Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

And that they are helpless when they are little might not apply as well.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The Japanese love their dolphin.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Which Japanese in particular? From what I see online, it's like whales: Not every Japanese person is demanding it, it's mostly a luxury product.

And even then, the sapience of dolphins is in question; at best, they're "near" it, but not quite at that level.

Also, I just want to say that going by some Asian countries for animal treatment probably isn't the argument you want to pursue. I can point out distinct animal abuse in Korea (based on personal experience, too) that would not fly in much of the Western world. Are you sure you want to go down that route?

Trying to support the argument that humans do and should treat sapient creatures poorly is really really disturbing for me. Like I said earlier, it's getting me really worried what happens when we start exploring outside our solar system.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Can we not debate whether humans show Evil behaviour, please.

The Aliens from the first three films seem to be programmed to reproduce. I don't remember any malice in their actions. However in the fourth film one of them seems to take revenge on a scientist.
This makes me think that they might appear evil because of their lack of intelligence and reproduction method. But individuals can be without tarnishing the whole.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Yes, okay.

After all, saying "The Japanese do X, therefore All Humans Are Like X", is pretty flawed for the bolded reason.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

David Brin (who among other things wrote the Uplift series and consulted on both GURPS Uplift and Tribes!) in the foreword to The Dogma of Otherness, tells about how he was forced to abandon his sentimental notions of intelligent dolphins. They're smart, but no more than chimps, and possibly less.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The point is that humans can be very remarkably cruel. I mean look at the Romans demonizing enemies for practicing human sacrifice while enjoying the games, which was really a form of human sacrifice that got more secularized.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The point is that if say the party was dolphins humans could well seem like evil monsters. And really if they are intelligence but sufficiently alien we might be totally unable to communicate to them. If so is their intelligence relevant? For example if they have intelligence but lack empathy of any kind(especially for things not their own kind) is their intelligence important?

If dragons were all psychopathic but intelligent would it make them more or less monstrous than non intelligent dragons?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

You want a pure badguy race, fine here are Dan's Evil Dragons.

Dragons are a race that has a racial memory and in females at least rather high levels of intelligence, but a total lack of any empathy. They have extreme sexual dimorphism were the females are much larger than the males and like in some species of spider eat the males after reproducing with them. The males are much smaller and commonly known a wyverns.

Do to their total lack of empathy and in general psychopathic personality they can never be trusted and are dangerous from a young age being born with a knowledge of magic that most human archmages would envy.

There you have it, a race that are loaners who can not ever be trusted and you can make good arguments for killing even newborn dragons.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

This goes both ways. if an alien culture cannot communicate with us (perhaps they communicate by ultrasound or the like), then they would be perfectly justified in making us extinct for our resources, no?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Sure. It is easy to set up such situations. See Speaker for the Dead for such an issue. It is not hard at all to come up with non humans who need to be killed in large numbers with out making them Evil.

Of course communicate can be in some very basic and violent fashion, like protecting a boarder fiercely.

We prefer to see humans winning this kind of war in fiction but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are better. This is because we can empathize with humans and characters who can not be empathized with are just not that useful as protagonists or getting the reader to feel something when they achieve victory.

It is easy to make species that are either alien enough(say some thing like hive insects) or intelligent but not social like my proposed dragon so that they really can not empathize with the humans position.

I mean in the same reasoning I can argue that vampires as a predator that must kill humans are not evil, but as a human I would support genocide against them.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

If the tiger is not evil for eating a man, than why is the ogre evil for doing the same?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Because it says so in the stat block.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Like the xenomorphs.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The relevant quote is from G.B. Shaw, to the effect that when a tiger murders a man we call it savagery, but when a man murders a tiger we call it sport.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Appeal to authority! Nice!

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Any statement is true if you are allowed to redefine the terms. As long as humans are safely Homo and chimpanzees are safely Pan, they are kosher (as it were). I urge you to look into the lengthy history of where that line between WE and THEY got drawn in Hominidae.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

:-P

Just that I see no need to duplicate his research. And if the man who wrote about space dolphins had to admit they weren't that smart, there must be something to it.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Maybe more back on topic, in DF there is a force of evil that is real and I feel that races like orcs, trolls, ogres, goblins, hobgoblins, etc. would be aligned with this force. Good vs. evil has been part of DF since it started.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

One reason might be...

To a tiger a man is just handy protein walking about and probably not being very careful about who is going to try to eat it. So tigers are incapable of comprehending the value of a moral argument. Even if you could magically "talk" to one of them, morality would be simply alien. They are amoral even if trained.

