Quote from: StormBringer;481862I just wanted to address this part really quickly; no one is saying an irredeemably evil creature is unbelievable.  Demons, unique creatures from mythology (I believe Medusa was mentioned), certain undead, etc aren't the problem.  What's wholly unrealistic is that there are entire species that are irredeemably evil.  No could ever possibly be so much as True Neutral, they are all EVIL.

Why?   Do you believe that normal human behavior exists independently of innate mental capabilities and instincts such that changing those mental capabilities and instincts as a matter of normal development would have no bearing on behavior?  Do you not believe in disorders like autism, psychopathy, and various inheritable behavioral disorders?  Or do you simply believe it impossible that a whole species could share what amounts to mental disorders in humans as their normal state of mind?

Quote from: StormBringer;481862I mean, hell, I am sure there were Nazis that signed up in a fervour of patriotism who later changed their minds and went AWOL because of the whole genocide thing.  Saying every last one of them was pure evil to the core is misguided, to say the least.

I'm not talking about normal human beings.  I'm not even talking about all psychopaths.  Are you claiming that if it is impossible for normal human beings mean it is utterly impossible?

Quote from: David R;481865You know something Morrow, this is getting tedious.

I agree.  I think we've reached the point where we are talking past each other for a variety of reasons and we are starting to go around in circles.  If you're done, then I'll give you the last word on this line of discussion.

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;481870I'd be at 100% terror and 0% outrage. I don't see how I could be outraged at something that has no choice in the matter. It's like being angry at a 'naughty' toaster or a 'mischievious' cliff. I don't anthropomorphise inanimate objects -- they hate it!

I really don't care whether you are outraged or not.  What I care about is how you think a good person should be permitted to deal with the threat.

Quote from: John Morrow;481879I agree.  I think we've reached the point where we are talking past each other for a variety of reasons and we are starting to go around in circles.  If you're done, then I'll give you the last word on this line of discussion.

I'm don't spend time here to get the last word. If you have the time or interest, please just summarize your position and where you think we differ. This would be  constructive last words to our discussion.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;481883I'm don't spend time here to get the last word. If you have the time or interest, please just summarize your position and where you think we differ. This would be  constructive last words to our discussion.

OK.  I'll reply to the bits that might still be constructive.

Quote from: John Morrow;481881I really don't care whether you are outraged or not. What I care about is how you think a good person should be permitted to deal with the threat.

Against a single irredemable monster a person should make the monster his slave, failing that make the monster his prisoner, failing that kill the monster, failing that live in an unending stalemate with the monster, failing that run away, and failing that fail.
 
It's the same thing for an entire species of monsters, except that then you get into efficiency of scale. They team up, or deputizing a few good Paladins so everyone else can get back to their lives with the least amount of wasted time and resources.
 
In the case of the guarenteed-dangerous pedophile living legaly in my neighborhood, that's a failure of society. In such a failed society I can't call the Paladin or assemble the neighborhood watch. I have to individualy defend my children, just like every other family in the neighborhood has to individualy defend themselves.

Quote from: David R;481865Agreed and this is exactly what the Criminal Minds bit I quoted implies, the whole quote mind you. But what you did was slash the quote and use it as a springboard to launch into your preoccupations with psychopaths.

Frankly, then I don't understand the point of the quote.  The problem is that I don't watch Criminal Minds and don't know the characters so it all just looks like random schmucks blathering about how each one has their own philosophy of life to me.

Quote from: David R;481865I draw that conclusion because even though I said that your games include a variety of types of evil – see my respone to CK – you continue cherry picking qotes of mine (like you did with my Crimnial Minds quote) and holding forth on psychopaths without providing examples as to the other types of evil in your games.

I'm not providing examples of the other types of evil in my games because they are not controversial.  What kind of example do you want?

Quote from: David R;481865This is what I mean. My example of the torturer was in response to your “advice” about doing research about “bad people” and "evil” with regards to psychopathy. The torturer example was about how bad or evil people were not always psychopaths but the only reason I brought it up was because you had started on abut psychopaths….again.

