REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "For NPCs Only: The Death Master"

Ah, that staple of Dragon from back in the day: the "NPC only" class. One of the oddities of the magazine was that, while there was a voracious demand for new character classes, as a house organ of TSR, it could never offer up a new class for use with D&D without a formal caveat, unless it came from the pen of Gary Gygax himself. Of course, this was done with a nod and a wink, as no referee I knew back in the day ever refrained from allowing his players to use "NPC only" classes if he felt they were well done and fit the spirit of his campaign. I know I never had any problems with it, though, to be fair, I was choosy and, in any event, most of the new classes presented in Dragon were so specialized as to have limited appeal.

Still, the presentation of Len Lakofka's death master class in issue #76 (August 1983) went above and beyond those of most other classes in terms of making it clear that it was intended only for NPCs. You can see the title of the article in which it appeared above. In addition to the "For NPCs Only" phrasing, there's the subtitle that calls the class a "monster" and notes that one shouldn't consider playing as a death master. Even more notably, the article itself begins with an "Introduction/Sermon" where Lakofka opines

The AD&D game should not have assassin player characters. In fact, no player character should be evil at all unless adverse magic affects him.

This is an interesting, though not unusual, point of view, especially as the '80s rolled on. It's also worth noting that assassins were eventually eliminated from AD&D in its second edition, a point of view even Gygax toyed with on occasion, though for different reasons. In any case, Lakofka continues in his introduction to explain that he feels evil is treated too casually in the game. One of his reasons for creating the death master class was to rectify this.

As a way of putting evil in its often without enough of a penalty proper place, here is presented an evil character that makes an assassin look like the boy next door. The death master is meant as a non-player character -- one the player characters and their party have to defeat. Please use the character that way only. If I ever run into a player character death master at a convention, I may turn evil myself. . .

Again, it's an interesting point of view, especially when viewed against the changing culture surrounding D&D at that time. Naturally, Lakofka's concerns had zero effect on me at the time, since there was for a brief time a PC death master in my old campaign – brief, because he was eventually slain by the other PCs, but I allowed the class nonetheless. The PC in question was a formerly good character turned to evil by possession of the Hand of Vecna and who became obsessed with eliminating his former companions in the belief that they would eventually destroy him. He was right, as it turned out, though, ironically, his destruction was more the result of his repeated attempts to slay the other PCs than their own desire to see his life ended. In any event, I didn't heed Lakofka's warnings and I'd be amazed if I were the only one.

The death master class itself is somewhat interesting. It's basically a necromancer, with many powers over the undead and a collection of new spells. Beginning at 4th level, the class also gains the ability to make a variety of "potions, salves, and pastes" that replicate some of his spells and class abilities. At the time, I found it an impressive addition, since it spelled out a bit more explicitly the crafting of magic items than was seen elsewhere. In retrospect, I'm not sure a new class was needed, when new spells alone could have probably sufficed, but that was the style at the time. Regardless, I'm not at all convinced that the death master did anything to advance the notion that evil should be Evil and never an option for player characters.

In Defense of Evil Characters

Having last week come to the defense of the murderhobo, I thought I'd go one step further this week by doing something similar for outright evil characters. That's because, for as long as I've played Dungeons & Dragons, I've never considered the possibility of playing such characters illegitimate. None of the editions of the game I encountered in the first few years after I entered the hobby – in order: Holmes Basic, AD&D, or Moldvay Basic – forbids characters from being evil (though the matter is a little complicated in the latter case, since there is no explicitly "evil" alignment). Indeed, all three versions of the game are quite clear that a player character can be of any alignment, including evil ones. 

Likewise, Holmes states that at least one class – thieves – are "not truly good," while AD&D goes further, claiming that "most thieves tend toward evil." Assassins engage in an activity that Gary Gygax memorably described as "the antithesis of weal," hence their outright restriction to evil alignment. Monks have a very limited range of alignments, but Lawful Evil is among them. Bards are almost as restricted in their alignment options, yet they too can be evil. Only druids, paladins, and rangers are forbidden from being evil by the rules, suggesting that the possibility of a player choosing to play an evil cleric or fighter is in no way beyond the pale. 

Of course, it's one thing to see the possibility of evil characters as legitimate and another to see it as desirable. In the early days, I tended to transfer Moldvay's perspective about Chaotic characters to evil ones more broadly: they don't play well with others. For the most part, my friends shared this perspective. I cannot recall anyone of my neighborhood buddies wanting to play an evil character, let alone actually doing so. Like me, they'd come to D&D as relatively innocent boys who looked to the heroes of mythology and literature for inspiration in generating our earliest characters.  Few, if any, of these characters were evil either in thought or deed and our own characters reflected this.