To an ogre a man is something that will scream and suffer when he is roasted alive and devoured. Ogres might be capable of understanding talk of mercy and compassion, but usually they willingly reject it in favor of cruelty and oppression. They are immoral, but you can sometimes dig up a fairly well behaved mercenary or something.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Oh, like a lobster!

I'm not trying to be pedantic, I am a proud omnivore (albeit a conscientious one: I don't eat from factory farms that mistreat the animals while it's alive.)

But the question of whether or not it is wrong to kill for food is complex, and the answer, "it's okay as long as it doesn't have a very large prefrontal cortex" is arbitrary at best.

Personally I think that it is morally right to kill for food. It's perfectly natural.

As an intelligent, self-aware species we have a moral obligation to be humane about how we get our protein, but a "monster" that hunts and kills humans for food is probably more moral than a human who hunts monsters for glory or the princess's hand in marriage.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The claim that dolphins are sapient or anywhere near it is a positive assertion of disputed fact and the responsibility for supporting it therefore rests with the party that made it.

Citing a science-fiction author that may be partially at fault for the prevailance of this fanciful notion admitting in print that the idea is more fiction than science is absolutely valid.

Personally, I eat pork rather than dolphin meat, but that's because dolphin meat is vile-tasting. If I had to pick the smarter creature, it's six-five and pick 'em.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Like a talking lobster. Except I wouldn't eat a talking lobster.

Who says it's arbitrary? The closer something comes to mental akinship to humanity the more wrong it is for humanity to prey upon it because the more the golden rule applies to it.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

If people eat lobster because they believe that the lobster is afraid and is being tortured, then possibly yes. Many many people try to cut down on perceived lobster suffering when they prepare that food.

Like you say, you don't HAVE to cause gratuitous suffering just for the ability to eat.

This is what I'm talking about. I don't mean that the ogre is killing people for food. I mean that the ogre is killing people for the pain and terror it causes and hey... might as well eat too. The monstrous ogre is willingly, knowingly and purposefully being inhumane about its eating habits.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Wasn't there a "Tales of Interest" episode of Futurama where Leela eats Dr. Zoidburg?

I've heard that logic extended to house cats, which is why many people prefer cats. It's also why in my DF game house cats are little balls of pure, purring, Evil with a capital "E". Not that they do anything Evil, just that they are Evil.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Sure, but if I was that food source it would be morally right for me to fight back and try to wipe out those eating my kind. That was a point I was trying to make about a game that didn't quite get off the ground. Vampires were not necessarily evil, they just viewed humans as food. As the game was about humans protecting humans they were not appropriate as player characters unless they were fairly strange and abnormal vampires and other supernatural denizens. Sort of like PETA for vampires. Say VETH, Vampires for the Ethical Treatment of Humans...

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Aren't cats very likely compared to dogs to eat a deceased owner?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

...and the golden rule is arbitrary.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good rule, for all sorts of reasons, but no less arbitrary or useful for a given individual than "Do whatever you can get away with, and to Hell with everyone else."

It's a rule that serves most useful when applied collectively, whereas the above is a rule that serves most useful when applied as an individual. The problem arises when one individual follows the above policy in a society that applies the Golden Rule.

But then, this whole debate is in danger of missing the point.

Evil races are predicated on a setting where there is such a thing as objective evil. Questions about moral relativity, intention and casuistry are relevant in an ethical debate, but in a "Good vs. Evil" fantasy world, there are wholly objectively defined good and evil actions, and wholly objectively defined good and evil factions endorsing the two codes. To some extent, the setting's authors and the campaign's GM decide what those actions are, and in that setting, that's what good and evil is.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Those are actually pretty much the same rule, subject to the constraint of repeat interactions.

The reason "evil" races that don't follow it are hard to make realistic is that the golden rule really does approach the optimum strategy for the prisoner's dilemma with repetitive play. It only needs a modifier that it does not apply to competitors with a proven record of treachery, which of course if everybody actually adopts the unmodified golden rule, never happens anyway.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Keep in mind that the prisoners dilemma is not necessarily the best model for all morals. But of course more altruistic situations are to everyone's benefit if everyone does them. Just because I have say extra camels right now and you have none does not mean that in 10 years time it might not be reversed, and I so I should give you some camels to get you back on your feet.

