quote from: S'montheir 'one drop rule'

Well, it does have the advantage that it makes their movie casting a lot easier. Like in Collateral Damage where the role of a Colombian terrorist/guerilla is played by...



A Maori?

Brown people from NZ, brown people from Spain, brown people from Colombia, it's all the same, man. The latte-sipping liberals of Hollywood are racist, too? Shocking idea, I know. As shocking as the idea that these guys here are projecting their own racist ideas onto the depiction of orcs in rpgs.

If the OP and Trollman and the rest don't like dark-skinned non-Christians, that's okay. Just shut the fuck up about it, and stop trying to cover it up with your commie ideas.

Quote from: Imperator;478074Everyone made a SAN check, the strangler's being hardest. I got some suggestions on how to handle it in DG: Countdown or Eyes Only, can't remember which. So even if he passed it, he lost a small amount of SAN. No one can do or watch such a thing and remain unchanged, I think.

Again, it's totally OK to declare that there are absolute Evil in the game world and that the only way of dealing with them is to kill them all. It can be fun, and I've had and still have fun playing in that conditions. It's just that I usually prefer the gray areas, as they make the situation more believable to me.

Totally get you.

Persoanlly as I said my concern with racist goblinoid stereotypes in D&D isn't that these leak into the real world at all. It's that they have to be recognised in the game world and if you really want to play the champion of a Good God then the 'paladin' order that espouse genocide have to be tackled and brought to justice.

It's like Slavery in Roman games. It is not 'good' to buy and sell people and treat them like chattels even if the morality of the time says it is. It might be lawful but it is not good. Now I have no problem with PCs not being good I have no problems with PCs espousing morality in the forum and then going home and beating and raping their slaves .. so long as the Player understands that their PC is not good and that these are not good acts.

Quote from: jibbajibba;478077Totally get you.

Persoanlly as I said my concern with racist goblinoid stereotypes in D&D isn't that these leak into the real world at all. It's that they have to be recognised in the game world and if you really want to play the champion of a Good God then the 'paladin' order that espouse genocide have to be tackled and brought to justice.

It's like Slavery in Roman games. It is not 'good' to buy and sell people and treat them like chattels even if the morality of the time says it is. It might be lawful but it is not good. Now I have no problem with PCs not being good I have no problems with PCs espousing morality in the forum and then going home and beating and raping their slaves .. so long as the Player understands that their PC is not good and that these are not good acts.

I think Gygaxian 1e AD&D 'Good' was more or less his idea of a fantasy pseudo-medieval 'Good', which included stuff like baptising the orc prisoners into the Church of St Cuthbert before cutting their heads off so they wouldn't backslide.   He himself seems to have preferred the Neutral alignment and presents it as morally superior in places, certainly in the Gord the Rogue books.

But his definitions in the 1e PHB are ambiguous and not well written.   There was then a lot of drift (I remember the early-2e Dragon article on whether Slavery is Evil: 'Hm, owning them might be ok, but if you're actually raiding for slaves, that's bad'), and by 3e 'Good' seems to mean 'What West Coast Liberal WotC Staffers Actually Think is Good'.  Which then raises issues like the one we're discussing today.

QuoteBut his definitions in the 1e PHB are ambiguous and not well written. There was then a lot of drift (I remember the early-2e Dragon article on whether Slavery is Evil: 'Hm, owning them might be ok, but if you're actually raiding for slaves, that's bad'), and by 3e 'Good' seems to mean 'What West Coast Liberal WotC Staffers Actually Think is Good'. Which then raises issues like the one we're discussing today.

That would be fine, except that WotC staffers aren't even all West Coast Liberals. If they were all Seattlite liberal atheists like Bill Gates that would at least be consistent. But only some of them are, and some of them are (no shit) East Coast ordained ministers (like James Wyatt). And that is why you have inconsistent confusing tirades like the Book of Exalted Deeds, where you have such incomprehensible positions as:

"Poison is Evil, except for this weird glowing one that punishes whores by making them die of horniness, which is Good."

Or the Book of Vile Darkness:

"Following the will of the gods is good. Turning away from the gods, like the Ur Priests, is wicked."
"Uh... aren't some of the gods like Hextor and shit? He's evil. Why is following him good?"
"Uh...."

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478079That would be fine, except that WotC staffers aren't even all West Coast Liberals. If they were all Seattlite liberal atheists like Bill Gates that would at least be consistent.

