Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481705Paladins would fight Evil orcs, (or an army True Neutral druids and True Neutral bears) but after winning they'd take a break to relax and have fun Paladin style: kneeling in prayer on a cold stone floor, scowling at perky people, and mumbling holy texts.
 

This RPG summed it up the best:
http://kuoi.org/~kamikaze/Nuelow/nl1_fairies.html#crusaders

"Crusaders, when not scouring the Magic     Forest for fairies, can be found in their austere stone fortresses.     Here, they pray to their gods, flog themselves, conduct subdued     gatherings, masses, and evening meals, flog themselves some more,     procreate while wearing their armor, look at books with dirty     illuminations, and, finally, flog themselves."

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481705Paladins would fight Evil orcs, (or an army True Neutral druids and True Neutral bears) but after winning they'd take a break to relax and have fun Paladin style: kneeling in prayer on a cold stone floor, scowling at perky people, and mumbling holy texts.

Emphasis mine, because it seems that you are suggesting that Paladins cannot be perky. I find that this plays into a stereotype of militant ecclesiastics that is quite offensive and contemptable. Paladins can be just as perky as your average glee club member - except they are a perky glee club member for GOD.

Quote from: David R;481576I am reminded of a scene in Criminal Minds where Hotch is interrogating the serial killer, Vincent Perotta.  

Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner: You were just responding to what you learned Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive and violent household...it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers.

I think that the idea that the evil can always be found in how a person is raised or that there is always an understandable reason behind the evil is as mistaken as believing that autism is caused by cold parents or homosexuality is caused by strong mothers and weak fathers.  

The problem is that most people assume that other people think the same way they do and value the same things they do.  They project their own mindset onto others.  And what that means is that when a decent person with a function conscience tries to imagine why another person might be evil, they assume that the other person has a conscience, must have some motivation to overcome that conscience to do evil, and that their conscience can be appealed to to redeem them and bring them back to being a good person.  In the case of psychopaths, all of those assumptions can be wrong, and that's important because "In a typical prison population, about 20 percent of the inmates satisfy the [Dr. Robert] Hare definition of a psychopath, but they are responsible for over half of all violent crime."  And if you try to treat a psychopath with a program that assumes that they have a conscience that can be appealed to and assume they have a desire to change, it can make things worse.  "[P]sychopaths who underwent social-skills and anger-management training before release had an 82 percent reconviction rate. Psychopaths who didn't take the program had a 59 percent reconviction rate. Conventional psychotherapy starts with the assumption that a patient wants to change, but psychopaths are usually perfectly happy as they are."  

Not to put too much of a point on it, but Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold avoided prosecution for a robbery by going through a "diversionary program" that, for example, asked them to write an apology letter to their victim, assuming it might help them understand the moral implications of hurting someone else.  Eric Harris wrote a lovely letter where he told the victim how he understood what he felt and how the robbery hurt him while, at the same time, writing in his own journal what an idiot the victim was and how he was entitled to take his stuff.

If you really want to understand bad people and evil to add verisimilitude to your games, I really do encourage you to research violent psychopaths.  Law enforcement sites also have a very interesting take on them.

Quote from: David R;481576Well I think when she went back for Newt she was being heroic, much like how the grunts walked in to the hive and then being relieved of their pulse rifles. I think her attempt to annihilate the xenomorphs was pragmatic.

I feel like I'm dealing with a shifting landscape here.  What I'm trying to get to the bottom of is whether you think a good hero can engage in pragmatic genocide and still remain good and heroic?  Did the pragmatic (or even spiteful) decision to annihilate the Aliens undermine her status as a hero and a good person?

Earlier in this thread, I described feeling unease watching James Bond gunning down Russian police officers while escaping a police station in Goldeneye because they were just doing their job.  Do you feel any sort of unease that Ripley was deliberately and ruthlessly trying to commit genocide against an intelligent alien species?

Quote from: David R;481576Not that I think they were evil or anything.  We can dream up of races and motivations beyond our ken who would be very hostile to humanity or any other race, without ever having to confine ourselves to good/evil.

What do you think evil is?  Do you believe it exists?

Quote from: David R;481576The first three Alien movies to me has always been a reflection of humanity with good and evil being played out in the human race and not in the Alien race . Ripley makes an astute observation when she say’s “You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage”  which goes nicely with Ash’s cold comfort description in Alien “I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality” all the while knowing that the Company sent them in to bring back a specimen.

