Yes. But,

1. anyone who hits the negative of their Con is dead either way, and thus,
2. the foe is free to keep whacking you with the club until your head is pulp
3. the only difference between sharps and blunts is, as I said, bleeding out while unattended, and
4. it's a game

And of course then we get into, "do you really want to talk about realism in a game with ascending hit points, magic missiles and so on?" but really that's just a restatement of #4.

Quote from: CRKrueger;915415Since in D&D you get more XP for Gold then you do for killing, then I guess D&D isn't supposed to be all about combat, it's all about Slavery, because you'll get more XP for capturing everything you see and selling it on the open market.

Well, in OD&D there are rules for subduing and selling dragons, so, yeah.  And given average dice rolls, the dragon is worth approximately 75% of the total value of its hoard.

Quote from: Manzanaro;915446Well, it's how paladins work in AD&D1e if memory serves. Guess there were a lot of shit GMs in those days?

Well, there were and are.  Read any fucking thread in any fucking forum about Paladins.  Shit referees seem to take particular pleasure in doing a "sneak attack" on a Paladin's status.  My favorite was the woman who, first time she played, played a Paladin and the ref declared she was magically charmed by an NPC and had sex with the NPC and then lost her Paladin status because she was no longer pure.

There are a lot of shit referees out there.

Now, I will clearly and explicitly tell a Paladin's player if the course of action they are contemplating would endanger their status.  The only rational reaction to a referee "tricking" you into losing Paladin status is to punch him in the fucking face so hard he shits his own liver.

Quote from: CRKrueger;915423Just a quibble, the Temple was turned into a market with vendors selling wares, Doves for sacrifices (basically buying your favor for god from the priests), money changers, etc... but the parable if you were, I always learned, was that it was turning a temple into an Open Market, a place of commerce, haggling, and profit instead of worship is what caused him to flip his shit, not specifically the economics of tacking a surcharge onto moneychanging or having Wimpy pay the priests double on Tuesday for a Dove today.

Jesus had two commandments, the first one was "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."  Turning a temple of worship into a garage sale pretty much takes a gigantic dump all over that one.  Actually pretty darn simple to see why he was pissed.

Thatès a perfectly fair and well-reasoned interpretation, though Ill note that my interpretation was shared by the Christian world for the better part of a thousand years, which I think again just goes to show how little help the Bible is in providing a black and white moral outlook when its open to any number of interpretations based on what the reader wants it to say more often than not.

Quote from: TristramEvans;915485Thatès a perfectly fair and well-reasoned interpretation, though Ill note that my interpretation was shared by the Christian world for the better part of a thousand years, which I think again just goes to show how little help the Bible is in providing a black and white moral outlook when its open to any number of interpretations based on what the reader wants it to say more often than not.

Oh there's no doubt that Usury was anathema for over a thousand years.  I'm just not clear on The Clearing of the Temple Courts being the primary impetus behind that decision, but then again I've never dug into Nicea to a historical academic depth.

Quote from: CRKrueger;915487Oh there's no doubt that Usury was anathema for over a thousand years.  I'm just not clear on The Clearing of the Temple Courts being the primary impetus behind that decision, but then again I've never dug into Nicea to a historical academic depth.

The prohibition against usury is based on Deut 23:19, not charging another Israelite interest, and Jesus' injuction to "love one another as I have loved you."

Who would Jesus kill?

Goblin babies.

Quote from: CRKrueger;915352Take a Conan campaign.  In most of the countries, slavery is a norm.  Hell, slave women might even be payment or loot.  Free them, sell them, let them choose, whatever you do, that's not a situation artificially placed there, it's a situation because you signed on to raid a Turanian caravan, or an Argossean Galley, or whatever.

The world is the world.  Sometimes it makes you think. Sometimes it makes you choose.

If I am playing a PC from a slave-owning culture, then my PC will be thrilled about the booty loot. If my PC is from an anti-slave culture, then freeing the slaves would be reaction. The "choice" would have been decided during chargen when I choose the PC's background and decided upon their personality.

