Morality playing

[nadriel]

I was doing some LARP today, playing my evil wizard (who is reasonable, helpful and competent- thus making it a lot harder for most goodly characters to justify killing him).

Anyway, for his latest head game to give the goodly types in the party a headache, he presented the following situation as handled by a predominantly goodly party and a predominantly evil one.

Situation: Party has been hired to rescue some innocent villagers from being sacrificed by an evil cult. The cult is guarded by some innocent dupe guards.

Goodly: Spends time talking their way round the various guards without harming them, as they're not the enemy. Gets to the sacrifice room too late to prevent the sacrifice, kills the resulting demon and associated cultists.

Evil: Kills the innocent guards, gets to the cultists before the sacrifice is done, kills them too, rescues the innocent victims, gets paid, goes down the pub and celebrates another successful mission.

When asked which of those two was more wrong, the goodly types could only come up with "the evil one, because they're evil", thus losing lots of kudos with the neutral party members (which was the plan on my part anyway).

So, can any of you do better?

Comments

[sutekhian.livejournal.com]

I'd say the first is in a way more evil. After all the cultists succeeded in killing total innocents and summoning a daemon (no guarantee they didn't get something else that escaped...) Whereas in the second one yes innocent guards die, but they were working for evil and the party do save the innocent victims and prevent daemonic evil being pulled into the world.

But hey I have an odd morality apparently ;)

[lokean.livejournal.com]

The second is clearly the more evil, primarily due to the intentions of the parties.

Team Fluffy Bunnykins probably undertook the mission in order to save innocents; Team Hellfire wouldn't have even attempted the mission unless they were going to get paid or otherwise benefit themselves personally.
Team Fluffy Bunnykins avoided killing innocents even to the point of their overall detriment (the avoidable deaths of other innocents, the failiure of their mission and a big bastard demon turning up). Team Hellfire, on the other hand, freely killed 'innocents' to further their own ends (vis a vis, payment).

Team Fluffy Bunnykins, as you have outlined it, are less successful but more goodly, they fail, but they fail due to their philanthropic desire not to harm innocents. Team Hellfire are more successful but perform the actions they perform with no objective more laudable than personal gain and are unconcerned for others.

What should have happened, though, was that Team Pious Templar got sent. Team Pious Templar scare the dupe guards away with illusions, beat them unconscious or dupe the dumb schmucks into buggering off. Team Pious Templar's stealthiest member, meanwhile, goes in to scout and discovers a difficult situation, the cultists are preparing for the sacrifice after hearing the commotion outside. However, he also learns that the cultists must ritually cleanse themselves in the blood of a lamb before the sacrifice. Putting nasty and debilitating contact poisons in the lamb's blood proves quite simple, allowing team Pious Templar to sweep through and slaughter the cultists with little or no risk to themselves. The innocents are rescued and allowed to return to their families, Team Pious Templar gets paid and puts the money into the group coffers after providing living expenses for the team. Team Pious Templar goes from strength to strength with this firm financial footing...

Yay Team Pious Templar!

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Heh, but remember, this scenario was deliberately being set up to make the goodly types look bad if they couldn't come up with an answer like yours, which they couldn't :-)

[iamseph.livejournal.com]

Isn't poisoning generally considered an underhand and deceitful tactic? Something generally looked down upon by your hardcore do-gooder types?
Of course, once you've snuck past/illusioned/knocked out the guards you can just go in and beat the cultists to a bloody smear anyway, albeit with slightly greater risk than poisoning them first. Well, except that you're dealing with a contact poison so touching the cultists might get the adventurers weakened anyway.

[dodgyhoodoo.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that's the problem with this whole binary GvE thing...

The right thing to do is stop the sacrifice happening. There's no option here for using non-lethal force, albeit extremely painful non-lethal force, to get the guards out of the way.

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's a deliberately unfair scenario- after all, the evil chap relating the scenario is trying to make the good guys look bad and thus increase his own rep with the rest of the group. Which worked admirably, I might add :-)

[rx-ritalin.livejournal.com]

sneak past the good guards, whistle at them, then go through door of cultist hideout. guards will follow you inside, see evil cultist who are doing the sacrifice - will then kill them for you. result: you get paid for doing nothing more than some whistling :)

regards,
hedley

ps: yes, i do let him read this sometimes.

[dodgyhoodoo.livejournal.com]

Now that's tactics.

[chainedspecter.livejournal.com]

KOBAYASHI MARU SCENARIO!!! the answer is of course to cheat. This is why all my characters max out disguise and forgery. Gives DMs a hell of a headache because I've yet to meet one that accounts for that angle despite its obviousness.

That said, intentions don't define the morality of the act. creating evil by action or inaction regardless of intention is evil. Good intentions don't mean shit if you fuck it all up for everyone. This isn't the special olympics where just trying really hard gets you the prize even if you lose. This isn't to say that there is no hope. but true goodness is the wisdom and forethought to prevent the your fuckups from being catastrophic. Then when they occur (as they inevitably must on occasion)you take responsibility for them. Correct them, repair them destroy them or redeem them.

You rescue those damn innocent people. and you do it without killing guards. Bonus points for kidnapping the cultists and deprogramming/changing their sexual preference regardless of what it originally started out as. obviously you can't do all of that so you shoot for the maximum amount of good without sacrificing the operation. if you're a kickass party of awesome dudes, you go in and effortlessly do it all. if you think you're capable but not great, you just try to rescue the people. if you think you're a party of barely functional trainable retards then you settle for not accidentally falling on your longsword and kicking a pregnant hostage when you charge in.

in short Your morality is determined by how many objectives you can manage to successfully accomplish without wizzing the whole thing down your be-chainmailed leg. not by how good you think you are or how good you intend to be. (behold! the objectivist dungeon rogue) as a footnote, rx_ritalin is my new hero.

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, it's rx_ritalin's boyfriend using her account (as a reward for being well behaved? Cheaper than a cookie, I suppose). But I'll pass on your regards next time I see him, if he hasn't read them himself :-)