I'm not seeing it.  Ash wasn't human and Burke is largely a straw man to be knocked down rather than a plausible example of human evil.  At best, he was depicted as a corporate psychopath (you can find plenty of articles on those, too).  I think all of the stories were, like the early Terminator movies, ultimately tales of survival against a smart opponent that you can't negotiate with who wants to slaughter you.

Added: One of the people in my gaming group is an Alien fanatic and what he seems to focus on is the movie as a story of what people can do to survive against the odds.

Quote from: David R;481576Games can be about different things. You can have a game about heroism where character actions are easily identified as such or you could move into murkier waters. Hopefully I have given you an idea of where I’m coming from.

My problem is not that games can be about different things (I'm fine with you telling me that your group wouldn't find the kind of game I'm describing much fun) but with the idea that games that take place in "murkier [moral] waters" are superior and a sign of better worldbuilding and that those with simpler moral landscapes are lazy, if not worthy of contempt.

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481705John, there's more to Good than murdering the wicked. Paladins can't spend all their time slaying orcs, they also have to make time for the other good things in life. At a certain point a  Paladin may decide that it's time to put aside the +5 sword of greater orc bane.

Have I ever said otherwise?  I feel I'm now being asked to defend a straw man.

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481705Paladins would stop short of genociding the orc threat and not feel bad about it in the same way that modern doctors try (and fail) to erradicate certain diseases. Oh sure, they'd feel great if they killed that horrible organism for good, but as long as there's not an epidemic in here-and-now-ville they can and should enjoy the relative peace and safety they've won for themselves and their worlds.

Again, have I said that Paladins should be scouring the world for every last evil creature and not rest until they are all dead?  What we were talking about specifically was the killing of helpless evil creatures, be they prisoners or the female and child evil monsters inhabiting a lair.  Care to address that issue?  And if the answer isn't to kill them, then what is the proper good course of action?
 

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481705But what about the psychopaths?
From what I understand, some psychopaths do bad things. But other psychopaths do good things even though they don't have good feelings and empathy while doing them. I don't care. I'm not the thought police. As long as they do good and not evil, I don't care what their thoughts are. But if they're doing good deeds for evil ends then they're guilty just like anyone else.

I've said it several times before and I'll say it again.  Being a psychopath, alone, does not make one a violent killer.  The majority of psychopaths are not violent killers and I do not endorse any sort of genocide against psychopaths.  But once a psychopath develops an inclination toward violence, they are notoriously difficult to treat or change because they don't want to change.

As for being the thought police, in a game where Paladins and/or Clerics and compel the truth and read alignment and magic users can read thoughts, one has the tools to be the thought police in a way that's not possible in the real world.  On the other hand, I do think there is some merit to the idea that being Evil in D&D should correspond to something that has actually been done such that an Evil aura signifies actual guilt of having done something wrong.
 

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481705But what about the evil orcs?
If they're as evil as you say, they should burn in hell for all eternity. But I don't have the foreknowledge to predict if an evil person would have done something unpredictable if I had not killed them, so I try to err on the side of caution and kill as few as is absolutely nessisary. Hypotheticaly, I'd kill evil orcs and True Neutral human Druids in self defense, defense of my family and neighbors, and (if I was a king or something) to protect my subjects.

Do you believe that psychopathic sex offenders who show no remorse for their crimes should be released after they've served their time for whatever crime they've been caught and convicted of because you don't have the foreknowledge to predict what they'll do if released?  Would you want such a person living next door to you and only be concerned that they might be a threat if you actually caught them in the act of sexually assaulting a neighbor or someone in your family?  Would you be entirely untroubled if they avoided your family, friends, and subjects and went on to sexually assault a string of people in another country?

Quote from: jibbajibba;481665Is a being that is irredeemibly evil ie is incapable of not doign evil really evil. The examples of the Aliens is a great one. The Aliens are not evil but like a virus they kill what they meet as part of their basic instint and life-cycle.

