Evil is Petty

Following on from good men doing evil for the greater good, I'm moving towards one of my favorite, touchiest topics in terms of good and evil.

One of the commonest mainstay fantasy fiction (and sci-fi fiction for that matter)is the Evil Overlord. So common, in fact, that he has his own list that's moderately famous around the internet. Typically, the control vast armies of evil (draconians, orcs/goblins, insert evil monster of the week here) and are hell bent on conquering the world and molding it in their own image, but spend a great deal of time brooding in their tent or castle like Achiles until the heroes of the story (in our case, the PC's) are ready for the confrontation. It's a concept that's at once familiar and comforting to our inbred sensibilities, that a face can be put on evil, that there's an apparatus it has built up around it. The ability to name and identify the evil and, more specifically, to identify it as "that one over there" is empowering for most people, not only because it builds up the image of a confrontable font of darkness, but it's pseudo-exoneration of those who would oppose it, even if only in principle.

The industrial sized, world threatening, archetypal evil lord is such a common image and device that I'm sure everybody here could name at least half a dozen of them, even excluding Morgoth/Melkor, Sauron, and Hitler (as a literary device, really, and not neccessarily the real life figure).

At a game level, the concept is tremendously convenient since it allows us to build everything around a single, larger conflict. Dark Lord McScarypants is threatening Utopiaville and all kingdoms of sweetness and light in a bid to conquer the world and oppress the innocent and kick little puppies on the street. It's up to the heroes to stop him! Everything else just writes itself into that framework and there's really nothing wrong with it.

When we try to break out of the stereotypical molds of games, we tend to do away with the conspicuous Dark Lords and replace them with "the Big Bad Evil Guy" or BBEG as he's commonly referred to on the mind numbing gaming forums. This guy is a bit like a demoted evil overlord. He gives us the convenience of an identifiable source of evil, or at least of the identifiable troubles, but he's somehow less hokey than the overpowering overlord ruling from his thrown of skulls and clotted blood in the land of shadows somewhere over that direction, but could you maybe look into this strange influx of goblins we seem to be having before you run off and take care of that? More conveniently, with the redefinition of "campaign" as a 1 year start to finish story by the newer editions of D&D, it's something that gives a strong focus to the game. The players are there to investigate the machinations and doings of some evil being who is causing troubles locally or globally or whatever. Over a 1 year time period, sandbox play really isn't that great and, it seems, that D20 type D&D requires a stronger focal point than simply wandering around and looking for adventure. The big bad(s) are a narrative tool, just on a slightly less cosmic scale.

As comforting and convenient as that all is, it ignores some specific and overt realities: and how I do love reality for inspiration. The issue is that evil is petty. Evil is, for the most part, small, relatively contained, and self-interested. World spanning and archetypal evils like that are relatively rare. Far more common are small things, like wife beating, child abuse, murder of local political opponents, and so on. Open up the news today, and you'll find an example of just what I mean. For the record, I find that particular news item extraordinarily unpleasant and the punishment leveled against the girl far insufficient.

For every Morgoth, there are ten Sharky's. For every Hitler inaugurating genocidal campaigns against hated ethnicities, there are a thousand Cheyenne Cherry's throwing kittens into hot ovens just to hear the cries of pain and fear it makes before dying. And more often than not, these evils are motivated almost entirely by self-interest and not some Moorcockian esoteric concepts of law and chaos, good vs. evil. The evil priest lurking at the outskirts of civilization sacrificing innocents in the hopes that his dark master will grant him immortality in the form of undeath as a lich or vampire or specter. A man who rapes and murders a woman who, in town council, blocked one of his pet projects.* A woman who bathes in the blood of her handmaidens in order to preserve her youth and beauty. These kinds of people are memorable simply because they are realistic and believable and because their crimes are far more personal than any plotting and scheming dark lord.

Why am I talking about this? Simply because, hand in hand with "all politics are local" goes "most evil is petty, small, and local." While there might be vast, brooding evil intelligences out in the game world, plotting the overthrow of order, the downfall of light, or whatever, far more effective game villains are of the smaller sort. These kinds of opponents tend to stick in players' minds when they are encountered and, as I said within the Bernardo Gui post, force the players themselves to confront something that is challenging or difficult for them.





