Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Ben

00:30

@Miniman I found my old GBA! Got all the games too... GS1 & 2, pokemon, LoZ...

Miniman

@Ben Awesome, gratz!

Ben

Only trouble is the GBA battery compartment is gone :( I left some batteries in the compartment and they corroded/calcified or whatever it is they do...

Miniman

Is it GBA original or SP?

Ben

Original

Miniman

(The SP can play just from outlet power with no batteries required.)

Ben

00:34

Yeah. I used to have a battery pack (that didn't work haha) but I could plug it straight into the AC power source, but since the actual compartment is gone I don't think that will help :(

Shalvenay

01:26

so yeah...lawfuls. that whole term connotes to me a character who strictly follows due process of law, yet that seems very, very out of place with regards to the expectations that I suspect most campaigns hold of D&D characters

(and of the settings they're set in -- the setting is busy going "wutz due process?"

BESW

You're familiar with my "alignments are forces of the universe unassociated with mortal philosophies" discussion, right?

Shalvenay

doesn't ring a bell

BESW

Alignment in D&D has very little to do with real-world philosophies.

Shalvenay

...yeah, but that just makes it even harder to interpret for me

BESW

The alignments are metaphysical forces. They can be not only detected but quantified by spells; they have the power to grant spells, create entire planes, and animate life.

Unfortunately, they're not presented that way in most of the material.

The PHB and DMG talk about alignment in terms of choices and lifestyles, and even within that context their descriptions are patently self-contradictory.

Magician

01:30

Which leads to the common feature of D&D: people make of them what they will. Including game designers who write the next edition.

Shalvenay

...yeah. which is part of the reason I lean Neutral/Chaotic -- it's a ton easier to not wind up outside of that box

BESW

I think any discussion of alignment has to start with the understanding that it's 1) a flawed self-contradictory construct and 2) only superficially related to real-world understandings of ethics, morality, and philosophy.

Magician

and 3) there originally to justify killing goblins.

D&D is not a game of moralilty exploration.

BESW

We live in a world where the Goodness or Evilness of a person is arguable based on intent, outcome, and context.

Shalvenay

my concerns usually link to the idea of me playing a Paladin -- I'd like to do it, but the alignment box they get put in in most D&D games is well...very unfortunate in my eyes

BESW

01:31

D&D PCs live in a world where a level one spell can tell us exactly how much Good or Evil that person has, end of discussion.

Magician

@Shalvenay 4e and 13th Age let you be any kind of paladin you want. Probably 5e too.

Shalvenay

I think 5e did lift that, yes

BESW

81

A: How do I play a paladin without being a stick in the mud?

The biggest issue with paladins is when their partners' behavior is judged as if the paladin himself had done the deed. If your DM is willing to avoid that pitfall, may I suggest... A paladin who does not expect non-believers to obey the laws of his faith. He hopes that through his shining examp...

Shalvenay

yeah, my concern is less about association and more about behavior that while consistent with my view of lawful, would seriously clash with campaign and even setting expectations

BESW

Then don't do that?

Here's a concept that might help: "just governance."

One possible mode of action for a Lawful Good character is to obey the laws of just governments, and oppose the rule of injust governments.

Miniman

01:35

@Shalvenay Which edition are you playing in?

BESW

But this is not the sort of story which a D&D-style campaign is usually interested in forefronting, so it'd be backstory motivation rather than a main plot element.

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- this is a cross-edition concern, since while 4e and 5e formally lifted the Paladin alighment box, I suspect that not all players are that open

BESW

One of my philosophy-major friends once postulated that Lawful Good is rule utilitarianism while Chaotic Good is act utilitarianism.

Miniman

> chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/22606256#22606256

So we're talking purely in abstract terms atm?

Shalvenay

yeah

BESW

01:38

In that interpretation (rule utilitarianism), a Lawful Good paladin adheres to his own code whether it violates local governance or not because he considers his code to be the ideal governance and it's his moral duty to act in a way which, if everyone behaved similarly, would make the world the best possible place.

2

Miniman

@Shalvenay That makes it difficult, since the correct answer here is generally "Make sure your group is ok with throwing away alignment restrictions like the garbage they are."

Shalvenay

right.

Magician

That's... baseless speculation, then. Just talk to whatever group you join about it, say you want to play a paladin and rules let you have your own ideology so that's what you'll do.

