In game ethical questions

[42]

So I'm wondering how people approach ethical dilemas faced by their characters during a role-playing session.

The general approach I've seen is to just ignore ethics and have the characters do what is most advantagious.

But those of us who actually what to play a ethical, non-hedonistic character, things become more problematic.

I'm thinking about this in current session where I play noble who is involved in a rebelion. Okay, my character was a major instigator of the rebellion. Now many of the other players are arguing that starting a rebellion is an evil act, but I don't see it that way. I see the current regime as being corrupt and evil, at least that's my impression from what the GM has presented. So I see my character as serving the greater good.

Yet, some of the other players repeated tell me that my character is evil because he is involved in the rebellion. Admittably, being in the rebellion has caused my character to commit several evil acts (lying, deception, theft, and assassination to name a few).

Course, war and rebellion are inherently evil, but I don't see the Founding Fathers of the US as being evil because they lied, cheated, stole, and killed to found this country.

So as you can see it is an ethical dilema.

Suggestions? Simular Experiences?

Preferaly answer in the next couple of days, because I plan to run my players through an ethical problem next weekend.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'd say that when you play an ethical character, you have to define, at least the general principles of, what he considers ethical.

Nephi killed a guy. He wasn't evil. Joshua led an army in and kicked a ton of people out of their lands and cities. Was he evil?

and so on. Sometimes, it's what you need to do.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

go to Outcasts thread in rants to see differences of morality and ethics in action. I tend to play characters with a specific set of ethics,... which can be anything from just looking out for number to being a philanthropist.  I for one think its cool that the party disagrees with you, and that there is some debate about the world in general. it makes the whole experience more real... I hope it hasnt ruined the game though...

Go on persuing your characters code of ethics, as long as it hasnt ruined the experience for everyone else...

Oh and your next move should be getting them involved against their will.

that would be fun

[42]

I'm trying to get the others involved against their will. They kind of already are. But there is a problem in that 2 other character really are evil. They are smugglers and thieves. Then there is one poor player who is trying to be a very upright and good soul. It's causing some tension.

I'm thinking that because I decided that the evil actions justified the goals of my character, the balance between good and evil characters got shifted to the evil side. But I see good coming out of all the chaos and destruction when things get reorganized.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

your a terrorist.

How interesting.

[42]

In one sense, yes. But I prefer to think of my character as a revolutionist.

[Fellfrosch]

The main difference being who wins and gets to write the history book.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

you do get to yell stuff like "Liberty Equality, fraternity! Now off with the rich nob's heads!"

So thats a plus

but on the down side your revolting

badump bump bump

[Eagle Prince]

This is the same campaign that Saint Ehlers was playing with us.

Here's one I've thought about myself quite a bit, tell me what you think it would be.  My character started up a smuggling business.  I exported grain from my country to a neighboring nation, where it was bartered for exotic woods.  I then imported the wood, bartered most of it for another grain shipment and sold off the rest as profit.

Okay, so here is where the "smuggling" part comes in.  Any type of commerce with this neighboring country (East Dakkar) is prohibited by our government (West Dakkar).  This isn't true in East Dakkar, you are free to cross the boarder if you want (although once in, getting back out could be a problem).

During a previous adventure, our group got permission to cross the border as part of a government investigation into terrorism.  We got a legal document that allowed us to cross the border, and I talked to the DM about it.  The document itself has no real restrictions on how much it can be used, when it can be used, who it can be used by, etc... just sort of "the bearer of this document has legal permission to cross the border".

This document was entrusted to our party cleric.  One night, my character stole it from her, forged a copy, gave the forged copy back to the cleric, and kept the original for himself.  This is how I now smuggle trade goods between the countries, technically its legal, although the legality was gained through rather devious means.  Keep in mind that we are now also trying to overthrow the West Dakkar government (and I think we have pretty good reason to do this, the King is a madman and tyrrant who has people beheaded, then "talks" to the heads for advice... also, in this campaign setting, defiling the dead is almost as unethical as murder).  So would this be considered lawful evil, neutral evil, true neutral... ?  Okay, so I smuggle stuff, but so did Han Solo and he's one of the good guys IMO.

To be fair, 42's character has got a bad rap about being evil.  My character has done way more evil deeds.  In fact, one thing in particular my character did was probably more evil then all of 42's evil deeds combined.  However, I have recently been trying to convert my character to the good side.