You complain that I'm not listening to you and I feel you are not listening to me, either.  I have repeatedly said that I understand that evil people are not always psychopaths.  In fact, I have said that not all psychopaths are evil.  So what are we disagreeing about here, then?

Quote from: David R;481865First off, my references for real life evil is not based primarily on fiction or folklore. It’s based on histories, testimonies (both victim and perpetrator), archival material, articles, research papers etc. I assume this is just a cheap shot because I make references to a TV show.

I replied that way because I think fiction is a poor way to understand how the world works and, yes, you are using a fictional TV show to support your points.

Quote from: David R;481865Fair enough. Here's another one from Criminal Minds.

Derek Morgan: Rossi, don't tell me you believe in evil.
David Rossi: Don't tell me you do this job and you don't.
Derek Morgan: I believe there are evil acts, but those are choices - brain chemistry. What do you think, Hotch?
Aaron 'Hotch' Hotchner: I think, deep down, we're all capable of unspeakable things. Where it starts or what you call it, I don't know.

So what, exactly, am I supposed to get out of that quote other than everyone has an opinion?  None of them really give me any reason to think it's a better opinion than any of the others.  If any of those characters were actually presenting an argument or example in defense of a position, it might have more value.

Quote from: David R;481865There may be no irredeambley evil races in my games but there are irredeamably evil individuals. As I said I base the evil in my games based on real world acts (psychopaths included) personified in individuals or groups in the game. Please respond to what I write and and not to what others write.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what we are arguing about anymore.

As for responding to you alone, we are having this discussion in an open thread rather than via private message.  As such, I consider everyone who may be reading the thread when I reply, and that means that I take opinions expressed by others into account.
 

Quote from: David R;481865Depth here had nothing to with personal preference or taste but rather how I (and my players) view the setting and their role in it.

Saying that a choice has or lacks depth implies a value judgement to me.  Maybe you didn't intend it that way, but I don't think it's unusual to read it as an objective value judgement.

Quote from: David R;481865I believe I answered that but in case you missed it, here it is again:

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.

I'm still not getting what I'm looking for out of that answer.

Let me try putting this in a game context with respect to the particular question I had to deal with in my D&D game and see if that makes what I'm asking more clear:

A Paladin rushes into a monster's lair to save a small girl.  I think we both believe that's heroic and good.  In order to get out of the lair, the Paladin lights the whole place up, killing not only the mother monster threatening him but all of her children, which may be the last of her species.  Does the Paladin still have a Good alignment or have the sacrificed their Paladinhood?

Is Ripley a good person and a hero at the end of the movie or did her pragmatic decision to kill off the Aliens (an option she endorsed before they kidnapped Newt -- "Take off and nuke 'em from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure." -- not to mention the "We Endanger Species" logo on the side of the lander) make her a bad person?

Quote from: David R;481865Well in the James Bond example it's the casual demonizing of the other, in this case evil Russians. The Good guy is allowed to get away with such actions well, because the "others" are the 'bad guys'. But I get what you’re saying. Read my response above for what I think of Ripley.

If Ripley's endorsement of Alien genocide bothered you as much as James Bond's wanton slaughter of Russian police officers bothered me, then you would think the writers made a mistake by having their hero commit Alien genocide.  I don't simply think he was making a pragmatic choice.  I think he was making a bad and immoral choice and that tainted the character for me and impaired my enjoyment of the movie.  Is that the case for you and Aliens?

Quote from: David R;481865The criteria varies between groups I suppose. I think I have given you examples of what I think is unheroic. Genocide for one, regardless of whether a race is evil or not.

Simply "unheroic" or bad, if not evil?  I don't consider an exterminator who kills termites and mice heroic.  I also don't consider them bad or evil.  Your focus on heroism rather than moral judgement makes it difficult for me to understand what you are really trying to say here.

Quote from: David R;481865Um, we would not be the ones doing the genociding ? What’s your point ?

If you make sure the planet isn't visited, you are actively controlling what happens either way.  What's the difference?  This goes back to my point about concentration camps, reservations, and prisons, all of which have a historical reputation that if not equivalent to genocide isn't a whole lot better.

