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Zulily Zoetrope posted:The general D&D differentiation between "usually evil" and "always evil" is that the former are born as clean slates, while the latter are born from the souls of those who did evil in life. I mean, chromatic dragons are classified as "always evil". Vampires are "always evil". "Often Evil" = cultural influences. "Usually Evil" = cultural influences + some outside factor (gnolls having a demon god leaning on them). "Always Evil" = some sort of biological determinism to be evil. (morality in Buffy coming from having a soul, and vampires having no soul). I think that's the way 3e at least handles it. edit - and confusing the matter further, even "always evil" doesn't literally mean always evil. Rare exceptions can still exist. Colonel Cool fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 17:15
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Ethics in DND given the 9 part alignment system is irreversibly screwed up. It's what gives Redcloak a lot of his bite as a character, because he's not wrong in his case against the system. Also, true neutral in D&D terms is either "balance in all things" or "eh, I dunno, it doesn't really matter to me." But unless you're going to get rid of that system entirely (which I'd be 100% fine with) you're stuck with all the problems it brings along. I remember the Rifts/Palladium system was better than D&D at handling those problems, with alignments like "Unprincipled" (generally OK but selfish) and "Abberant" (basically Omar from the Wire before Omar from the Wire) giving examples of how that type of person would handle different situations.
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Aug 10, 2020 17:42
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When I DM, I've taken to reskinning the alignment system as "Pick two abstract things your character genuinely believes in the importance of" A mafioso could be "Money" and "Family", which is far more interesting than "Chaotic evil"
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Aug 10, 2020 17:48
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ikanreed posted:When I DM, I've taken to reskinning the alignment system as "Pick two abstract things your character genuinely believes in the importance of" That's a good way to do it.
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Aug 10, 2020 17:52
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habeasdorkus posted:Ethics in DND given the 9 part alignment system is irreversibly screwed up. It's what gives Redcloak a lot of his bite as a character, because he's not wrong in his case against the system. Also, true neutral in D&D terms is either "balance in all things" or "eh, I dunno, it doesn't really matter to me." Yeah, there were two good, two selfish and three evil alignments in the Palladium system. Principled was basically lawful good. Scrupulous was neutral good. Unprincipled was chaotic good more or less. Anarchist was chaotic neutral without being a fishmalk. Miscreant was neutral evil, but small scale like a petty criminal. Aberrant was lawful evil in that you still did bad things, but you also held to a code of principles/standards that kept you from being a total monster. Diabolic was full-blown Saturday morning cartoon villain chaotic evil.
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Aug 10, 2020 17:55
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By the way, I think my system makes dickish paladins worse, because their role is literally enforcing those views on the rest of the world for their god.
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Aug 10, 2020 18:10
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Johnny Aztec posted:Does this involve Elan having to pilot a bio-Robot made from his dead mother Yes
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Aug 10, 2020 18:12
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Yes, and Belkar is extremely jealous that he doesn't have a big robot
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Aug 10, 2020 18:31
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Daikloktos posted:Okay, sounds like I didn't miss anything (or rather, there wasn't anything to miss), so - the staff being made of tongues is more a necromancy thing than some sort of specifically Orcus symbolism? It has been suggested to me that I've conflated two different evil artifact rods from the Book of Vile Darkness, and the Rod of Orcus is in fact not interesting at all. 
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Aug 10, 2020 18:31
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Mystic Mongol posted:It has been suggested to me that I've conflated two different evil artifact rods from the Book of Vile Darkness, and the Rod of Orcus is in fact not interesting at all. Wand of Orcus. You maybe thinking of the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus.
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Aug 10, 2020 18:40
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MonsterEnvy posted:Wand of Orcus. You maybe thinking of the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus. Isn't the Ruby Rod in actuality super green?
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Aug 10, 2020 19:35
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paradoxGentleman posted:The Book of Vile Darkness (which I read in my shameful teenage edgy phase) describes him as obese, but then the illustration looks like this: I wouldn't go so far as to call the brother fat, I mean he got a weight problem. What's he gonna do? He's a demon. 
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Aug 10, 2020 19:35
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Clearly D&D should use Myers-Briggs.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:55
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habeasdorkus posted:Ethics in DND given the 9 part alignment system is irreversibly screwed up. It's what gives Redcloak a lot of his bite as a character, because he's not wrong in his case against the system. Also, true neutral in D&D terms is either "balance in all things" or "eh, I dunno, it doesn't really matter to me." The 9 part system as an array of thoughts like the one Thor flew past is fine, it's assigning them to races that is dumb.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:24
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This is page 1138, so the system should just be light side vs dark side.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:44
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Raenir Salazar posted:Clearly D&D should use Myers-Briggs. 