Shalvenay

@Magician -- I suppose I can try asking folks who are closer to the situation I'd be putting myself into

Miniman

@Magician Great minds...

BESW

01:39

(Rule utilitarianism is stupid in the D&D context, but it holds together until examined too closely in connection with, eg, racially-defined alignment.)

Shalvenay

but my concern isn't just my character having their own ideology, but that ideology placing expectations on the setting that the setting may be unwilling to fulfill

how many D&D settings do you know of have a fully fledged constitution of some sort or another?

BESW

(Because, again--the nature of alignments as demonstrable natural forces is a fundamental game-changer which renders real-world philosophies hollow and naive.)

Magician

@Shalvenay In fiction? There may be some. I doubt anyone bothered to write one.

Adeptus

@BESW That's how most Paladins I've played with (or as) behave. I haven't studied philosophy & ethics enough to have a name for it until now.

Miniman

@Shalvenay None, but why would you need one to have a character with their own personal ideology?

Shalvenay

01:42

@Miniman -- because the most likely choice of ideology I'd pick for a Paladin would place strong expectations on world governance -- not just 'just' but process-oriented and limited in power

BESW

Rule utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance." For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the amount of good it brings about when followed. In contrast, act utilitarians judge an act in terms of the consequences of that act alone (such as stopping at a red light), rather than judging whether it faithfully adhered to the rule of which it was an instance (such...

Miniman

@Shalvenay So you want to play a character who doesn't follow their own ideology, instead following laws laid down by the local government?

Magician

@Shalvenay Most settings don't have "world governance".

BESW

@Miniman He doesn't think he can play someone who adheres to the mortal laws of the land without first knowing those laws, because someone who lived like that would be morally bound to have studied them.

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- I'm expecting them to follow the process of law -- and in a limited government -- that often does not mean following every statute to the letter

in fact, such a character would have no qualms about raising a "this is beyond the powers of government to do" issue

or some other sort of behavior that while workable in the context of due process, would lead to them disregarding some statute or another

in fact, they could even find themselves defending someone who was outright evil because the "good guys" were trying to make a wreck of the process of law in their desperation/vehemence to try to get the bad guy

Miniman

01:46

@Shalvenay Ok, so where do you want to get that process of law from? Your own personal laws? Laws written by a government? The laws of your religion/deity?

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- it's a fusion of what the government writes and personal philosophy

Miniman

@Shalvenay So the reason you're concerned about playing a Lawful character is just that you don't expect settings to have a fully fleshed-out system of laws?

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- not even fully-fleshed-out -- not having statute for X or Y doesn't bug me nearly as much as a government that is granted unlimited powers in some form or another

if the gov't can just lock you up and throw away the key for any reason under the sun or none whatsoever, leaving you with 0 recourse -- that can turn messy quickly

Miniman

@Shalvenay Most D&D games take place in a medieval setting with feudal government, so that's generally going to be the case.

Shalvenay

yeah -- my tendency to think of "paladin as lawyer" is a bit at odds with that -- or more simply: lawful characters apply the law's provided means first to get their ends, while chaotic ones simply take matters into their own hands

BESW

01:52

Most actual governments within the inanely broad spectrum of time and space which D&D ostensibly draws its "history" from did have some kind of justice system more than "do whatever."

Shalvenay

(that'd make a great modern/urban-fantasy char though)

BESW

But this is one of those cases where D&D only plays the "historically accurate" card when it wants to and shrugs everything else off as "but it's a fantasy setting so neener." And usually "historical" actually means "saw it in an unresearched Hollywood film."

Miniman

@Shalvenay In any case, if your character is incompatible with the setting, you have 3 options.

1. Play a different character.

2. Adapt your character to the setting.

3. Adapt the setting to your character.

Shalvenay

yeah. I'm actually wondering if a more divinely focused paladin would be better suited for me

Miniman

(All 3 are possibilities here.)

@Shalvenay That was my first thought as a way to have a system of law to follow.

Shalvenay

01:55

although -- deity selection will be mildly interesting

because I was thinking about making the char in question half-orc, half-something-nonhuman

Miniman

@Shalvenay Well, ideally you'd want the literal God of Law, right?

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- perhaps :)

BESW

Perhaps the best example of the inanity of D&D's "Lawful" alignment is that there's a universal Force of Law which hasn't actually laid down any rules for people to follow.