*I'm very clear here that such topics are not always suitable for all games, nor am I encouraging those who don't want to deal with such unsavory topics to every include them in their games, nor should such topics EVER be treated lightly.

Bernard Gui Was Lawful Good

James Raggi over at LotFP has put up a series of articles over the last week about alignment. Here's the latest in the series. What's interesting is that the articles are not the standard dithering over defining what Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil really mean as if the definitions in the books weren't already clear, but about larger, farther reaching ramifications, such as what a being of evil incarnate might be like when the evils perpetrated by ordinary humans (even in the name of good) are so heinous as to turn your stomach. A demon or devil, even a relatively low level example, would be evil on a level unknown to lowly humans.

I wanted to get into some of the smaller, closer to home aspects of alignment. How a normal mortal might operate within the framework of the nine-point dual axis (i.e., AD&D alignment system) alignment codification and still break from a 1970's conception of right and wrong and morality: which is not to say anything disparaging against such conceptions, merely that good and evil within the framework of D&D seem to be largely judged from the paradigm of a 1970's educated man, which makes perfect sense since it was written and largely written for 1970's educated men.

My first object lesson is Bernardo Gui, born 1261, died 1331, and arguably the most famous member of the Medieval Inquisition (as VERY distinct from the infamous Spanish Inquisition which he had absolutely nothing to do with). It's remarkable how few people know Bernardo outside of the near caricature by F. Murray Abraham and Umberto Ecco in The Name of the Rose: you see, Umberto disliked the Church in general and the Inquisition in particular and it bled into his writing (which I'm sure he'll be the first to tell you is open to the audience's interpretation) and when the movie was created, it was decided that there was a need for a stronger antagonist than an old monk who hated laughter during the climax, thus was born the enhanced antagonism of Abraham's Gui.

In reality, the man quite literally wrote the book on how the Papal Inquisition was supposed to conduct and comport itself as well as its overall purpose: Practica Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis or "Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Wickedness." The work discusses the purpose of the Inquisition, describes its "targets" (including a very good description of the Cathars and why they are designated heretical by the Church of the time), and the methodology of accusations, interrogation, indictment, and punishment by members of the Inquisition. Gui did, indeed, advise the use of torture as a method to extract information from accused persons, an act that almost anybody in the Western World would consider irredeemably evil. During his tenure in this position, Gui obtained about 900 convictions, but only turned over a mere 42 to the state for execution. He was very reticent to see the people brought before him executed arguing convincingly that such would be considered a failure of one of the most important purposes of the Inquisition: the detection and rehabilitation of those persons who had strayed from the "correct" teachings of the Church. More common and preferred forms of punishment and rehabilitative therapy included pennance, joining an aesthetic monastic order for a time, a long pilgrimage, flogging, or simply time in the stocks. Killing somebody in this situation would be effectively damning them to hell, something that was to be strenuously avoided as the Church truly believed itself to be in the business of helping to save souls, not condemning them. Thus, execution was reserved for only the most vile and unrepentant heretics.

In the end, and within the context of his historical setting, I would argue that Bernardo Gui would fit in well within the Lawful Good alignment, despite what we would view as reprehensibly evil methods, much of which could be attributed to a Medieval sense of jurisprudence really. Which brings me to my point, at last; while it's certainly great to play D&D within the moral framework of modern folk, there's a lot to be said about opening up to a different moral paradigm. To continue within our example of the Inquisition, how would the players themselves interact with such a person? Upon realizing that torture was being used as a method to seek out and identify heretics (or, perhaps, slightly easier on our modern sensibilities, hidden evil moles), what would the party's attendant Paladin do? The party may be asked to perform tasks for such an inquisition and to abide by its regulations.

Travelling this way is difficult to do without getting hokey and over simplified, but done right, it challenges more than just the technical and role playing skills of the players, it challenges the players themselves. A little narativist in a way? Sure, but even the oldest and grognardiest of games can benefit from some of the better lessons of the White Wolf and Hickman/Weiss revolutions. Dealing with good and evil on a more than just lip service level, forcing players to confront some of their own personal demons within the game, is, in my opinion of course, one of those good lessons. It's another layer of challenge beyond disarming traps, killing monsters with clever tactics, and hauling treasure out from under the nose of a sleeping dragon. How, as a player of a Lawful Good character, do you work within a game world where not only is slavery and martial interrogation (torture) are not only accepted and acceptable functions of society, but are so widespread as to be near universal?

