Vigilantism and the Lawful Alignment in OotS

[Math_Mage]

Chaotic Evil Fyodor isn't an idiot; he's a desperate man who is tired of the constant struggles to survive in Vorostokov. When he stumbles on a man who needs help, he doesn't feel empathy for the man; all he can do is stare at the merchant's fine clothes, fat purse and heavy pack, and think "Why should he have such a good life?" Ignoring the merchant's hacking cough, shivering and fever, all Chaotic Evil Fyodor can see is the material wealth. So he lashes out at the merchant, killing him in as bloody a fashion as he can. The Dark Powers notice this, the Mists rise, and for a moment the forest has no sound but the death rattle of the merchant and Fyodor's knife stabbing the merchant. When Fyodor looks up in horror from what he has done, hours seem to have somehow passed, and Zolnik is there with a job offer for Fyodor. This has nothing to do with Fyodor's intellect, only with years of grinding poverty, a winter that never lets up, and a moment where an inability to show empathy to a stranger curdles into hatred. That is why he stabbed the merchant.

"Fyodor stabbed the merchant because he was jealous of his wealth."

Just saved you 150 words. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Kish was talking about what happened after Fyodor got back to town. Just sayin'.

Conscience is not less worthy than code.

[Kish]

Here's what I wrote:

That's a part of what you wrote. Leaving out the bits where the Chaotic Neutral character behaves worse than the Lawful Evil character (already called out, by multiple people, and ignored by you) and the Chaotic Good character just happens to behave in a stupidly paranoid way and unleash a vampire on the town.

(And please don't spend another thousand words explaining why that just happened to be bad luck, not the Chaotic Good Fyodor being any less wise than the Lawful or Neutral versions.)

[Sir_Leorik]

Conscience is not less worthy than code.

No they aren't, but try telling that to the groups who are opposed to following codes or to following one's conscience. In the (A)D&D game Alignment is serious business, and Lawful and Chaotic groups go to war over which path is "right". (See Blood War, the, for more details.)

A Paladin, who has dedicated her life to following her code of Law and Good, is not going to abandon her code when it becomes inconvenient. A Chaotic Good Bard, who follows his heart wherever it may lead, will not set down roots and stop pursuing personal freedom for himself and others. A Neutral Good Ranger can try to get the Paladin and Bard to stop bickering (maybe by joking that they should just "get a room already!"), but the internal tension he feels between his code and conscience is a serious thing with no easy answers. Properly role-played this can lead to fun for all the players in a group. Or everyone could start yelling once they reach a moral dilemma that they don't agree on.

The reason I brought up the "Ravenloft" and "Planescape" campaign settings is that these two settings took the stark black and white morality in many (A)D&D campaigns and added large doses of gray. (The "Dark Sun" and "Eberron" campaign settings do as well.) PCs in these campaigns have to make moral decisions where there is no right answer. But if you really feel that the discussion does not benefit from complex discussions about Alignment, so be it.

[Math_Mage]

No they aren't, but

Nothing said before the word 'but' really counts.

try telling that to the groups who are opposed to following codes or to following one's conscience. In the (A)D&D game Alignment is serious business, and Lawful and Chaotic groups go to war over which path is "right". (See Blood War, the, for more details.)

A Paladin, who has dedicated her life to following her code of Law and Good, is not going to abandon her code when it becomes inconvenient. A Chaotic Good Bard, who follows his heart wherever it may lead, will not set down roots and stop pursuing personal freedom for himself and others. A Neutral Good Ranger can try to get the Paladin and Bard to stop bickering (maybe by joking that they should just "get a room already!"), but the internal tension he feels between his code and conscience is a serious thing with no easy answers. Properly role-played this can lead to fun for all the players in a group. Or everyone could start yelling once they reach a moral dilemma that they don't agree on.

The reason I brought up the "Ravenloft" and "Planescape" campaign settings is that these two settings took the stark black and white morality in many (A)D&D campaigns and added large doses of gray. (The "Dark Sun" and "Eberron" campaign settings do as well.) PCs in these campaigns have to make moral decisions where there is no right answer. But if you really feel that the discussion does not benefit from complex discussions about Alignment, so be it.

I'm fine with complex discussion. Have you been reading my exchanges with Liliet?

I'm irritated with your continual use of scenarios that demonstrate you think less of Chaotic consciences than Lawful codes, but what really bugs me is that you refuse to acknowledge this. You explicitly judge CG characters from a LG perspective, and then you pretend that constitutes an objective assessment of CG morality. And whenever someone points this out, you obfuscate the situation with further unnecessary flourishes on your scenarios, rather than addressing the actual point.

For you to turn around and accuse me of being simplistic is just laughable. Hell, half the problem is you've tacked on so much unnecessary noise to your moral choice scenarios that you can't even see your own bias!

[Kish]

Yyeeeahhh. Complex discussions? "Fyodor who is Lawful Good does the best thing in every conceivable way and gets the best reward for it! Fyodor who is Chaotic Good messes up, ruins his home town, and gets his family killed! Fyodor who is Lawful Evil does evil but his conscience plagues him, Fyodor who is Chaotic Neutral is pretty thoroughly evil but might just barely be able to function in an adventuring group, Fyodor who is Chaotic Evil is a complete and gleeful monster!" The opposite of complex; if you could send it back in time I'm sure they'd consider printing it in the 1ed Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide, though.

