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What Are The Types Of Heroes And Villains In This Game?

 
Quote:
Originally Posted by shawnhcorey View Post
D&D has an artificial moral compass. A CE character is a villain to LG but a hero to other CE. In other words, there is only one type of hero-villain. Which they are depends on the colour of your team's shirt.
That strikes me as a false equivilancy. I can see a situation where the LG is a villain and the CE is,,, maybe not a hero exactly, but not totally the bad guy.

D&D has its roots in wargaming. In war, everyone does the same thing: murder other people. In wargaming, alignment is just the colour of the team's shirt.

But morals are a lot more complex than categories. The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of evil is righteous. And all of them have little to do with morality. Alignment should not be in any role-playing game. Because, to play a role, the player needs the freedom to choose the character's morality. Which may change, depending on circumstances.

Quote:
Originally Posted by shawnhcorey View Post
But morals are a lot more complex than categories. The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of evil is righteous. And all of them have little to do with morality. Alignment should not be in any role-playing game. Because, to play a role, the player needs the freedom to choose the character's morality. Which may change, depending on circumstances.
How's that a reason not to have alignment?

Alignment does not remove any freedom to choose the character's morality, nor does it prevent morality from changing. The last two sentences in your statement have no bearing on the preceding ones.

Quote:
Originally Posted by shawnhcorey View Post
D&D has its roots in wargaming. In war, everyone does the same thing: murder other people.
Are you seriously saying that every side in every war fought in history are interchangeable?
I don't want to go dragging in real life but is there no war in history about which you could say, "it's probably a good thing these people who commit all the atrocities and the war crimes were beaten", or "I wish someone had beaten these guys and stopped all of the bad things they did, rather than allow them to continue doing their morally objectionable practices"?

People fight in wars, yes. But it matters why they fight and how they fight.

I think that, if in your personal variant of English the words “good,” “bad,” “evil,” and “righteous,” have little to do with “morality,” and if for you “good” (in its conventional moral sense, as in “a good person,” not in its other main conventional sense, as in “a good mechanic”) cannot be used as the opposite of “evil” — then you’re using these words in very specific and peculiar senses that are different from the way in which I use them.

And while it’s absolutely true that D&D has its roots in skirmish wargaming, it’s also true that D&D’s crucial innovations were the ones that started to transform skirmish wargaming into something else - a game in which people played characters who were not actually engaged in warfare as such.

(Also, I don’t actually agree that the only thing that everyone does in war is “murder” other people — although that’s certainly what they do in a certain kind of D&D.)

We're kind of getting off the topic here. The OP was asking about the kinds of characters you can make in D&D 3.5. 3.5 has an alignment system, end of sentence. This isn't really the place tomdisucss if it's a good idea or models anything well; it exists, it is part of the system and must be endured as all rules are endured.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raveled View Post
We're kind of getting off the topic here. The OP was asking about the kinds of characters you can make in D&D 3.5. 3.5 has an alignment system, end of sentence. This isn't really the place tomdisucss if it's a good idea or models anything well; it exists, it is part of the system and must be endured as all rules are endured.
I must admit, that’s not how I understood the question. I thought s/he was asking what categories of “heroes” and “villains” one finds in the game as it is actually played, which is similar to but not quite the same as saying “what kinds of characters can you make according to the rules?” Which is why my answer focused on what kind of “hero” the system encourages or discourages (which has a lot to do with the implied world).

And doesn’t pretty much everyone always houserule something rather than endure every single rule?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
Are you seriously saying that every side in every war fought in history are interchangeable?
Are you seriously saying that the US has never done evil things in war? History is written by the winners and the winners always make themselves out to be the good guys. Yes, both sides are interchangeable.

And since we're now very firmly in the territory of Worldly Talk, thread closed.




 

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