John, by continuing to rest your argument on psychopaths you're creating an enormous distraction. I know others have said so as well but I'll restate:

1. I certainly don't deny there are bad people, and some of those individuals are "irredeemable". Meaning, they'll keep doing bad things if they aren't forcibly prevented by e.g. locking them up, or executing them.

2. I find the idea of a naturalistically-portrayed, irredeemably evil species of humanoids difficult to accept. An irredeemable species means that they're born evil, or with the seeds of evil in their genes. (I.e., even if they're cute & harmless when young, they're genetically programmed to become noxious as they age.)

3. Noxious is partly contextual. A species that's harmful when it comes in contact with humanity isn't inherently noxious. To be inherently noxious the species has to, essentially, require harm for its own survival. (In this sense, smallpox, measles or filariasis are worse than the plague bacterium, since plague doesn't require human hosts to propagate the species.) By definition, this means that stopping the harm caused by the species is equivalent to starving it to death or otherwise wiping it out.

(Incidentally this is a sufficient argument for why the aliens in the Aliens series were inherently noxious, since they can't reproduce without harming humans, other sentient lifeforms, or at least dogs. And dogs are worth protecting.)

4. A naturalistically-portrayed species of humanoids that need to harm humans in order live must necessarily have appeared after humans already existed. And from that time on, they must necessarily have been harming humans, always at the edge of human settlements. If they could live entirely apart from humans then they aren't inherently noxious. (I suppose that some could live close to humans and trade the necessary "products"--slaves or whatever--to those who live farther away. But the species as a whole requires human contact.)

To me this suggests that the humanoids are either far less "human" than would be suggested by e.g. the Monster Manual, or that their appearance on the scene is a very recent and unstable phenomenon. Rather like a disease, the amount of harm they need to cause in order to reproduce would be inversely proportional to their ability to sustain themselves. (If they wipe out all humans in an area, they can't live there any more.) The more Alien-like they might be, the less "human" but also the more plausibly noxious. A species of goblins that can only reproduce by laying eggs in living human hosts is (a) horrific and (b) a pretty radical departure. (Yet even this could be a hard case for evil, particularly from a utilitarian standpoint. Consider: what if the goblin-aliens agree to build and maintain hospitals that would benefit humanity at large, in exchange for a small quota of victims, chosen by lottery?)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;481896John, by continuing to rest your argument on psychopaths you're creating an enormous distraction.

He has a fascination with psychopaths. He's probably one of those guys who has a whole bookshelf dedicated to True Crime books. That's creepy stuff.

Quote from: John Morrow;481892I replied that way because I think fiction is a poor way to understand how the world works and, yes, you are using a fictional TV show to support your points.

I mentioned real world evils like slavery, ethnic cleansing, murder for profit or political gain, genocide, child soldiers etc in my first post in this thread. Later I mentioned the sources of information I use to research these phenomenons much like how you mentioned law enforcement agencies/books for your research on psychopaths. In no way would anyone think I was using a fictional TV show to understand the way how the world works. I was using fiction to underscore points much like how you used a comedian and movies.

Edit to add: For example when you asked me what I thought evil was and did I believe it exist. My response was that I could point you to real world evil acts and my thinking was that of Rossi's from Criminal Minds - "Our jobs is to stop evil not discover where it came from". The latter merely means I'm uninterested in where evil comes from - philisophical, religious or scientific ideas - and more interested in confronting it. It's rather simple really and since I don't think you are dumb, I'll go with dishonest.

I see no point in answering your questions because if I did, no doubt you will just cherrypick my answers to go off on another tangent, attribute arguments to me which I never made (but others did, simply because we are on public message board) and then claim I'm not listening.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: CRKrueger;481842How does this differ from the same charge you could levy against, say, comic books?

No its much the same but Comics I say would have a darker side still. Remember comics are more popular with Japanese adults than they are with American kids and don;t get me started on the Italian and french stuff, RPGs may be dark but Liberatore's RanXerox is constantly shagging his 13 year old girlfriend and kills anything that walks or crawls on the earth.
So I am not saying that comic books, rap music, etc don't have dark sides, they do, I am just saying that denying the dark side of RPGs is at best blinkered. Poison'd does exist and is an RPG, you may not like that but ....