Shalvenay

@BESW :P yes. you'd think that some enterprising paladin would have started pondering the notion of constitutional government by now :P

BESW

At best, Law's universal rules are discovered through the enforcement of its Inevitables.

Miniman

01:57

@BESW There's an argument that the modrons are too busy running the universe to care about the behaviour of individual chaotic elements.

BESW

@Miniman I'd buy that, if Inevitables didn't exist.

Inevitables are constructs that get selectly tailor-made to punish individual mortals for violating the un-explained Rules of the Abstract Concept Law.

Adeptus

I just had an interesting idea... a Paladin of Science! "Wizard, stop throwing fireballs! You're breaking the Laws of Thermodynamics!"

Miniman

@BESW Hmmm. Maybe it's that it doesn't occur to creatures for whom the laws of the universe are encoded into their very being that anyone could not know the laws.

Shalvenay

@Adeptus -- LOLOLOL

Miniman

So they enforce them, but they don't bother advertising them.

Adeptus

01:59

"And no Levitate, either!"

Shalvenay

@Adeptus -- actually, I figured out what fireball probably actually does -- it ignites the nitrogen in air

Miniman

Because from their POV everyone just knows them.

BESW

@Miniman Interesting concept, though we're really reaching to back-justify a poor setting design at this point.

Let's see.

> Kolyaruts mete out punishment to those who break bargains and oaths.
Maruts confront those who would try to deny the grave itself.
Zelekhuts are charged with hunting down those who would deny justice—especially those who flee to escape punishment.

Miniman

@BESW Par for the course, sadly.

Shalvenay

(air will burn if you get it hot enough -- its where those annoying NOx molecules that come wafting out of your mower's exhaust come from)

Miniman

02:01

@BESW Only the marut is problematic - the other 2 are enforcing laws the creatures made themselves.

BESW

That seems... oddly random.

> Each type of inevitable is designed to find and punish a particular kind of transgression, hunting down a person or group that has violated a fundamental principle. [emphasis mine]

Don't break promises, don't cheat death, and don't run.

Miniman

@BESW Yeesh. I'll let the kolyarut pass, because I can see how an oath could be considered fundamental. The zelekhut is just plain bizarre under that definition, though.

Shalvenay

the other thing that irks me about alignment is inherently evil creatures, especially humanoids or pseduohumanoids such as goblins and such (albeit not most forms of undead, although fully sentient undead such as vampires are something that I don't see as inherently evil either)

BESW

@Miniman The marut gets problematic really fast too.

> Any who use unnatural means to extend their life span could be targeted by a marut. Those who take extraordinary measures to cheat death in some other way might be labeled transgressors as well. Those who use magic to reverse death aren’t worthy of a marut’s attention unless they do so repeatedly or on a massive scale.

Shalvenay

smacks zelekhuts around with statutes of limitations, spoliation inferences, and other such inattentive-prosecutor-eaters

BESW

02:05

Apparently Law considers all mortals to have morally-binding DNR orders.

....now I wanna run a campaign about a malfunctioning marut that punishes people for learning CPR.

Shalvenay

LOL @BESW

who gets opposed by an unseemly alliance of a lawyer-paladin and a freight-dog-vampire

BESW

Coming this fall on ABC.

Shalvenay

(actually, regulatory-regime chars like said freight-dog-vampire would work well as LG too for me)

(with "freight dog" being a slang term for a cargo airplane pilot)

Miniman

@Shalvenay You've got a problem there, though. There's a universal law that vampires are Evil, so by being Good, you're also being Chaotic :P

BESW

@Miniman Take 4d6 paradox damage each evening?

...actually, that might be a decent way to think about the alignments. Hrm.

Shalvenay

02:12

@Miniman -- it's a total paradox, because the character's behavior is quite strictly Lawful -- it has to be as Chaotics don't last too long on a flight deck

BESW

White Wolf's "consensual reality" concept writ large between multiplanar factions warring to control the cosmos by getting the majority of sapient life to assume their version of reality is true.

Miniman

@Shalvenay Pretty sure "following the rules so I don't die" is allowable behaviour for a Chaotic character.

Not least because a chaotic character should sometimes obey rules and sometimes not.

BESW

(In the World of Darkness, magic is hard to do because "everyone knows" it's impossible. The collective certainty of humanity that magic doesn't exist fights the mage every time he tries to do something that humanity knows is impossible.)