Quote from: Spinachcat;915496If I am playing a PC from a slave-owning culture, then my PC will be thrilled about the booty loot. If my PC is from an anti-slave culture, then freeing the slaves would be reaction. The "choice" would have been decided during chargen when I choose the PC's background and decided upon their personality.

A Shemite might not think anything of it, might even have slaves of their own...but due to roleplaying interaction with some specific slaves, decide to free them.  Not because the player had in mind some great Moral Passion Play, but because they felt like it.  Then again an Aquilonian follower of Mitra might be against slavery, but the slaves are Stygian, and the money can be put to good use.  The group might be Free Companions hired to kill a rival claimant of a throne of some small eastern kingdom, see that the rival would make a better ruler and put them on the throne instead.  Players make choices and change their minds for different reasons, morals or ethics are just one of the possible factors.  No one has to be patting themselves on the back, virtue signaling from the rooftops or rubbing one out, they just have to be roleplaying.

Quote from: CRKrueger;915352... if you're going to a place where there are Orcs, Giants, whatever in sufficient numbers to have a breeding population, and those races actually breed, then you can either let the setting be consistent, or paper stuff over.

Papering stuff over is to me just as false as putting in front and center.  Stuff coming up organically, means just that.  If that ends up being a moral choice, then it does.   In most cases, these choices are going to be relative.  Killing goblin non-combatants might not be a moral choice for a dwarf.  It might.

Take a Conan campaign.  In most of the countries, slavery is a norm.  Hell, slave women might even be payment or loot.  Free them, sell them, let them choose, whatever you do, that's not a situation artificially placed there, it's a situation because you signed on to raid a Turanian caravan, or an Argossean Galley, or whatever.

The world is the world.  Sometimes it makes you think. Sometimes it makes you choose.

Yes. My morality in gaming is not so much about requiring certain acts to be immoral in my games, but that I want my games to make sense, so much that they fail as something I want to do, when they don't. Morality issues become important for me mostly because of the inconsistency they create if ignored or not treated seriously enough. The logic either breaks down or the morality of the group erodes until the heroes are a bunch of murdering merciless greedbags whom no decent person would ever like, and who should have a blood feud with a thousand families, etc.

There's also noise on the issue of goblins because apparently many D&D worlds are full of monsters whose children may as well be mosquito larvae or giant killer wasp eggs, which sure kill them with fire, but goblins have never been that in my games (which have almost all been not D&D - in TFT, Goblins are actually pretty interesting schemer types who never tell lies but who are quite clever and try to fool you even without lying, and the orcs are basically just humans with pointy teeth/ears and a little too much testosterone).

If goblins aren't irredeemable monsters and the players aren't all in agreement they should be butchered (say, because they are all from a village which was butchered to the last child by goblins), then it seems to me that butchering their children is almost surely a crime against intelligence, because it's probably completely unnecessary, and is probably ignoring details such as them trying to escape or hide, and the details of the actual experience of trying to kill them and every party PC/NPC's reactions to the horror of that, etc.

It's a bit how I am about actual morality issues in real life, though. That is, I would be an environmentalist even if I were also an arch-capitalist multi-billionaire wanting to own the world, because I understand that if you destroy the planet as much as we have been, that the planet I want to own is going to suck and possibly not support life for my children. Ignoring that to pretend short-sighted profiteering makes sense is just stupid, even if morality didn't enter into it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;915483...punch him in the fucking face so hard he shits his own liver.

I'm going to be giggling all day thinking about the visuals for this, thanks!

"Ha, ha!  You're just a fighter now!  Your magic horse kicks you and..." *SMACK*  *SPLURGHHT*

"Holy shit, is that his...call 999 Karl is bleeding out!"

Quote from: Manzanaro;915420Game of Thrones isn't powerful because Good and Evil are different there than in our world. It's powerful because they're NOT different.

It's powerful because people interact with all that moral grey passively, like a nosy neighbor.  But when people choose active recreation (I'm directing activities) instead of passive recreation (I'm watching something as a bystander), they overwhelmingly choose activities that don't require them to make moral choices frequently, or possibly punish them for making a choice the referee sees differently.

I try to DM games for casual people who don't play RPGs as a primary hobby, but are willing to play AD&D (1E) occasionally.  I'm just looking to have fun, and play a game.  I don't care about a lot of things that many capital "G" gamers seem to care about.