However, as I mentioned in my post about murderhobos, a number of the protagonists of the pulp fantasy stories that served as the inspiration of Gary Gygax in his personal conception of the game were, at best, morally ambiguous and, in a few cases, evil by the standards of D&D's alignment system. That this is the case is made unmistakable in, for example, the write-up of Elric in Deities & Demigods, which judges him Chaotic Evil in alignment. One can certainly argue the fine details of that or similar judgments, but there's no denying that there's a strong tradition of pulp fantasy characters whose exploits include a lot of morally dubious actions.

Beyond that, one need only take a look at the play of the earliest Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Blackmoor, the birthplace of D&D, featured at least one significant evil player character – Sir Fang, a fighter-turned-vampire whose depredations proved so frightful to the other characters in that campaign that the cleric class was created to stand against him. Meanwhile, one of the most successful characters in Gygax's Greyhawk campaign was Robilar, played by Rob Kuntz. Robilar was not unique in this regard. A quick look at The Rogues Gallery reveals a number of evil-aligned player characters among TSR's writers and designers. If you look at the pregenerated characters for use with modules like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Dwellers of the Forbidden City, you'll find several also have evil alignments.

The weight of all this evidence was still insufficient to turn me into a defender of evil characters, except in the narrowest sense. Yes, the rules allow for evil characters, but that didn't mean I had to like it. What ultimately changed my mind was when, many years after I first played D&D, I participated in several sessions that featured an evil character. He was a Neutral Evil psionicist/thief – this was in the days of 2e – and he made himself very useful to his companions by both his skills and his knowledge. I never completely trusted him, but there was no denying that he filled a niche in the party and that his presence helped us succeed when we might otherwise have not. It helped, too, that he was well roleplayed as a charming, if not at all trustworthy, rascal. 

Ultimately, that's what convinced me that an evil character could be fun: good roleplaying. Here was a completely disreputable character, a liar and a cheat, whose actions were always self-interested – but he was played so well and so enjoyably that I almost forgot he was evil. Eventually, the character had the opportunity to betray his comrades to his benefit and he took it. The betrayal left us in a bit of a bind and, while my character was certainly angry, I was not. The character acted as he ought to have, given his alignment. If anyone is to be blamed, it's the rest of us for taking on such a character, knowing as we did that he was evil. But, as I said, he was charming, so fun, that we let our guard down and paid the price for it.

That may seem an odd defense of evil characters. From my perspective, though, it's the strongest one I can offer: sometimes it's fun. Roleplaying games are a form of escapism, something I consider very important, especially nowadays. Having a creative outlet for our baser instincts is, in my opinion, just as vital as having one where we can behave heroically. Sometimes we want to be Galahad and sometimes we want to be Cugel the Clever. I don't see either one as inherently better than the other. While my preference remains for less morally compromised characters, I can easily see the fun in evil characters. Arguably, many of the characters in my House of Worms campaign would be considered evil in D&D terms, so it's not as if the playstyle is completely outside my taste. I've also long harbored a desire to a referee a D&D campaign in which all the characters are members of a Thieves' Guild. In such a campaign, I suspect the vast majority of the characters would be evil, or at least non-good.

I'd love to know of your experiences playing or playing with evil characters. Is it enjoyable? Is it something you'd recommend? What are the advantages and drawbacks of this kind of game? It's a topic that I think deserves greater examination.

Random Roll: DMG, p. 60

The topic of alignment has been coming up a great deal on this blog of late. I suppose that's understandable, considering how many players of Dungeons & Dragons loudly take issue with the very concept. Consequently, I take a great deal of interest in reading about how Gary Gygax conceived of alignment, if only to get a better handle on how he thought it might be used in the game. Today's entry in the Random Roll series isn't directly about alignment but rather a related topic that provides some additional clues to the bigger question, namely the detection of evil and/or good.

Gygax begins by making a distinction

between character alignment and some powerful force of evil or good when this detection function is considered. In general, only a know alignment spell will determine the evil or good a character holds within. It must be a great evil or a strong good to be detected. Characters who are very strongly aligned, do not stray from their faith, and who are relatively high level (at least 8th level or higher) might radiate evil or good if they are intent upon appropriate actions.

From what Gygax says above, it would seem that a character's alignment is a description of his moral/ethical tendencies and little more. For most characters, alignment has nothing to do with cosmic allegiance and is thoroughly mundane. However, Gygax implies that there's some connection between being strongly aligned and being devoted to one's faith, a connection that is explicit in Empire of the Petal Throne. He also suggests a linkage between level and the ability of one's alignment to be detected by magical means. He expands upon this last bit by reference to potent monsters.