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Aug 10, 2020 20:52
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seaborgium posted:Isn't the Ruby Rod in actuality super green? Depends on what Chris Tucker is wearing.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:53
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PMush Perfect posted:I see. Then every time you take an alignment test, you get a different result. And you can tell who's evil by whether or not they're very proud of their whatever
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Aug 10, 2020 20:55
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Lol, I never typed in the next strip's url in manually before. That's some old art
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Aug 10, 2020 21:36
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What on earth is treasure PSTU? Plain, special, treasure, unimpressive?
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Aug 10, 2020 22:45
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Acerbatus posted:What on earth is treasure PSTU? P was random coins, S was potions, T was scrolls (why not S?), and U was 'jackpot!' that only a few monsters had . At least, if this stack overflow article is right.
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Aug 10, 2020 22:59
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Also, each of those letters represents a treasure table that the DM would roll on to determine which specific potions, scrolls, big ticket items, etc, the monster dropped. Old school D&D was very big on randomisation that way. In many ways, a lot of video game traditions (like loot tables and random gear drops from defeated enemies) are directly descended from attempts to adapt the vibe of those old D&D books to home computers.
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Aug 10, 2020 23:02
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I don't have the table handy, but older editions of D&D had a long set of "treasure type" tables to determine loot. The letters don't have a special meaning, they just indexed the tables by letter, with each type having a different breakdown of gems/jewelry/coins/magic items/etc. This is also the basis of the old joke Roy made about Miku would be less horrible if she had been receiving "treasure type O" regularly.
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Aug 10, 2020 23:03
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Not gonna lie, I really miss treasure tables. Players would get this joy in their eyes when they killed a red dragon and got four shots at the gems and art slot machine.
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Aug 11, 2020 00:06
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SuperKlaus posted:Not gonna lie, I really miss treasure tables. Players would get this joy in their eyes when they killed a red dragon and got four shots at the gems and art slot machine. I had a DM who would just do his own custom tables, no real sense or order to them and probably never used the same one twice, but that was still awesome! Especially because he was really, really good about coming up with random niche objects that weren’t over powered, but still wound up being practical and whatnot, like my guy who got a brick of returning. Otherwise not magical, and it’s not like throwing a brick is an especially useful form of combat (meaning penalties when throwing it), but damned if we didn’t put it to a LOT of use on general principle.
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Aug 11, 2020 00:10
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Android Blues posted:Old school D&D was very big on randomisation that way. That's also literally what the "Frequency" field is: very rare meant that if you were bopping around on the abyssal plain, and you get a random encounter, there's a 4% chance of meeting something that's Very Rare. Like Orcus there.
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Aug 11, 2020 01:26
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Thaddius the Large posted:Otherwise not magical, and it’s not like throwing a brick is an especially useful form of combat
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Aug 11, 2020 01:49
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3e changed everything fundamentally when it started indexing loot and magic items by expected level and nobody really noticed at the time - and it was just a side effect of magic item creation.
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Aug 11, 2020 02:08
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Seems like character alignment or principle systems are only useful to the extent the DM can use them to compel the player to make interesting choices because of them. I know some systems directly use metanarrative tokens the DM can offer players that they can later use right back but of course that's not very simulationist, which is important to some people. I guess for those people they also need an explicit mechanic so hell, "fallen Paladin" versions of every class. Fighter spend too many weeks studying or get locked up and can't exercise? Loses even their paltry class features.Mystic Mongol posted:It has been suggested to me that I've conflated two different evil artifact rods from the Book of Vile Darkness, and the Rod of Orcus is in fact not interesting at all.