As far as the intersection between alignment and killing goblin babies, this is how I look at things at my table

1. As an overarching backdrop, 1E AD&D has more in common with cinematic westerns than it does with King Arthur.  The players are exploring the wilderness, pushing the frontiers back, and making things safe for commoners to settle the newly claimed or re-claimed land.  

2. There is a cosmic conflict in AD&D, the use of the word "cosmic" appearing multiple times in the DMG alignment section.  Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos, expressed through a combination of deities, and planar beings of ideal and fixed alignments, fight the battle through human proxies.  Whatever choice humanity chooses to make for itself will either tip the balance to a victor, or, preserve the status quo in a balance between all (a cosmic choice of neutrality as opposed to an existing predilection towards neutrality).  Until such an event occurs, humanity is the sole species with total freedom of alignment.  Some other races (e.g., the demis) have individuals that are variant, but as far as race/species, they are largely fixed cosmically to one side or another.  Non-playable monsters have no individual variance, and are instruments of the various alignments.  

3. "In co-operation men bring ruin upon monsterdom, for they have no upper limits as to level or acquired power from spells or items." (DMG pg. 21)  Monsters are also the opponents of humanity.  The local question for humanity is if they will get their shit together in order to eradicate monsterdom and take full and total dominion over the land.

This is all much more simplistic than real life, but it makes for a very effective game - one that casual players can immediately grasp and operate.  It also allows for a contrast between simple and complex morality.  The shallow end of the pool, where the bulk of the game is played, is against the monsters.  A goblin will always be evil.  As Chainsaw said:

Quote from: Chainsaw;915233In my games, evil monsters create miniature evil monsters - not "children." The miniature evil monsters are about as childish as that small-sized alien that burst from what's his name's chest in Alien and then quickly grew into a full-sized, acid-blooded killing machine. Of course, you know, some people prefer "monsters" that are basically just humans with funny features and different colored skin. If those people want to navel gaze over their "monsters," it's no concern of mine.

"Children" isn't an appropriate term for monsters' offspring because it is pre-loaded with suggestions of blank slate and innocence, instead of simple physical immaturity.  Monsters have immature monsters that are still monsterous and can never be anything other than monsterous.  I have no concern for what players do to physically immature monsters.  There is no moral obligation to treat them differently for their physical immaturity, because even if not the threat to an adult fighter that it's parent goblin is, it certainly is a threat to children of humans and other species that are innocent and uncomprehending.  It is both physically superior to immature humans and also fully (un)ethically functioning from the moment of its birth.  An immature goblin might tempt a human child, using its natural curiosity against it, to play out of sight of its mother into the nearby woods, where it would turn on the human child and kill it.  

While casual gaming doesn't focus on the immature monsters, once they are framed in this manner the matter takes care of itself.  And there really isn't any need to roll the dice and play it out should it be relevant.  If all the adults are killed, the rest is abstracted.  But the framing cuts off at the root most of these sorts of issues that ruin games.  

However the DM can still contrast between simple and complex reality, and make a superior game that way.  AD&D adventures where other humans or demis, instead of monsters, are the other side offer all the steamy moral greyness one could hope for.  If you want the moral quandaries, adventure in the cities.  If you want the straightforward my team/other team, head to the wilderness.  

This allows casual players to have as much or as little of either sort of game, or the perfect mix of them for that group, without ever getting moral decision fatigue that becomes un-fun and makes them want to go bowling over beers instead

Goblin children were put in the Caves of Chaos because Gary wanted to screw the paladins!

Quote from: DavetheLost;915604Goblin children were put in the Caves of Chaos because Gary wanted to screw the paladins!

Boy did he! Why theres No Paladins In BX D&D At All! Man did he have it in for paladins that they arent even in the game!

Quote from: TristramEvans;915401So you have no idea how the monetary system in the modern world works or came about. Fun.

You are conflating your modern concepts as the entirety of the modern world. Go look up Islamic "banking" as a start and how cash can be very divorced from your assumed modern concepts. Your ignorance shows. I lived that reality.