I believe they are really evil and I think most normal people do, too.  From the article How Psychopaths Threaten Moral Rationalism, or Is it Irrational to Be Amoral?:

QuoteThe standard Conceptual Rationalist response to this problem is to maintain that sociopaths or psychopaths do not "really make moral judgments at all" (Smith 1994, p. 67).  When psychopaths say that it's wrong to hurt people, they are not expressing the same thing that normals do with the same sentence, since psychopaths are not motivated in the right way and thus their words mean something else.  Rather, psychopaths use moral terms in an "inverted-commas" sense (Hare 1952).  [...]

[...] Hence, an important initial question is, what do people think about moral judgment in psychopaths?  Since both Conceptual Rationalists and their opponents are heavily invested in the debate, we should be wary of relying on their intuitions about what people think about psychopathic moral judgment.  A less loaded alternative is to simply ask people who haven't been trained in the debate.  In light of this, I carried out a preliminary study in which I presented philosophically unsophisticated undergraduates with questions about whether a given person really understands moral claims.  Subjects were given the following probes:

John is a psychopathic criminal.  He is an adult of normal intelligence, but he has no emotional reaction to hurting other people.  John has hurt and indeed killed other people when he has wanted to steal their money.  He says that he knows that hurting others is wrong, but that he just doesn't care if he does things that are wrong.  Does John really understand that hurting others is morally wrong?
 
Bill is a mathematician.  He is an adult of normal intelligence, but he has no emotional reaction to hurting other people.  Nonetheless, Bill never hurts other people simply because he thinks that it is irrational to hurt others.  He thinks that any rational person would be like him and not hurt other people.  Does Bill really understand that hurting others is morally wrong?

The responses to these questions were striking – and they ran in exactly the opposite pattern that Conceptual Rationalism would suggest.  Most subjects (nearly 85%) maintained that the psychopath did really understand that hurting others is morally wrong, despite the absence of motivation.  Neither was this due to an insipid reluctance to deny genuine moral judgment, for, surprisingly, a majority of subjects denied that the mathematician really understood that hurting others is morally wrong.  These responses suggest that, at least in some populations, the common conception of psychopaths is precisely that they really know the difference between right and wrong, but they don't care about doing what's right.

Quote from: jibbajibba;481665They are not evil because they are not making a conscious choice to do 'evil' they simply follow their instinct. If you stick a polar bear in a room full of kids it will probably kill all the little kids, does that make it evil? If you stick a man with a big knife in the room and he kills all the little kids is he morally equivalent to the bear ? (clue no of course not )

If they guy has no conscience, doesn't feel there is anything wrong with murdering little kids, and enjoys killing them, then why isn't he the equivalent of the bear?

Quote from: jibbajibba;481665So if you make a whole culture irremedibly evil are they actually evil at all?

I believe they are.  I think philosophers who have attempted to rationalize morality have argued that to be evil requires various things, including free will and an understanding that what they are doing is evil.  I do not think that's how normal people who have not been influenced by philosophical theories telling them otherwise naturally assess wether a person or creature is good or evil on the basis of what it does rather than why it does it.

I have no background in philosophy, but I was raised Christian, and the whole conflict of Good and Evil as presented in the Bible hinges on Good and Evil being choices made by free-thinking individuals who are aware of the difference (Tree of Knowledge, anyone?).  

In fact Good and Evil are uniquely tied to humans and angels, and not something attributed to beings without free-will or a knowledge of the divide between the two forces.

Quote from: Peregrin;481716I have no background in philosophy, but I was raised Christian, and the whole conflict of Good and Evil as presented in the Bible hinges on Good and Evil being choices made by free-thinking individuals.

So what was your church's take on Original Sin, Concupiscence, and being saved by Grace vs. Works?  Different churches do have different takes on this but there are plenty that believe that humans have an inherent sinful nature as a result of the Fall and it is thus impossible for a human to live a sin-free life.

In what way is this thread related to rpgs? Shouldn't it be in some other forum?

I was raised Catholic, but eventually switched to a more non-denominational type church in my teens, before getting out of religion entirely.  It varied.

My point was that the Bible was written with the assumption that all humans had a conscience and free-will.  Even if we're drawn to sin, we still know when we're sinning.  When you add in people who function on a fundamentally different level than the average person, it changes things.  Psychopaths and fantasy species that function similarly are more like forces of nature than something that can be contained within the whole Good/Evil paradigm.  I would use the term "sub-human", but since we're comparing orcs to psychopaths, I really don't feel comfortable calling another person that, even if their mind functions without normal human emotions.

