Honey, I Summoned a Demon

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Yeah, like many other disadvantages, "sense of duty" is a way of representing your PC's values. It seems perverse to claim that if you didn't take the points for it and just roleplayed your virtue, you'd be "more virtuous" than if you used the system's tools to accurately represent your character.

Thank you, you expressed that much better than I did.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I do not agree that Sense of Duty makes an individual a good person and acting to protect and/or help your focus does not make you a good person. There were SS officers in WWII who probably possessed Sense of Duty (Germans) and who committed crimes against humanity that they felt were protecting and/or helping the German people.

I guess one of the problems is that GURPS doesn't necessarily have an objective definition of 'good', much less 'pure' good, or 'lily white' purity. Statistically I'm not sure there's any way to represent it...

GURPS Powers has "Evil" and "Good" categories of powers which might help navigate that but I don't have a grasp of it.

Questions like "can someone be lily white pure good and a non-vegan" for example... I wouldn't know how to answer that in GURPS terms. Philosophically it's hard for me to even define if objective good can exist apart from inherent impulse to get dopamine response from hard-wired charitableness, or subconscious desire for reputation/karma.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I do not agree that Sense of Duty makes an individual a good person and acting to protect and/or help your focus does not make you a good person. There were...who probably possessed Sense of Duty (...) and who committed crimes against humanity that they felt were protecting and/or helping the ... people. Similar types of people have existed throughout history, people who committed atrocities against one group because they had a Sense of Duty towards another group.

Naming specific real-life examples may come close to being a subjective political judgement which I believe we're advised to avoid on this forum.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

This is running into the old problem that fantasy settings often assume the existence of objective “good” and “evil”, without being very clear what the definition is or where it comes from beyond the writer/GM’s vague aesthetic sense — though I believe that D&D has thrown up its hands and said “Good is what the certified Good Gods say is good, so shut up”. Of course, they may be Pratchettian gods who are basically amoral idiots that can’t afford to confuse their worshippers too much (but sometimes do so anyway).

I might add that, if there is an objective good, and following it guarantees that your healing spells will be demon-free, this gives you one (tricky and dangerous) test for whether you’re on the Right Side. One imagines Doctor Benevolus, well-meaning and sincere medical wizard to Lord Dubious’s black-clad Legion of Doom, fossicking up one of the many healing spells he has to cast after the PCs have been through and getting a demon. So while the Legion Rapid Response Team are shooing their visitor back to its plane of origin, Doc Benevolus is sitting in a corner having a crisis of conscience and going “But... But... But...”

I very much like that GURPS avoids the "good guy, bad guy" distinction by not making it a codified set of rules. And the Doc's dilemma sounds like it could be the beginning of an adventure or even a movie.

My first RPG was a certain fantasy RPG that did make that good/bad distinction. I was playing a pure, lily-white paladin--who in order to gain experience points had to go around killing people. Fortunately, my gaming group was understanding of my dilemma, and gave me a partial way out--I could earn points, but not quite as much, if I nearly killed someone and then voluntarily stopped. It wasn't a perfect solution by any means, but better.

As for the debate over following Sense of Duty qualifying as lily-white, pure good in intent, remember GURPS Magic says "(The GM may waive this result if, in his opinion, caster and spell were both lily-white, pure good in intent.)" (Italics as are in the book).

As in all things, if in doubt, consult your GM.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Plane

I guess one of the problems is that GURPS doesn't necessarily have an objective definition of 'good', much less 'pure' good, or 'lily white' purity. Statistically I'm not sure there's any way to represent it...

GURPS Powers has "Evil" and "Good" categories of powers which might help navigate that but I don't have a grasp of it.

Questions like "can someone be lily white pure good and a non-vegan" for example... I wouldn't know how to answer that in GURPS terms. Philosophically it's hard for me to even define if objective good can exist apart from inherent impulse to get dopamine response from hard-wired charitableness, or subconscious desire for reputation/karma.

This is a feature, not a bug. Gurps doesn't really assume any moral framework or lack thereof for any given game. It does give advice on what genre conventions say "Good" and "Evil" powers or magic look like, but in the end its just advice.

The morality of your setting (including games set in the real world) is between you and your players. There are settings and stories where Good and Evil are objective things that can be measured and give their wielders power. There are stories where whether or not those objective powers actually line up with good and evil is explored. There are settings where morality-based powers don't exist.

One interesting feature of good and evil in fiction is that its much easier to present pure evil than pure good. I've got a hate-filled monster that wants to kill or torture everyone he sees. That's easy to portray, as we don't need this creature to wrestle with moral quandaries. He could be more intelligent or target something other than physical suffering, but that doesn't get many people worked up. On the other hand, we ask a "being of pure benevolence" to not only wrestle with the quandaries but solve them out of hand.

So the most common way to depict the forces of good and evil is to present outright forces of evil, and then show a very restrained and subtle power of good that only really targets the forces of good and acts through mortal agents, who are allowed to make mistakes and have flaws. That way we can avoid actually working out perfect ethical systems anytime we want to write fiction.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Plane

I guess one of the problems is that GURPS doesn't necessarily have an objective definition of 'good', much less 'pure' good, or 'lily white' purity. Statistically I'm not sure there's any way to represent it...

Originally Posted by ericthered

This is a feature, not a bug. Gurps doesn't really assume any moral framework or lack thereof for any given game.

I believe this comes out of GURPS being generic and universal. As per an example mentioned above, being vegan is not defined by GURPS as being good, evil, or indifferent--but it could be so defined in a specific campaign. For another example, one world might have holy warriors, while in another being a warrior would be evil--some real life beliefs do hold to that (you'd probably have a hard time finding a campaign where that's true, though).

Just going through GURPS Basic, I found dozen of references with various versions of "as in all things, the GM makes the final decision." The system is designed to be adaptable so that the GM can set things as desired and then communicate "how this world works" to the players.

[Alden Loveshade]

Synchronistically, within a day after I started this thread, a GM had a demon appear in a GURPS game I was playing. The GM claims to have not yet seen this thread before that game.

The demon wasn't summoned due to a magical critical failure, though; he was just stopping by a tavern for a bite to eat.