Miniman

Always disobeying the rules would be a Lawful character following their own personal "disobey laws" law.

BESW

@Miniman This is one of my problems with the alignment grid: it encourages defining one's philosophy in terms of what one's philosophy isn't.

Miniman

02:15

(Not actually serious, just more "alignment is stupid"-ness.)

Shalvenay

@Miniman -- see Member Robert Sumwalt's many presentations on pilot professionalism, coupled with the fact that you don't know when Death is watching...and he is a fickle observer.

BESW

Being chaotic shouldn't mean "not following Laws" unless the point of alignment is an ideological war between opposed factions rather than a codification of individual choices.

Miniman

I keep coming back to the "alignment is solely a determinant of what afterlife you get" argument.

BESW

If alignment rises from the war, rather than war rising from alignment, suddenly things make a lot more sense.

Magician

@BESW You're coming close to my cosmic horror take on D&D.

Maruts make sense in it, btw.

BESW

02:23

@Magician Thinking too hard about the implications of D&D worldbuilding on this level leads to horror kind of inevitably, I think.

Shalvenay

ntsb.gov/news/speeches/RSumwalt/Documents/Sumwalt_140905.pdf for @Miniman -- in particular, note what he has to say about "normalization of deviance"

also @Miniman: ntsb.gov/news/speeches/RSumwalt/Documents/…

doppelgreener

@Ben FYI we have a no expletives policy in chat

no harm done this time

Ben

02:40

@doppelgreener ahh ok. Shall remember that for future :)

doppelgreener

02:54

@BESW That sounds cool. :P

... hmmmm

I have a plot idea.

BESW

Oh, noes.

doppelgreener

Yeeesssss.

BESW

Do keep in mind that maruts in modern-day settings are gonna bring up controversial themes which not everyone may be prepared to deal with.

doppelgreener

Hm.

I could spoil the plot idea to you and see what you think in terms of controversy.

If you play in it anyway, you will be conspiring harder than anyone else against your character. c(:

BESW

Sure.

doppelgreener

03:01

Oh wait, no, this might take the form of a we-know-what's-happening mystery.

(player-wise)

BESW

Oho.

doppelgreener

A creature playing the role that Maruts play decides to start targeting surgeons, nurses, and so on. It is a murder investigation, with the challenge be to find out what the creature is, what its pattern is, and to catch it and stop it.

Shalvenay

yeah, there's all sorts of directions you could go with that :D mixing up MOs could make for some very interesting things ... play on the Beech Bonanza's reputation as a "doctor-killer", for instance?

doppelgreener

That makes sense.

Shalvenay

which could explain the cargo-plane-flying-vampire's involvement -- perhaps he was witness to one of those initially-thought-to-be-accidents?

doppelgreener

03:08

the what?

I'd have to gauge what exactly happens, since I want the Marut-thing to be scary, but I don't want the incidents themselves to necessarily be horrifying.

Like, no horrific gory deaths out of Supernatural.

Shalvenay

the idea is that the Marut kills a surgeon by causing the small plane he's flying to crash

doppelgreener

sure, I get that.

Shalvenay

and the cargo-plane-flying vampire is flying through the area, busy hauling a bunch o' boxes for UPS, when he overhears the emergency call on 121.5 and sees the crash down below him

doppelgreener

Where's the cargo-plane-flying vampire come into it though?

I don't know if that's something you're making up as an example, or what, and why

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener -- read up :)

doppelgreener

03:11

@Shalvenay I did, I have read your things

Shalvenay

and then the vampire becomes part of the ensuing investigation as a witness

(heck, it could be a crash-on-takeoff and the UPS plane was the next one in line)

doppelgreener

But why a vampire?

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener -- it's a char concept I've wanted to play for a long time

doppelgreener

This is something I'll be running inside our personal Atomic Robo games

Shalvenay

so the vampire part's just my personal spin on the cargo-plane-pilot char

doppelgreener

03:16

That said though, another supernatural creature learning about this could be why Amaterasu finds out about it and gets involved: it travels through the supernatural grapevine, then makes its way into the mortal black-ops grapevine, then ends up in Amaterasu's lap. Local law enforcement is relieved of the case.