QuoteCould you quote me the relevant sections of the book where the RPGs "take the stance" that things should be solved always with violence?  I guess I missed the cliff notes.

When the major flagship RPG has specifically set out to ensure that all classes can contribute equally to combat and when the rule book for said game is 80% about combat the implication is that combat is pretty central. May games give XP for killing things and taking their stuff, some even state that 'content avoidance' ie sneaking round the monsters and not killing them gets you less XP (this reaches itszenith in MMOs).

QuoteThese all actually happen in your campaigns, huh?

Mine don't have this problem, bad GMing does not equal a "dark side to the hobby".

They don't have to happen in my games they have to happen in the hobby. If you attend a typical RPG at a con or a one off in a store you will see these tropes laid out plain as can be to deny it is frankly bizaare.

QuoteThat's the only reason huh?  Bad GMing with lazy cosmology design does not equal a "dark side to the hobby".

If you had been reading my threads I have explicitly been saying that irredeemily evil creatures are often a feature of lazy world building and a lack of imagination. As I have also stated I always avoid it. For me you have to choose to be evil or you aren't really evil.
The fact that these tropes are clearly features of many many games and the fact that they are features of many many published adventures is surely evidence that this aspect of the hobby exists ?
 

QuoteAh, and kids who jump off buildings expecting to fly is the fault of Superman, right?  Didn't we decide that was bullshit 40 years ago?

Yeah right that is exactly the same thing. We all know that desensitizing people to violence and demonizing the enemy have no effect on people's ability or desire to commit violence that is why the Marines stopped doing it years ago and instead they explain how all people are inherently the same and that every Jyhadist or Commie is someone's son or daughter with their own wishes and aspirations.

Quoteand here I thought we were talking about roleplaying games.  There are lots of storygames that fulfill your criteria if you need the metagame.  Players and GMs unable to roleplay social situations does not equal a "dark side to the hobby".

Again I am not sure if you are being deliberatley obtuse or if there is a real failure of understanding here. The fact that it happens even in a small minority of cases is sufficient for it to be a dark side to the hobby. I am not saying all RPG players are Nazi psychopaths, I am merely saying that certain aspects of common game play are when analysed clinically as a real behaviour pattern somewhat 'dark'.

QuoteRun a lot of "murderous hobo" campaigns do you?  I don't.  Feel free to quote from any actual D&D game source anything that remotely supports the above paragraph as the default or normal playstyle.

Okay I can quote away. I played a Cleric Assasin for a long time. He worshiped a god of Chaos and when he met strangers on the road he would roll a dice, a sacred dice his holy symbol, if it came up 1 he woudl attack the person and sacrifice them to his god. Eventually it got him killed.
Reasonably dark?
I played in a Cthulu campaign once and bodies starting popping up and we started tracing the murders rather than the cultists, turned out one of our PCs was a serial killer. Dark?
When I was a kid and we played D&D for 2 hours a day every day it was common for PCs to kill each other steal all their belongings.
If you don't think the murderous hobo play style exists again I am only assume you are playing in a vaccum and you were never 12.
People in this very thread have stated that one of the main reasons to have irredeemibly evil bad guys is so that the Good PCs can kill them without angst. It's only a game they aren't real.

QuoteRPGs can communicate ideas.  Name me one method of idea communication that hasn't been manipulated by a fringe group somewhere for foul ends.  Any dark ideas communicated in RPGs are from one source - the humans playing them.

I can't think of any but again that isn't the point. You seem to be saying that RPGs are immune to this sort of manipulation somehow sacrosanct.
All ideas by the way from anywhere come from people dark, bright, shallow, malignant or redemptive, they all come from people.

QuoteOk, that's "one", but again, nothing particular to the hobby itself as lots of hobbies are sedentary and there's always Kyle as a role-model of geek fitness.

So far except for the sedentary part, it's a big wall of fail.

That is your opinion of course, as you can see I have taken exception to many of your points and I suspect even if we are a minority in this discussion there would be some others that agree with me, at least in part.
Now even if it was only me and my play group and the guys playing poison'd or whatever that still constitutes a side...
If you really think that kids don't pick up RPGs make up characters then kill each other then sorry I don't think it's worth me answering any of your future posts because you obviously are not prepared to engage in an adult debate.