(The particularly ironic thing is that when I started reading your "Lawful Good Fyodor" scenario, my thought was, "He's totally going to unwittingly take the merchant to one of Zolnik's werewolves for help, isn't he?" But of course not! No one ever caused a disaster by being Lawful!)

[veti]

Lawful Good Fyodor would never think of stealing from a dying man, even to pay for the man's cure. Doing so violates Fyodor's personal code/religious beliefs/local traditions. Neutral Good Fyodor is caught between following his personal code and following his conscience, and I think that in this case his conscience will win out, at least until the merchant recovers. He's not a thief, but he might try to reason that the merchant would probably want Fyodor to save his life.

That sort of thing may violate Fyodor's personal code/religious beliefs/local traditions. But then again it may not. It's perfectly possible to imagine an 'Lawful' code that would see it in terms of 'taking payment for services rendered'.

But where does the Chaotic Good character stop? If it's okay to steal bread, why not gold? Why not rob from the rich to feed the poor, ala Robin Hood? How much bread is it okay to steal before a Chaotic Good character's conscience will tell him to stop?

Indeed, Robin Hood is one of the classic archetypes for Chaotic Good. And the answer is, you take what the victim can well afford (in your honest estimation) to lose. The Ravenloft 'Dark Powers' rules themselves actually codify this as a moral rule - it's the difference between Major Theft and Minor Theft.

This is why a Lawful Good character would frown on this viewpoint. He won't go all Inspector Javert on the thief, but he may ask him to make restitution to the baker in some way, perhaps by becoming his apprentice, or delivering bread.

It's easy to wave your hands and say what hypothetical sorts of restitution might be made, but it soon gets very messy when you try to administer that sort of justice in practice. What if the baker doesn't have any job openings? Should some innocent bakery-delivery-guy or apprentice be out of a job, because the baker now has access to indentured labour? (In fact, come to think of it, that's not even a solution. Because if the baker has to pay a fair wage to the thief, then he's not really getting restitution at all - just an employee that he didn't even get to choose. Whereas if he doesn't, then the whole 'starving family' problem is still there.)

My idea of a Lawful Good character would pay the baker for the bread, then officially give it to the thief, meaning there has been no theft - just a slightly delayed payment, which the baker can surely be persuaded not to make an issue of. Then she'd look for a source of sustainable support for the starving family.

If she happens to be broke herself, then I think she'd try to persuade the thief to make restitution to the baker at some later date, whenever he could. But the whole 'support the starving family' thing must take priority, because if you don't resolve that, all you've done is set the stage for further crimes.

A Neutral Good character would have a real difficulty: do I condemn the thief for stealing, or help him escape to feed his family? Besides, doesn't the baker deserve to earn a living too? Surely there is a way to help the thief and the baker, without anyone going to jail or having to make restitution? Just give the loaf of bread back and no one needs to call the city watch.

The bread is soiled, no-one else is going to buy it - giving it back is actually the worst of all worlds. It makes the thief poorer (and more desperate), while leaving the baker just as screwed as before.

The Lawful Neutral Fyodor in my example didn't leave the merchant to die, he just wouldn't take unnecessary risks to rescue him. He recruited a village Ranger to help in the rescue and together they saved the merchant in the nick of time. True Neutral Fyodor isn't interested in saving the merchant himself; the worst his conscience can get him to do is to report the merchant's location to the Rangers. I don't see why Chaotic Neutral Fyodor wants to help the merchant. "Better him than me," is probably his response. He may or may not snatch the purse, but even if his conscience urged him to help, he would not do more than True Neutral Fyodor.

What you haven't answered is, why is Lawful Neutral Fyodor motivated to help the merchant, in a way that Chaotic Neutral Fyodor isn't? I don't understand why LN Fyodor feels the need to go with the ranger (and what bass-ackward kind of village has its own rangers, but no healer? - they seriously need to get their priorities straight). That sounds more like the actions of a Good person who just didn't think they could manage the job on their own.

Chaotic Evil Fyodor cared for his family, but may have had an abusive streak. Remember he's been struggling to feed them for years, in a land with an endless winter. His crops are dying, and there isn't enough game.

And that's another thing... This whole setting just doesn't add up. If there's been endless harsh winter for years, the crops aren't dying, they're dead. And the game isn't scarce, it's gone. Even penguins need something to live on.

[Kish]

And that's another thing... This whole setting just doesn't add up. If there's been endless harsh winter for years, the crops aren't dying, they're dead. And the game isn't scarce, it's gone. Even penguins need something to live on.

That's Ravenloft.

The issue of Sir Leorik spinning these long and detailed hypotheticals to explain/justify his interpretations of alignment aside, the Dark Powers don't really care about things like "is this domain internally consistent?" Vorostokov exists to bring out the worst in a man who traded his humanity for the idea of being a hero who saved his village from starvation, and then murdered his wife for cheating on him. People from Gregor Zolnik on down find, or don't find, game entirely at the whim of the Dark Powers, who don't want dominating every village in the domain to be as easy for him as "Join me or starve."

[theNater]

You play 4e, don't you? That's simply not true in any other edition.

It's not true in 4e, either. The alignment named Good is just a bundling of Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, not a new "Lesser Good".