[Captain Morgan]

Good and evil are such relative terms. Fellfrosch is right about who wins and writes the history books. If this kingdom you are rebelling against wins you will be considered a traitor and possibly a terrorist, if you win, you liberated a country and set people free you could be called a saint or a hero. The actions you took to some might be considered evil, but to others they were considered good.
The US vs. USSR is a prime example. I remember growing up being totally afraid of the evil communists. They would kill me in an instant for my belief in democracy, and put my head on a pike to show off as their trophy. (I had a very active imagination as a child). Having met quite a few Russians in the recent years about my age, they thought the same thing about us. Although for them it was Capitalist equals evil and communism is good. (I do realize that Communism is a market system and not a political system, so Capitalism and communism compare, but not to a monarchy. I didn't get that as a kid that Russia was a communist dictatorship, it could have just as easily been a communist democracy which to me would have made a lot more sense.) The main point is, depending on which point of view you are looking at right or wrong, good or evil is relative to your own personal ethics and morals.
Nicadymus and I are always talking about character alignment. What is the difference between an evil character that does evil things for the greater good and a good character that does good things for the greater good? Or vice versa, a good character doing good things for the greater evil, or any number of the above...
For example: Your character could be considered evil if he kills a lot of innocent people for the greater good. Lets say you are a commander in the military and an infection broke out that could infect everyone in the nation in a matter of days. You have the ground zero quarantined, but you know these people are trying to escape, because they are afraid of becoming sick. The town has two thirds of the population with this sickness, and the early stages of the sickness make it hard to distinguish between a healthy person and a sick one. If one infected person gets out the whole nation is at risk. There is no cure for this disease, and there will not be one for years. Do you destroy the town or not to sanitize the disease. Doing so ensures the safety of everyone else on the planet, but you will be killing thousands of non-infected people. Not destroying the town you risk everyone's life on the entire planet including your own family. Is either choice good or evil? As I said earlier it is relative. Killing innocents is considered evil, but saving the rest of the planet would be considered good. In my opinion the only way either scenario would be considered evil is if you enjoyed killing those people, or enjoyed watching them suffer.

Let's look at your character. Were the actions you committed for the rebellion right or wrong? That of course depends on what you did and how you did them. Are you killing a mass of innocent people to save the country or are you assassinating just a few corrupt officials to save a country? Did you enjoy the killings? Was there another way to accomplish your goals without killing or stealing or lying? I would say that in your heart (that being the heart of your character) do you feel what you are doing is evil or good? If you say evil, is it the lesser of two evils, because in some cases that is the only option for an otherwise good character. If you say good, then ignore what the other players are saying about your character being evil, because you have established your own ethical and moral code, just as our founding father did. Although if your end result is to become a dictator and rule with absolute terror, then you going to be considered evil, versus liberating a country from corrupt officials.

[Entsuropi]

I always felt that alignments corresponded to your motives rather than acts. Once I played a game on the web where the GM warned me that my true neutral character was acting out of alignment by beating a prisioner to try and get information about enemies ahead. My defence was that he felt it was acceptable, he didn't regard the (bugbear i think it was) demihuman as a true sentient, and he only did it the once. So I felt that it was not out of alignment for a True Neutral (which is, the character will act according to their own code of ethics heavily modified by the situation, since they have no overriding allegance to good or law or what have you).

To me it seems silly to try to say that everyone acts in one alignment all the time. Thats just not true - you can have devout, kindly clerics (lawful good) who have an intense bigotry towards, say, Elves. Their bigotry does not remove the fact that to everyone else they are 'saintly' (the GM refused to accept that example... guess we just didn't see eye to eye on alignments). I tried to point out that medieval Catholic priests could be regarded as an example of this very example, but he said they would not be Lawful Good if they did the whole burning at the stake thing. In retrospect I should just have pointed out that paladins are usually felt to carry a pyre at all times just to be ready...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

actually, EP, i have to disagree. The party cleric is using an illegal copy now, even though he was trusted with a legal copy. It's illegal because it is not a document issued by a legal authority.

The document you actually USE is a bit mroe hairy. It says the bearer, so technically, if you were in a society as bound to the letter of the law as our own, you'd be in good, though an authority could yank it at any time. But you're in a quasi-medieval society, and it would probably be interpreted as illegal use, since you are not the person to whom the document was issued and not using it for that reason. The characters would be aware that this is how the law was interpretted, generally speaking (that is, if they were in a situation, as they are, where this sort of thing is necessary and/or common), thus I think the character must be aware that he is flaunting the law. I don't think I'd call it legal.

[Eagle Prince]

Actually, I think the cleric lost the forgery and ended up asking for a new one.  I also took some precautions by making friends with some of the border guards and only bring shipments through while they are on shift.  Of course, we did hire on all those pirates to smuggle us in goods from the ocean.  You might remember that, since your character help set it up.  Btw, last session we found out the king has an army set up down there and has been stealing some of our shipments.

All I know is going from a thief to a good guy is hard work.  Especially if you want it to be from seeing the error of your ways instead of something more contrived like, 'Oh last night I had a holy vision, so I'm going to act good now.'

[cheesegrater]

I will do anything to win - cheats, hacks, trainers, exploiting bugs, taking advantage of people, etc. I used to do that a lot in counterstrike, but now I switched to RPGs after CS got boring. I will pwn j00 all!

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

uhm... this is about paper-and-dice RPGs, cheesey. There are no cheats or hacks other than lying about what you roll.

And it's about IN GAME ethics.