That's not entirely true.  There are certain sects of Christianity that believe that God hates those who aren't elect and has thus created them to be cast into Hell in order to show the glory of God to the predestined.  Free will thus does not truly exist.  Since it involves words written a long time ago in foreign languages, there are multiple interpretations of various verses and a lack of clarity overall.

QuoteThat's not entirely true. There are certain sects of Christianity that believe that God hates those who aren't elect and has thus created them to be cast into Hell in order to show the glory of God to the predestined. Free will thus does not truly exist. Since it involves words written a long time ago in foreign languages, there are multiple interpretations of various verses and a lack of clarity overall.

QuoteI was raised Catholic, but eventually switched to a more non-denominational type church in my teens, before getting out of religion entirely. It varied.

My point was that the Bible was written with the assumption that all humans had a conscience and free-will. Even if we're drawn to sin, we still know when we're sinning. When you add in people who function on a fundamentally different level than the average person, it changes things. Psychopaths and fantasy species that function similarly are more like forces of nature than something that can be contained within the whole Good/Evil paradigm. I would use the term "sub-human", but since we're comparing orcs to psychopaths, I really don't feel comfortable calling another person that, even if their mind functions without normal human emotions.

QuoteSo what was your church's take on Original Sin, Concupiscence, and being saved by Grace vs. Works? Different churches do have different takes on this but there are plenty that believe that humans have an inherent sinful nature as a result of the Fall and it is thus impossible for a human to live a sin-free life.

What the HELL does any of the aforementioned RELIGIOUS CRAP have anything to do with a FRIGGIN RPG and ORCS?

Moderators, please shut this topic off.  It has run its course now.

Quote from: B.T.;481721That's not entirely true.  There are certain sects of Christianity that believe that God hates those who aren't elect and has thus created them to be cast into Hell in order to show the glory of God to the predestined.  Free will thus does not truly exist.  Since it involves words written a long time ago in foreign languages, there are multiple interpretations of various verses and a lack of clarity overall.

Sure, if you try to logically deconstruct Christianity in the same way people are trying to do to D&D and examine all the paradoxes, you end up with Pre-destination.

I guess that sort of makes Calvanists like the "unimaginative" folk who can't work within D&D's alignment system.

Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;481722What the HELL does any of the aforementioned RELIGIOUS CRAP have anything to do with a FRIGGIN RPG and ORCS?.

About as much last several pages of trying to address "what is evil?"

Predestination is specifically sanctioned in the Bible.  How predestination comes about is where various sects of Christianity differ.

Anyway.  Back to orcs.

Quote from: John Morrow;481708I think that the idea that the evil can always be found in how a person is raised or that there is always an understandable reason behind the evil is as mistaken as believing that autism is caused by cold parents or homosexuality is caused by strong mothers and weak fathers.

I think you missed the point of that. The point was that good can come from an evil environment. It relates to theme of redemption that seems to run through my posts here concerning evil.

QuoteThe problem is that most people assume that other people think the same way they do and value the same things they do.  They project their own mindset onto others.  And what that means is that when a decent person with a function conscience tries to imagine why another person might be evil, they assume that the other person has a conscience, must have some motivation to overcome that conscience to do evil, and that their conscience can be appealed to to redeem them and bring them back to being a good person.  In the case of psychopaths, all of those assumptions can be wrong, and that's important because

I think the problem here is that you only relate evil to psychopaths or at the very least seem to think of it as the only example of evil. Your example of play with the goblins is a good example of psychopaths in play but by no means is it the only conception of evil. In the real world evil takes many forms and you do not need to be a psychopath to carry out evil acts or for evil acts to become an excepted part of your culture and thinking. I mentioned numerous examples of real world evil such as slavery, ethnic cleansing, mass murder for political reason, murder for profit, torture, systemic racism  all of which have at one time or another been a part of various cultures or carry on to be.

A torturer who maims people for an evil dictator can go home and be a loving parent to his children all because he’s afraid to rebel against a system which may put his own family in peril. Is his acts not evil? Yes. Is he always a psychopath ? No

QuoteIf you really want to understand bad people and evil to add verisimilitude to your games, I really do encourage you to research violent psychopaths.  Law enforcement sites also have a very interesting take on them.

