Wolf Link đșCultural differences in fantasy races instead of the plain "good vs. evil"
ZigguratThere is a lot of critic against the whole Good/Evil Lawful/Chaotic alignment and most RPG either donât have any morality system, or different compass⊠A simplified D&D style alignment is great for board-gaming where you want to quickly says who is good and who is evil, but isnât representative of real-life and doesnât work for RPG, at least at the moment you want to write conflict a bit more complicated than Good versus Evil.
More important than culture, there is the point of view of various factions. Orcs are seen as dangerous barbarians who attack humans, but may-be orcs see human flesh very nourishing, need to give human flesh to kids if we want them to grow big and strong. Elves are at war against human, but may-be human are cutting the trees that elves need to live in. You example regarding property is pretty interesting. Weâre on lemmy so letâs get political, in real-life many left-winger would agree that property is robberry Who is evil ? the person deciding that a piece of land and the cattle growing there is theirâs or the person who cross that land and hunt that cattle to feed their family ? Isnât the farmer asking gold to people wanting to feed their family the bad guy of the story ? Look at real-life, there is no such thing as good or evil only people with different opinion and objectives.
So when writing conflict, you need to take into account everybody opinion. Everybody needs the water from the river to water their crop, but the upstream clan decide to build a few canal to water more crop leading to drought in the downstream territories. There is plenty of real-life conflict based on that and itâs a very good pitch to start a war with things more complicated than evil orcs like to eat humans
The bigger problem occurs when players cast stuff like detect good and evil. If they cast it on the orcs, what do you tell them as a DM? Do you tell them what you think is their morality? Do you make the spell give an ambiguous result? Do you make the spell fail? All these options have benefits and drawbacks, but none of them are perfect.
cast stuff like detect good and evil.
This is actually my more fundamental critic against D&D. As a GM (and a player) I like more investigation-type scenario than dungeon crawling or big battle. Spell like detect good/evil or detect lie are basically killing any investigation scenario very quickly. like you have kids disappearing in the village, the king hires adventurer to investigate. The adventurer run one spell, Oh the Queen is Evil and the rest is a fight against the queen. While in an RPG without that type of spell (or even a whole alignment system) youâll have a whole scenario on finding out that the Queen kidnaps kids and bathe in their blood to stay young and pretty, now you spent most of the evening about finding what happen, get enough proof to confront the queen, and finally fight her (or ask the guards to so because itâs already 23:00 and you work tomorrow). So an alignment mechanic and a way to detect it can have a huge influence on how the game goes.
cast stuff like detect good and evil.
My long-term players have learned to not rely on that dumb spell anymore ⊠because the way I handle this as a DM is purely about the intent of the characters in question, independendly from their actual actions. Examples:
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A witch-hunter who tortures and then burns women at the stake. A person who factually and personally brings suffering, pain, fear and death into the world as per his actions. Whatâs his intent? Well, if he just enjoys torturing women and takes the job of a witch-hunter as a convenient excuse then heâs certainly evil. But someone who is brainwashed into thinking that burning âwitchesâ will save their souls from eternal hellfire and suffering, actually has âgoodâ intentions and doesnât think what he is doing could be evil. Sure it sucks that there is blood and fire involved, but what is a broken bone or two and a little bit of temporary pain compared to an eternity in hell? The spell would tell the caster that this is a âgoodâ dude even tho he factually does the same as the other guy.
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An adventurer going to kill a dragon that has plagued nearby villages for ages ⊠surely thatâll be a hero, right? Well, if he does this FOR the villagers, to save them and prevent future suffering, no matter whether it is dangerous for hmself, then he has good intentions. If someone does this purely out of spite because he happens to hate all things scaly, or purely out of greed because he wants the bounty / plunder the dragonâs hoard and he just doesnât care for the villagers or his co-adventurers, then the spell would âdetectâ him as being evil, even tho both adventurers factually do the same in the end.
Of course this isnât optimal either (the optimal solution would be to just not have that dumb spell in the first place IMHO) but it can make for nice little story twists if the obviously evil villain of the story has an ulterior motive and gets detected as âgoodâ ;) The players might get an explanation AFTER the game, but while theyâre still in the middle of an adventure, they have to figure it out on their own.