Powerful monsters such as demons, devils, ki-rin, and the like will send forth emanations of their evil or good. Aligned undead must radiate evil, for it is this power and negative force which enables them to continue existing. Note that none of these emanations are noticeable without magical detection.

This all makes sense to me and I have no qualms with it. Even if one understands alignment more as a function of one's metaphysical "team," as I tend to do these days, what he says here works fine. His discussion of magic items offers up some additional points. He states that

powerful magic items which have some purpose as respects alignment will radiate evil or good – unless they are aligned with neutrality, which is neither, of course. Most other magic items will most certainly not, even though their effect might be for evil or good.

Purpose seems key here. An intelligent sword forged to "overthrow evil" would clearly radiate good, while a sword that merely grants a bonus to attacks against a specific type of creature, like lycanthropes or reptiles, would not (generally) radiate any alignment, even if using it inflicted harm on an individual example of that specific type of creature. He makes this more explicit when he says:

Likewise, items which are not magical but which have powerful effects will probably not give any evil or good aura. Poison is a prime example. It is perfectly neutral and has no aura whatsoever. 

On the other hand, both holy and unholy water radiate good and evil respectively, since their creation involves "some deity of evil or good" – again connecting alignment to religion, or at least the action of a divine being. Curiously, Gygax says that traps are generally neutral. However,

if the … trap leads victims to the lair of Juiblex … there will be an aura of evil about it; while if it brings victims into the realm of Bahamut, it will send out an aura of good.

This section baffles me somewhat. I can see how a trap intended to send a victim to the lair of a demon lord might be evil, but in what sense would a trap that sends someone to the Platinum Dragon be good? Presumably, such a trap would only be a trap if the victims were themselves creatures whom Bahamut might harm, but, if harm is the trap's purpose, how can that be good? This then makes one wonder how Gygax could have claimed just a sentence earlier that most traps are neutral and thus do not radiate good or evil. What is it that differentiates a trap that takes one to the lair of Juiblex or Bahamut from one that simply drops a party into a pit of spikes? Is it the connection to extraplanar beings of great power? That's a reasonable extrapolation of his earlier comments, but it's far from clear that that's the case.

I'm increasingly coming to feel that alignment is one of those topics that becomes less coherent and useful the more one attempts to explicate its precise workings. Rather than coming away with a better sense of how Gygax understood alignment, this section raises many more questions.

The Articles of Dragon: "For NPCs Only: The Death Master"

Ah, that staple of Dragon from back in the day: the "NPC only" class. One of the oddities of the magazine was that, while there was a voracious demand for new character classes, as a house organ of TSR, it could never offer up a new class for use with D&D without a formal caveat, unless it came from the pen of Gary Gygax himself. Of course, this was done with a nod and a wink, as no referee I knew back in the day ever refrained from allowing his players to use "NPC only" classes if he felt they were well done and fit the spirit of his campaign. I know I never had any problems with it, though, to be fair, I was choosy and, in any event, most of the new classes presented in Dragon were so specialized as to have limited appeal.

Still, the presentation of Len Lakofka's death master class in issue #76 (August 1983) went above and beyond those of most other classes in terms of making it clear that it was intended only for NPCs. You can see the title of the article in which it appeared above. In addition to the "For NPCs Only" phrasing, there's the subtitle that calls the class a "monster" and notes that one shouldn't consider playing as a death master. Even more notably, the article itself begins with an "Introduction/Sermon" where Lakofka opines

The AD&D game should not have assassin player characters. In fact, no player character should be evil at all unless adverse magic affects him.

This is an interesting, though not unusual, point of view, especially as the '80s rolled on. It's also worth noting that assassins were eventually eliminated from AD&D in its second edition, a point of view even Gygax toyed with on occasion, though for different reasons. In any case, Lakofka continues in his introduction to explain that he feels evil is treated too casually in the game. One of his reasons for creating the death master class was to rectify this.

As a way of putting evil in its often without enough of a penalty proper place, here is presented an evil character that makes an assassin look like the boy next door. The death master is meant as a non-player character -- one the player characters and their party have to defeat. Please use the character that way only. If I ever run into a player character death master at a convention, I may turn evil myself. . .

Again, it's an interesting point of view, especially when viewed against the changing culture surrounding D&D at that time. Naturally, Lakofka's concerns had zero effect on me at the time, since there was for a brief time a PC death master in my old campaign -- brief, because he was eventually slain by the other PCs, but I allowed the class nonetheless. The PC in question was a formerly good character turned to evil by possession of the Hand of Vecna and who became obsessed with eliminating his former companions in the belief that they would eventually destroy him. He was right, as it turned out, though, ironically, his destruction was more the result of his repeated attempts to slay the other PCs than their own desire to see his life ended. In any event, I didn't heed Lakofka's warnings and I'd be amazed if I were the only one.