This is partially why it is harder to make social races who have no empathy that it is non social. If orcs are truly from a harsh climate they should be very giving to other orcs at least. They might have a strong prejudice against non orcs but they should have empathy and the ability to work together. Of course if you get more alien then you can have somewhat different basis's for social organization.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

I think that's why Banestorm gives orcs their peculiar take on the Eternal. They treat everything as a challenge to them, as a matter of faith, and a) only cooperate with someone they've acknowledged they can't beat, b) only until they do figure out how to beat them, and c) only so as to gain assistance beating a third party.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The point is that this view would be very counter productive in harsh conditions. It was to make them feel more like Orcs, but it really does not fit very well with humans who live in harsh climates.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Because tigers aren't able to use clerical magic and hence are unaligned in the battle between the gods.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

That point would only be relevant if humans could never be evil. Since the word "evil" was invented to describe humans in the first place...

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

So what human societies are/were evil? Why not give them cultures based on those societies?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

I don't understand the question.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

I believe Blacksmith meant "give the Evil race's cultures based on Evil human cultures"

Wouldn't the real world be better described as shades of grey instead of black and white?

Individual humans can be Evil but societies couldn't, one might get into the darkest third of the shades of grey and be considered Evil, but that doesn't make it black.

I think the original post was about groups who are black instead of very dark grey.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Or a living one...

If my cat runs out of food while I'm asleep I've caught her nibbling on me.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

I'm going to completely miss the point, but anyway...

Or non-humans that while perfectly understandable (technically not alien at
all) for reasons of biology/biobabble can at best co-exist with non-them if
safely separated by geography.
Consider a species that pretty much amount to humanoid shrews, with a
metabolism that means they need to eat maybe half their weight or more
each day. Add young that are pretty much just smaller and stupider/less
experienced adults, fully independent days after being born, and a pretty high
birthrate. And a short-ish attention span (probably as in "But then I got
hungry...").
Their view of non-them (and not-their-tribe-them) when not hungry is still
debated by the sages and possibly irrelevant since sooner or later they will
become desperately hungry. And since they are not cannibals and can't eat
their weapons and armour...
Not evil any more than any dumb animal with very high metabolism is and
technically there is nothing that prevents them from including non-them in
the "do not eat"-category, but they'll be wreaking havoc on the local
ecosystem and have big trouble co-existing with non-them.

This, incidentally, is my reskin/rewrite of Dungeons & Dragons kobolds.

On the other hand, I prefer to have the species "neutral"*, maybe moderately
alien**, and leave the evil bit to culture.
After all, it's not as if there aren't human cultures that, when filtered through
(for example) a Victorian historian or anthropologist, comes across as
anything from irredeemably to cartoonishly evil.

*Well, the "natural" ones. Predatory undead and extradimensional beings is
another matter.
**I don't have GURPS Fantasy so I don't know if it's there as well, but the
personality traits from Uplift and Space have a lot of potential here.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

We already do that. Organized evil races have a distinct tendency to look like all the worst features of Rome and the Nazis. Disorganized evil races have a distinct tendency to look like the worst features of the Goths and the Nazis.


Yes. However DF has nothing to with with describing the real world.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

I was asking for your examples of evil cultures from the real world. I suspect most cultures are evil by your definitions, or that your definitions are not all that consistent.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The problem here is that you would have rampant cannibalism. They would be more like mormon crickets or locusts(I don't think locusts cannibalize each each other like mormon crickets). You have made a monster but not really a race, they are going to deplete their resources so fast that they are not going to be stable anywere.

This is rather like the Poslean in John Ringo's books.
Why aren't they cannibals? They are going to rapidly out strip any food source and deplete it so that eating each other is the only food source. Cannibalism is needed to keep their population in check.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Only if you only pay attention to the elements of cruelty and mercilessness within them.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

So? Why not play it that way?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Okay. And?

What do you want from us? Do you want us to say we all agree with you, give you lots of validation and then promise that we will play our games that way as well? Do you want Kromm to come in and tell you that you are right?

You have stated your feelings. No one is stopping you from playing how you want to play. Play how you like. Others will play how they like.

GURPS doesn't have a one true way.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

ahem...this comic seems very relevant to our current discussion

http://badgods.com/images/orc.png

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Well, there is at least one culture whose most significant belief was/is
something along the lines of "All the cattle in the world is ours. Anybody else
who owns cattle is a filthy thief and deserves anything that happens to him
in the process of us reclaiming our property". If I remember correctly reports
from the time also mentions things like killing passing caravan porters for the
lulz (and, by implication, for not being a real man like them).
Some of it may have been slander and they appear to have mellowed a bit,
but going from older descriptions they come across as pretty evil.