Inherently Evil

The morality system of Dungeons and Dragons (in most of its incarnations) has been the source of lively debate since . . . well . . . pretty much ever. Put ten gamers into a room together and you'll have ten different views on how the alignment system "should be" interpreted, which version of the alignment system is "best," whether or not Gary Gygax was, indeed, taking controlled substances when he thought that this would be a good idea for a game, and at least three black eyes. Many, if not most, blogs even peripherally about D&D have long series of articles discussing the "true nature of alignment" and how it works and such a discussion has even made it over to the pop-culture repository of "knowledge" called TVTropes.org. It is, in my opinion, one of the best articles about the D&D style alignment system ever. A great many gamers decry the whole exercise and call it a straight jacket or some bizarre, ill-conceived attempt to shoe-horn a morality system into the game that wasn't needed.

The topic has gotten some play within the blog sphere: here and here for instance.

Whatever side of this discussion you fall on isn't important here, and I'm not going to weigh in entirely about it. The truth of the matter, though, is that it (the alignment system and its attendant assumptions) tend to pose some difficult questions for modern gamers, especially considering modern ethical and moral sensibilities. Specifically, the concept of an "always chaotic evil" or even "often evil" type monsters. Orcs, goblins, hobgoblins (my personal favorite humanoid), kobolds, and etc. were, if I recall the history of the game correctly) designed specifically as a a sequence of incrementally more powerful targets for the PC's to kill and loot without attendant guilt complexes. They were, in short, evil races and could be slaughtered with aplomb. Of course, no plan or mechanic, however ingenius, survives contact with gamers.

The concept of an entire race or species (and I've honestly been confused as to whether we're to consider the various non-human sentients in the game a species or a race, or if there's a difference in the first place) as being objectively inferior and identifiably and demonstrably inherently evil is one that truly grates against modern sensibilities. After all, such excuses have been used in our own world to justify some of the most horrific acts in history and it's natural that those of us raised in this world would be recoil from such a thought. Or course, that didn't stop many of us from assuming that anything in the game with a written XP total was there for us to kill and acting accordingly. According to Dave Kenzer himself, the humanoids in the new edition of Hackmaster are going to hearken back to this understanding, that they are all evil and the players have a right if not duty to slaughter them wholesale and further, that upon reading the descriptions of said monsters in the Hacklopedias (their version of the Monster Manual) that you'll actually want to.

One of the natural responses to the quandry is to create a rational for why such and such a race is evil. Orcs, for example, might be magically created things little more than self-replicating automata. A disease, almost, on the land. James over at Grognardia has reportedly taken this angle with his Dwimmermount campaign (linked above, see the comments) where orcs at least are the result of genetic tinkering by one of the precursor races that bestrode the world like giants in the long dark history of the world. This angle is great for Dwimmermount since blaming one of the older races who are already a part of the campaign for the horrific humanoids rampaging through the world and preying upon the innocent does not multiply entities at all. In fact, orcs in Thylia share a similar niche, though I feel with a particularly dark twist.

Of course, the LOTFP article linked above takes a different tack, playing with the uncertainty of players and characters as to what place in the metaphysical and moral place in the world humanoids occupy. The suggestions to play up this uncertainty is delightfully evil in and of itself and I plan on having child goblins and kobolds around to trip up the players' certainties.

I've never really had a problem with a race of beings being evil. It just doesn't bother me on the same level as it does others, I suppose seeing as I don't view "Good" as objectively superior in any way within the context of the game. Of course, within the game itself, "Good and Evil" are semantically loaded terms anyway as they both seem to coincide with, respectivly, what our modern society considers morally laudable and morally reprehensible, but I consider that to be terms of semantic limits: sometimes you just can't escape using a word that has strong associative meanings. However, within the context of the game world, good and evil are neither superior nor inferior in any way, they just are.

This isn't moral relativism, because evil is still evil, if that made any sense.