Quote from: David R;481901Edit to add: For example when you asked me what I thought evil was and did I believe it exist. My response was that I could point you to real world evil acts and my thinking was that of Rossi's from Criminal Minds - "Our jobs is to stop evil not discover where it came from". The latter merely means I'm uninterested in where evil comes from - philisophical, religious or scientific ideas - and more interested in confronting it. It's rather simple really and since I don't think you are dumb, I'll go with dishonest.

I was willing to give you the last word and went back for another round of replies because you weren't happy with that because I'm... dishonest?

I honestly really don't understand what we are arguing about at this point or what you are looking for.

Quote from: David R;481901I see no point in answering your questions because if I did, no doubt you will just cherrypick my answers to go off on another tangent, attribute arguments to me which I never made (but others did, simply because we are on public message board) and then claim I'm not listening.

I didn't expect to get an answer, which would actually be somewhat relevant to the concerns of the campaign I ran and the issues going back to the original message of the thread, which is why I tried simply ending the discussion rather than speculating on why you aren't answering it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;481907I can't think of any but again that isn't the point.

Actually that is the point, stick with me.

Quote from: jibbajibba;481907You seem to be saying that RPGs are immune to this sort of manipulation somehow sacrosanct.

Nope, I never said that RPGs are immune to manipulation.  What I am saying is that all methods of communicating ideas are subject to manipulation.  "RPGs" as a medium of communication are no different, and have no darker a side, then "novels", or "movies" or whatever.
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;481907All ideas by the way from anywhere come from people dark, bright, shallow, malignant or redemptive, they all come from people.

EXACTLY.  
There is nothing "ist" about books that doesn't come from people.
There is nothing "ist" about movies that doesn't come from people.
There is nothing "ist" about plays that doesn't come from people.
There is nothing "ist" about RPGs that doesn't come from people.

If you're claiming that RPGs are somehow capable of being more "dark" or more "ist" then books, movies, plays, whatever, then we're back to the OP, and there being something inherent about RPGs, specifically D&D that makes it "dark".  

Either RPGs are different then books, plays, and movies as a communicator of ideas or they are not.  WHICH IS IT?

If they are, then there must be something in RPGs themselves, these supposedly default and standardized tropes that get mentioned.  You say violence, Adam Dray says racist and colonialist, Stormy, who knows, he doesn't have the courage specify his own other then say "me too" to you and Dray out of one side of his mouth while denying it with the other.

I'm not denying that RPGs can be used and in fact are used for foulness, I'm saying SO WHAT?  What's the next point that follows?  Is there one? Because otherwise you're telling me that something that communicates ideas can communicate bad ideas and sorry, but that's not really a terribly astute observation.  It sounds like you're saying there is more to it then that.  If so, lay it out, brother.

Of course all those idiotic playstyles you referred to exist, RaHoWa was published, after all.  However when is that last time your campaign was like that?  Been a while, right?  You think you're the only one?  Your arguments carry with them a kind of "unwashed masses" inference.  You've risen above some primitive playstyle you claim is the baseline and assume everyone else is still wallowing in the gutter you've risen above.

News Flash: The uneducated adults don't play like 12 year olds anymore either.  

BTW, a sidetrack, but assuming the existence of an irredeemably evil intelligent race doesn't point to lazy worldbuilding, it just points to your lack of imagination, hamstrung by your inability to conceive of an absolute good or evil.  You just have a blind spot there, no worries, we all have them.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;481896John, by continuing to rest your argument on psychopaths you're creating an enormous distraction. I know others have said so as well but I'll restate:

1. I certainly don't deny there are bad people, and some of those individuals are "irredeemable". Meaning, they'll keep doing bad things if they aren't forcibly prevented by e.g. locking them up, or executing them.

2. I find the idea of a naturalistically-portrayed, irredeemably evil species of humanoids difficult to accept. An irredeemable species means that they're born evil, or with the seeds of evil in their genes. (I.e., even if they're cute & harmless when young, they're genetically programmed to become noxious as they age.)