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Aug 11, 2020 02:46
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oobey posted:Oh, drat. The dwarves really throw a wrench in that idea, yeah. You would have to exclude Hel’s Domain for that reason alone. I don’t think the other planes have any non-Evil souls, though, I don’t think that kind of mistake is cosmologically possible. Eleanor Shellstrop would like to have a word with you.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:06
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Alignment should be relative to one's culture, but still be universal in cosmology terms. So the noble paladin and the savage goblin, each obeying the precepts of their culture, both go to the lawful good heaven. Which is gonna make for a whole lot of awkward afterlife conversations.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:20
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Glass of Milk posted:Alignment should be relative to one's culture, but still be universal in cosmology terms. So the noble paladin and the savage goblin, each obeying the precepts of their culture, both go to the lawful good heaven.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:28
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Glass of Milk posted:Alignment should be relative to one's culture, but still be universal in cosmology terms. So the noble paladin and the savage goblin, each obeying the precepts of their culture, both go to the lawful good heaven. Trying to mix cultural relativism with absolute cosmic good and evil is a fools errand.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:28
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What if instead of moral alignments on the fate of your eternal soul, you had some kind of system that measures your place in the geopolitical landscape that your adventure takes place in. And if instead of playing D&D you were playing 13th Age.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:45
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ikanreed posted:Trying to mix cultural relativism with absolute cosmic good and evil is a fools errand. For sure. You can have Discworld or Lord of the Rings. They're both great! But if the Balrog would have been good if he was raised by a nice, Eru-fearing set of parents, it sort of loses some of the impact of Gandalf identifying himself as a servant of Eru and proclaiming that the Balrog's dark flame will have no purchase here due to the divine mandate that Gandalf bears. Likewise, it'd be really weird if the questionable things Lord Vetinari does that help the city could be objectively measured and identified as Good or Evil. Order of the Stick is a story about people from Diskworld being trapped in a system designed to have Lord of the Rings morality, and it's had some of its best moments when it's grappling with that.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:50
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ikanreed posted:Trying to mix cultural relativism with absolute cosmic good and evil is a fools errand.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:50
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Capfalcon posted:For sure. You can have Discworld or Lord of the Rings. They're both great! But if the Balrog would have been good if he was raised by a nice, Eru-fearing set of parents, it sort of loses some of the impact of Gandalf identifying himself as a servant of Eru and proclaiming that the Balrog's dark flame will have no purchase here due to the divine mandate that Gandalf bears. I think you're wrong in a way that Rich himself has written against - that the morality of a work of fiction is divorced from a sort of, didactic reflection of reality. I wish I had the quote handy, like maybe if some obsessives maintained a sort of "Index of The Giants Comments" including a byzantine inclusion-vote process to maintain readability without overarchiving... but at least in my view the morality of all fiction is ultimately supposed to be a tool for the reader to reflect on the morality of their lived experience. The contrast between "cultural relativism" and "absolute polar Good and Evil" is irreducible in either reality or fiction. As you identify, certain works magnify different questions, present things along different lines. You're not supposed to be thinking about the Balrog's parents in that moment, whereas if... Steven Universe found an ancient demon beneath the earth you can bet you should be wondering what trauma led it to burrow to such depths. But in no work can you, or should you, entirely set these fundamental questions aside in a holistic examination.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:39
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I had an idea about the surprise new ally character hinted at in the commentary of utterly dwarfed. But one panel is loving it up. Redcloak's niece who got smuggled away from xykon was on one (1) page front and back Except you can see her through a window one panel later. But it makes so much sense given the nature of the conflict.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:43
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Daikloktos posted:First of all, I want to say we have an excellent Tolkien Thread in The Book Barn which, like Lothlorien itself, feels like the last vestige of a more ancient time of effort and expertise on these forums. They'd be able to explain better than I the evolution of Tolkien's precise feelings on this matter alongside the development of his legendarium but it is, famously, among the last indecisive revisions to The Silmarillion material that he struggled with these exact questions and whether even Melkor himself might find redemption before the end of time. I think this entire line of discussion is fundamentally mistaken because: ikanreed posted:Trying to mix cultural relativism with absolute cosmic good and evil is a fools errand. The post(s) that kicked this off aren't talking about "works" they're talking about games. Alignment is a tool for a game first and foremost. You're not really comparing apples to apples. Alignment is roleplaying training wheels to help people find their niche. It falls apart under deep scrutiny but in most games where it is employed deep scrutiny was never going to happen in the first place.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:57
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Daikloktos posted:First of all, I want to say we have an excellent Tolkien Thread in The Book Barn which, like Lothlorien itself, feels like the last vestige of a more ancient time of effort and expertise on these forums. They'd be able to explain better than I the evolution of Tolkien's precise feelings on this matter alongside the development of his legendarium but it is, famously, among the last indecisive revisions to The Silmarillion material that he struggled with these exact questions and whether even Melkor himself might find redemption before the end of time. I think the idea Cap was suggesting that in terms of what your written work presents itself as, there is often a separation between works which are about the struggle between cosmic forces of good and evil vis a vis works that portray themselves as being either taking place in a morally grey world or a morally questionable one. Not that moral quandaries or ethical dilemna's don't exist but it's pretty rarely in the former category does systematic abuses wrought by mortal hands (i.e chattel slavery by "the good guys", serfdom, discrimination etc) is ever directly questioned by the heroes, or rarely are present and everything on the good guys is an idealistic rose tinted medieval stasis and all the bad things we know of is because of the forces of evil. Then you have settings where the setting being morally grey is the main point, and everyone is some varying degree of selfish and short sighted and flawed. Maybe there are good gods and evil gods but they very in how ultimately benevolent they are in the end, and vary in direct importance to the events in the world. Takhisis in Dragonlance is a mover and shaker, while Lolth and other evil gods in Faerun tend to sit back and let their mortal servants cause trouble in their name instead.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:01
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