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

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by nik1979

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?

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

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?

Why would the Ogre want to stop?

Where is sentience or freewill if the Author is programs one race to be "evil" and another race to be "good".

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

[Stone Dog]

Originally Posted by nik1979

Where does the Author influence end and the Ogres motivation begin?

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.

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?

... 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.

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by nik1979

there is no point in making any Ethical problem solving if an Objective Perspective will have to say what's black or white.

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.