No doubt if my perception of evil was limited only to psychopaths and such creatures made up the sum evil in my games, I’ll take your advice. As it is, the scope of evil and how people are both perpetrators and victims can be found in the history or narratives of various real world cultures.

QuoteI feel like I'm dealing with a shifting landscape here.  What I'm trying to get to the bottom of is whether you think a good hero can engage in pragmatic genocide and still remain good and heroic?  Did the pragmatic (or even spiteful) decision to annihilate the Aliens undermine her status as a hero and a good person?

I don’t see how I can be any clearer. Ripley’s act of going back for Newt was heroic. Her act of (not spiteful but rather rage filled – understandable since the people who had worked with her and in Aliens fought with her and given up their lives in some instances, were killed by them  ) genocide was pragmatic.

I don’t think a person who commits genocide against a species which is not evil but which is a threat to her kind is a hero. I fully concede that my conception of “hero” is limited in scope. Please refer to the options I gave you about living with a race of irredeamble evil creatures or wiping them out from existence.

I fully understand the implications (and utilitarian arguments) for holding on to altruistic principles but I’m not  invested in the concept of “hero” to widen the scope to justify actions that I don’t consider heroic. I am willing to say that a protagonist is capable of both heroic and pragmatic acts. No doubt some would find my heroic fantasy campaigns prosaic but I don’t think they are.

QuoteEarlier in this thread, I described feeling unease watching James Bond gunning down Russian police officers while escaping a police station in Goldeneye because they were just doing their job.  Do you feel any sort of unease that Ripley was deliberately and ruthlessly trying to commit genocide against an intelligent alien species?

I felt unease that the soldiers were sent to their deaths by a mendacious corporation. I felt unease that the settlers were unaware on what they were building their lives on. I understood, why Ripley did what she did. Look at it this way. Here were two mothers facing off, with the lives of their offsprings in the balance. And yes these intelligent alien life forms are a threat to humanity….well they would not be if that damn corporation did not send people to them….

QuoteWhat do you think evil is?  Do you believe it exists?

I believe evil exists. As to what I think it is, I could point you to numerous acts . But my thinking of evil esp in games and I suppose in real life is, to quote David Rossi from Criminal Minds – “Our jobs is to stop evil not discover where it came from”. (I suppose now we are going to get into a whole discussion about the nature of evil all the while conflating a whole range of issues)

QuoteI'm not seeing it.  Ash wasn't human and Burke is largely a straw man to be knocked down rather than a plausible example of human evil.  At best, he was depicted as a corporate psychopath (you can find plenty of articles on those, too).  I think all of the stories were, like the early Terminator movies, ultimately tales of survival against a smart opponent that you can't negotiate with who wants to slaughter you.

Ash isn’t supposed to represent humanity. He supposed to represent the human face of the Corporation. His actions were not supposed to demonstrate evil but rather how the corporation is like the Alien – “A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality”. Burke was hardly a stawman. Burke may seem like a corporate stooge but he was more than that. He too was trying to survive. His aim was to cover up the gross act he had done by sending the colonist there. He wanted to make a profit from his failure. The fact that he was an unlikely early ally (even though he had ulterior motives) to Ripley further demonstrates the complex faces that man paints on as opposed to the pure state of the Aliens.

Edit to add: Also look at the protrayal of the "killing machines" in the movies. The diverse bunch who were the marines as oppossed to the hiveminded aliens. Gorman redeemed himself and was willing to sacrifce himself for Vasquez. Hudson rediscovered his balls and the foolhardiness that comes with it. Spunkmeyer died without changing his name. My point is that humans were protrayed as capable of changing while the aliens could not operating on instinct and survival.

QuoteAdded: One of the people in my gaming group is an Alien fanatic and what he seems to focus on is the movie as a story of what people can do to survive against the odds.

Sure. That’s one way of looking at it.

QuoteMy problem is not that games can be about different things (I'm fine with you telling me that your group wouldn't find the kind of game I'm describing much fun) but with the idea that games that take place in "murkier [moral] waters" are superior and a sign of better worldbuilding and that those with simpler moral landscapes are lazy, if not worthy of contempt.

Ok. Where did I say this ? I am curious, did I imply this somewhere. It was not my intention and if you point to a post where I said or implied this, I will retract it or apologize or explain what I meant. As for "murkier waters" I don't see how you could see this as a slight on your games. I was merely commenting on the difference of tone.

Regards,
David R