The death master class itself is somewhat interesting. It's basically a necromancer, with many powers over the undead and a collection of new spells. Beginning at 4th level, the class also gains the ability to make a variety of "potions, salves, and pastes" that replicate some of his spells and class abilities. At the time, I found it an impressive addition, since it spelled out a bit more explicitly the crafting of magic items than was seen elsewhere. In retrospect, I'm not sure a new class was needed, when new spells alone could have probably sufficed, but that was the style at the time. Regardless, I'm not at all convinced that the death master did anything to advance the notion that evil should be Evil and never an option for player characters.

Irredeemably Evil

Commenting on an earlier post of mine, Steven Marsh asks a question I think worth pursuing,

I've had a personal distaste for many years for many "old school" conventions of slaying, say, a village of goblins, just because they're evil. Is it considered to be just for "heroes" to slaughter them all? Is it right to never offer quarter to sapient foes, but rather barge into a dungeon room with swords drawn? etc.

Personally, I can really only enjoy hack-n-slash if there's either a strong moral compass for the heroes (requiring those who follow good to offer quarter, not taking lives needlessly, etc.), or if those the heroes act against are by definition irredeemably evil (demons, devils, undead, Cthulhu-esque horrors, etc.). But I admit I'm weird and don't judge other viewpoints... and it's not like I'm consistent in this view. (I don't like heroes killing orcs just because they believe they're evil, but I don't think a player of the Russian side in Axis & Allies is tacitly approving of Stalin's actions.)

Generally, I don't give a lot of consideration to questions of this sort, because, in my experience, they're often insincerely asked. That is, they're really a cover for a hidden agenda of some sort, including (but not limited to) a general indictment of D&D and/or swords-and-sorcery gaming generally.

In this case, though, the question included reference to a moral compass, something I've previously commented upon as a necessity in D&D. Indeed, my feeling remains that the game implicitly holds to a rather traditional moral structure derived from a kind of "fairytale Christianity" that partly provides a counterbalance to the game's other, more unsavory implications -- but only partly.

That's because D&D has never been a systematic game, particularly in its inspirations. While pulp fantasy writers like Howard, Leiber, and Vance, none of whom were much concerned with "moral" questions, are the game's primary influences, they're not its only ones. Both Gygax and Arneson were interested in medieval history and its events, both real and legendary, also loomed large in their imaginations. It's from here that deviations from the comparative amorality of pulp fantasy entered the game, aided no doubt by the authors' own moral beliefs. The end result is a game with some very muddled moral stances, complicated by the fact that many of D&D's internal mechanisms, such as alignment, contributed to rather than dispelled its muddled state.

This moral confusion was made worse by the fact that in most traditional swords-and-sorcery literature, there aren't a lot of "monsters," let alone intelligent ones. The enemies against whom Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fought, for example, were generally other human beings, none of whom were portrayed as evil by nature. They were enemies because they opposed the protagonists, not because of what they were. D&D, though, borrowed many surface elements from high fantasy writers like Tolkien, elements that, when stripped of their larger context, don't mesh well with the pulp fantasy superstructure of the game.

Thus, the importation of the irredeemably evil orcs -- and the extrapolation by Hit Dice of other related races -- introduced a wrinkle into the implied setting of the game that it couldn't easily contend with. Whereas Conan's slaying of an individual man could be potentially be justified on the basis of the individual's actions, humanoid monsters don't seem to enjoy that same status. They're evil because they are evil and no further justification is needed. Tolkien himself seemed to waver on this point later in life, but D&D, for most of its existence, has not. Add to this the naturalistic presence of non-combatant females and young, and you have the recipe for some very thorny questions that D&D's incoherent moral structure just can't handle.

I say that not as a criticism of Dungeons & Dragons. I don't personally have any problems with this incoherence, mostly because it's precisely this that makes the game so accessible and malleable to many tastes. But there's no denying that the incoherence is there and that, without some thought on the part of the referee (not to mention the cooperation of his players), the game can quite easily degenerate into something that some might view as indefensible from a moral point of view.

Again, let me stress that I'm not saying that this has to be the case or even that it's much of an issue for me personally. I've dealt satisfactorily with these matters in my own campaigns, but doing so required that I deal with them. I don't recommend making them the focus of one's campaign (or one's thoughts about it), but I also think avoiding them isn't viable in the long term. Or at least it's never been so for me. I much prefer to address moral questions head on, even in RPGs, and it's precisely this that I think too many referees don't do, thereby lending ammunition to those who would argue there's something inherently immoral about swords-and-sorcery. That's why, like Steven Marsh, I think a moral compass of some sort is needed to combat this false accusation.