Shalvenay

of course, the NTSB or equivalent body being involved would also be an issue -- I suppose it depends on if the Marut was acting as a subtle saboteur, or doing something more obviously supernatural to bring the plane down

BESW

@doppelgreener Good way to involve an old NPC.

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh yeah!

I'll wait until we have such an NPC.

well, we do have NPCs, but do we have a good one for the role of the person who gets it to Amaterasu? if not, I can wait until a few sessions after we do.

BESW

Is there an NPC the party liked? That's all you need.

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay Hopefully the NTSB will be helpful! Assuming the players don't ruin that chance.

@BESW Not sure yet

Oh! There was the doctor from the Black Raven session!

Shalvenay

03:21

@doppelgreener -- yeah, the NTSB could be very helpful in figuring out the facts of what happened to the poor doctor

if you don't mind the folks here being a bit spoiled -- I actually have a means of sabotage in mind for the Marut to apply...

doppelgreener

hm.

It won't be a spoiler because the players themselves will come up with the reason - but I'd like to hear what you have in mind, because I'll keep it as one of my back-up possibilities.

Shalvenay

making it so the elevator cable breaks shortly after takeoff

doppelgreener

In case events wind up putting in my lap the need to construct what happened based on what the players have already determined / made up is the case.

Shalvenay

a la the Air Moorea Twin Otter crash

doppelgreener

That controls the rudders (or whatever they're called) on the main/large wings right?

Shalvenay

03:26

no, the flippers on the horizontal tail :P

you're thinking of ailerons

although snapping the aileron or rudder cables shortly after takeoff would be nearly as catastrophic

another insidious one is reversing pitch trim

doppelgreener

So the Marut snaps a component involved in steering and keeping the aircraft afloat. Sounds good.

Shalvenay

very nearly snaps it -- so that the airloads cause it to fail on the next takeoff

breaking the elevator cables too soon is actually less problematic

BESW

Now we're getting into good old fashioned WWII gremlins.

Shalvenay

an Embraer RJ lost its elevator controls during a takeoff roll at JFK...pilot flying stepped on the brakes and popped the spoilers, and the plane came to a near halt on the runway, then taxied back to the gate. :P

(in this case, it was a faulty gust lock design that caused gust loads to stretch the elevator cables to the point of yielding)

doppelgreener

@BESW Lovely.

@Shalvenay None of the precise details matter much to me - I know barely anything about aircraft and don't care to learn. I'll leave it as "something snaps, plane falls out of the air".

Shalvenay

03:30

aaah

doppelgreener

I doubt any of my players would know either, and if they do then they can add detail as they feel comfortable.

BESW

Last session we explained something as being caused by "a convergence of electromagnetic fields, crystalline energies, and leylines."

Shalvenay

heheh

doppelgreener

@BESW of course. those leylines do all kinds of things.

BESW

And then proceeded to fix it by having a Jedi meditate on crystal vibrations.

doppelgreener

03:32

nobody should mix them with crystalline energies!

BESW

Well, that's what you get for holding fanatic church meetings near a golf course with crystal-infused granite finials.

(The church meetings created negative belief energies that pushed the local leyline away onto the golf course.)

(It was easier to fiddle with the crystal vibrations than to re-align the leyline, though, especially as timing was important.)

Session idea: the PCs are assigned to cleanup duty following another Amaterasu team's mission.

doppelgreener

Haha!

That sounds fantastic.

BESW

13:13

((don't mention RAW/RAI, don't mention RAW/RAI, don't mention RAW/RAI))

lisardggY

Heh.

I'm a firm believer in Death of the RAW.

BESW

I'm fond of the stories I've heard about the White Wolf guys saying "Yeah, don't worry, we were totally high when we wrote that."

Miniman

@BESW In reference to?

BESW

@Miniman Main chat and the significance of authorial intent.

Miniman

@BESW Ah, right.

My reaction is "don't mention Tolkien, don't mention Tolkien", but yeah.

BESW

13:20

Oh, man. Tolkien is a bottomless hole of authorial intent.

(Seriously, posthumously publishing partially-completed works? That's a nightmare for debates over intent and canon.)

BESW

13:44

I'm also kinda tempted to mention those '90s "Shoot Barney the Dinosaur" online games, as an extreme example of work derived as a reaction to the franchise.

Both creator and consumer of such works have to have some understanding of the reference material and some emotional connection to it, or they wouldn't exist.

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Not a bar, but plays one on TV