3. Noxious is partly contextual. A species that's harmful when it comes in contact with humanity isn't inherently noxious. To be inherently noxious the species has to, essentially, require harm for its own survival. (In this sense, smallpox, measles or filariasis are worse than the plague bacterium, since plague doesn't require human hosts to propagate the species.) By definition, this means that stopping the harm caused by the species is equivalent to starving it to death or otherwise wiping it out.

(Incidentally this is a sufficient argument for why the aliens in the Aliens series were inherently noxious, since they can't reproduce without harming humans, other sentient lifeforms, or at least dogs. And dogs are worth protecting.)

4. A naturalistically-portrayed species of humanoids that need to harm humans in order live must necessarily have appeared after humans already existed. And from that time on, they must necessarily have been harming humans, always at the edge of human settlements. If they could live entirely apart from humans then they aren't inherently noxious. (I suppose that some could live close to humans and trade the necessary "products"--slaves or whatever--to those who live farther away. But the species as a whole requires human contact.)

To me this suggests that the humanoids are either far less "human" than would be suggested by e.g. the Monster Manual, or that their appearance on the scene is a very recent and unstable phenomenon. Rather like a disease, the amount of harm they need to cause in order to reproduce would be inversely proportional to their ability to sustain themselves. (If they wipe out all humans in an area, they can't live there any more.) The more Alien-like they might be, the less "human" but also the more plausibly noxious. A species of goblins that can only reproduce by laying eggs in living human hosts is (a) horrific and (b) a pretty radical departure. (Yet even this could be a hard case for evil, particularly from a utilitarian standpoint. Consider: what if the goblin-aliens agree to build and maintain hospitals that would benefit humanity at large, in exchange for a small quota of victims, chosen by lottery?)

Frankly, requiring this much "realism" in the context of a fantasy game is what I find hard to believe. I have no idea what you base any of these "facts" on, since there are no other species of humanoids, so they can not, by definition, be "naturalistically-portrayed". I continue to fail to understand how any of ya'all can postulate a world where these species of humanoids can be created by evil deities, where the evil deities are demonstrably real and actively involved in the lives of their creations, and yet have some kind of problem with them being irredeemably evil. How about this... "I'm evil because my God and Creator told me to be." Or perhaps, "I'm evil because my God and Creator designed me to be, out of hatred for all the other people." Is that not enough justification for you in a world where dragons exist, and can even fly... wizards can fling fireballs out of thin air.... druids can turn into animals.... where the dead walk around and try to swell their ranks? This over-analysis and purported need for "realism" comes across to me as being excessively silly. It makes it difficult for me to believe these arguments are serious.

Oh, and what part of the description of orcs in the Monster Manual makes you think they are like humans? Sure, they have 2 arms, 2 legs, facial features, etc. So do gorillas. So do racoons. Fuck, orcs are not humans. They're not even real.

Oh, and Aliens in the Alien series were inherently evil because it said so in the fucking script.

Quote from: jibbajibba;481907If you had been reading my threads I have explicitly been saying that irredeemily evil creatures are often a feature of lazy world building and a lack of imagination. As I have also stated I always avoid it. For me you have to choose to be evil or you aren't really evil.
The fact that these tropes are clearly features of many many games and the fact that they are features of many many published adventures is surely evidence that this aspect of the hobby exists ?
 

The problem I see with this is that I have absolutely no reason to accept you as some kind of authority or expert on world-building or GMing. I see no reason to believe this assertion. I reject it, in fact, as I have personally encountered evidence to the contrary. Instead, I believe that your difficulty accepting the idea of irredeemably evil orcs (or anything the GM wants to so designate) is much more a possible sign of your lack of imagination, or perhaps your arrogance in assuming what you believe is universal.

Honestly, if any of ya'all are having such a hard time with D&D's morality, or this perceived "dark side" to the fucking hobby... there are many other hobbies in the world. Rather than join with Dray in arrogantly condemning vast swathes of people, most of whom you've never met and know nothing about, as racists, you can take up stamp collecting or knitting. There's very little moral controversy in those hobbies as far as I can tell.