Of course, much depends on how you describe things. Polyandry sounds
much nicer (and empowering) than "each band of young warriors picks a sex slave from among the young girls".

Yes, that is a problem (as is them managing to become a tool-using culture in the first place).
The frenetic handwaving involve such as elements as them being Dungeons &
Dragons kobolds (with all that implies regarding size, squishiness and place in
the food chain - consider all the jokes about 0-level commoners and domestic
cats), short lifespans, high infant mortality rate under normal conditions, a
creative definition of cannibalism (Killing a fellow kobold for food?
Inconceivable. Eating an already dead fellow kobold? Funerary rite.) and
A Wizard Did It.

I like to think that it is mostly a case of fine-tuning the metabolic rate, so
that smaller groups can exist without disrupting the system but an
exceptional leader/decrease in predators/increase in food production (own or
raid target's) can lead to a population explosion. (E.g. rapidly going from D&D basic "found in lair" numbers to ADD numbers. Interestingly enough, the former is 6-60 total and the latter is 40-400 males + half as many females.)

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

Didn't this show up really early on in the discussion? I don't like repeats.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

I wish I'd said that.

Two days ago.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

So the Setting Author has to make it explicit what constitutes as evil and good, since they are the "Objective" perspective relative to the game universe. Does the Authors have to make all those Rules Explicit because it seems that there is no point in making any Ethical problem solving if an Objective Perspective will have to say what's black or white.

Ex.
Author: This Ogre here will delight in the feasting of human flesh and its cries of pain and anguish. He gets such a huge kick doing it that there is nothing else it would rather do.

The Ogre is then evil, as to being that does what it is told by the Author and not because the Ogre will it? Where does the Author influence end and the Ogres motivation begin?

If an Ogre were to can't stop doing "evil", and exercise a will that is beyond the author's programing wouldnt that prove that it the ogre is just a automaton? If they can exert their will beyond the Author's design and make their own choice, then they can stop doing "evil"? If they some can just stop then they stop being an Evil race?

If an Ogre makes an ethical choice to do something of the least harm, within the limits of his bounded rationality, like eating slugs (which have no means of communicating) would the Ogre then not be evil despite his programing?

Where is sentience or freewill if the Author is programs one race to be "evil" and another race to be "good". So if elves get a whole lot of pleasure doing Good, like protecting the forest, where does the inlfuence of the Author end and that of the will of the elf begin?

In this sense, isn't what the Players do: Killing Evil Creatures Considered Good because they are good not really a choice but just they are just following the objective definition of what is Good or Evil?

I guess a pure evil race, in a setting that has an objective good and evil defined is kinda encourages turning off your empathy. Empathy (not the advantage but basic human empathy) is useless when you have objective morals, since everyone just follows programing and their is no real will or freedom to choose. Since there is no empathy, there is no Role to play. How can you get into the perspective of something that predictably follows a narrow set of motivation and programing.

What is the pay off when gathering a bunch of friends to play a game which a MMO provides the same range of experience without the work?

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

They are the same thing. The Ogre is, after all, a fictional character.

Why would the Ogre want to stop?


<shrug> Of course we have to believe in free will. We have no choice.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

The ogre is entirely a puppet of the author without any ounce of free will. It is a fictional construct and is without any motivation apart from what the author perceives.

... Are you kidding? Having your friends over to play a game IS the pay off. It could be as simple as Dungeon Frag on the table and it would STILL be a different experience than an MMO.

Note to SJG.... get to work on Dungeon Frag.

Re: [DF] Why not have some pure "bad guy" races in DF?
 

All good points, but we're talking about conflicting campaign styles.

If the campaign assumes the common heroic fantasy trope that good and evil are real, objective, measurable forces (there are even spells that sense them, and types of energy that affect good and evil people differently), then there's basically no ethical problem solving. Good guys act good; bad guys act bad. The challenge isn't parsing ethically complex situations, it's figuring out who's which before you start swinging.

D&D helpfully stirs it up slightly with monster alignments that state "Usually Evil" (species has free will, but are culturally inclined to selfishness and destructiveness) or "Always Evil" (species is supernaturally tied to the forces of darkness, and always acts in an evil way), which allows you to run different moral perspectives side-by-side, but it's still not an ideal setting for exploring moral complexity.

If you want ethical problem-solving, you're better off running a game in which good and evil don't exist as objective forces, in which case the GM and players have to think more on their feet to analyse and understand the motivations of everyone involved.

In GURPS terms, it's the difference between Dungeon Fantasy (as I understand it) and Banestorm.