Well I was exaggerating, and thinking of the Johnathan Tweet/Monte Cook 3e PHB - the difference between the attitude of the 3e PHB to Alignment and the 2e "Angry Mothers from Heck" mid-Western TSR version is quite striking.

But as you say, the inconsistencies in the varied approaches to what is supposed to be "Absolute Good, Inherent in the Multiverse" are really jarring. I'm really glad 4e D&D de-emphasises Alignment, though I'd prefer if they went back to a Law-Neutrality-Chaos Allegiance system, or just abandoned it.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478079Or the Book of Vile Darkness:

"Following the will of the gods is good. Turning away from the gods, like the Ur Priests, is wicked."
"Uh... aren't some of the gods like Hextor and shit? He's evil. Why is following him good?"
"Uh...."

-Frank

He he.    

That particular paradox seems inherent in D&D's whole* "Christian churches with pagan gods at the altar" approach.  In say classical Greek religion, it would be wicked not to pay appropriate respect to all the gods of the pantheon, albeit that some of them like Hextor represent vices not virtues.  D&D's Zoroastrian-Dualist approach says "These Gods: Good.  Worship.  Those Gods: Bad.  Fight."  OK.... but then you get the 4e mish-mash where the Primordials are the enemy (Greek style), but then the evil gods are ALSO still the enemy (Christian/Zoroastrian style).  And not really in an "Ares is a jerk, but hey, battle-lust is still part of life".  No, it's more "Oh no, the Cult of Bane is spreading its lies on the Borderlands!  Call out the Inquisition of Pelor to smite them!"  :rolleyes:


*Gygax-derived.  Greyhawk/Oerth in particular is an unspeakable mess.  I've tried really hard to create something usable out of the Oerth religious system & its deities, which mashes up 15th century European Christianity (Bishops!  Inquisitions in the See of Medegia!) with Roman-Greek-Norse style paganism, and it just can't be done.

Well, that is what I was saying before: whenever you try to define absolute good and evil, you are bound to run into inconsistencies.

Quote from: Imperator;478084Well, that is what I was saying before: whenever you try to define absolute good and evil, you are bound to run into inconsistencies.

Totally.

You just have to define some rough areas and point the PCs to them. Personally I go with putting others before yourself = good, putting yourself before others = evil, doing stuff to help yourself that doesn't actively help anyone but doesn't do them harm = neutral. The bands can be pretty wide so stealing bread from a rich baker who has plenty of bread is pretty neutral, but stealing a loaf of bread from a starving guy who only has one loaf of bread is probably evil.

Religion as always is the thing that really causes issues.

"It's good to sacrifice your firstborn son to The God, cos god says so."
"but what if that wasn't The God, that told you to do it but Another God"
" but there are no other Gods only God"
"Why that rule that we can't worship other Gods then?"
"Burn the Heretic!!!!"

Put religion to one side and let 'The Ethics of Captain America' decide what is good and what is not good. Then put religion back in and decide if that particular law is a good one or an evil one and they will tell you if you have been worshipping the right guy or not.

Killing your daughter for marrying into the wrong family - evil law
Helping the weak and sick - good law
Burning people that worship other gods - evil law
etc etc

But we are getting away from the OP.

Quote from: Imperator;478084Well, that is what I was saying before: whenever you try to define absolute good and evil, you are bound to run into inconsistencies.

Which is probably the core of the complaint with the attempts to justify genocide against Orcs. If you can't consistently define your absolute good and evil, you don't have an absolute good or an absolute evil. And then you're just a cafeteria christian - picking and choosing the segments of your book you will kill people for and refuse to discuss rationally and ignoring the rest or waving it off as a metaphor. A metaphor for... something... mumble...

You can't derive what you should do in a specific instance from the existence of absolute good until you can explain what absolute good actually is. And since no one can actually do that, absolute morality isn't a justification for anything. It's just an excuse to yell at people who disagree with you.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478086Which is probably the core of the complaint with the attempts to justify genocide against Orcs. If you can't consistently define your absolute good and evil, you don't have an absolute good or an absolute evil.

Yeah, that is what I meant. Here in real world, religions may be as inconsistent as they please (and boy, are they) because there is not an objective way of knowing who's good or bad. But once you introduce alignments, that things changes and then.. what? How do you even conceive that?

Frankly, I find that uninteresting when compared with gray areas, and far less of a headache.