Am I just getting old?

[coffee]

I ran OD&D for the first time today, as I've described in the Campfire section.

The thing that surprised me was that almost every player wanted to be Chaotic!

That is, they did until I gave them my alignment spiel:

"It's about which side you're on: Law is the good guys, Chaos is the bad guys, and Neutral are the selfish SOBs who can't commit!"

After that, the vast majority of the party was neutral.


What I'm wondering is this: When did it become unfashionable to be the good guy? When I started playing, in the early 80s, it was pretty much assumed you'd play a good alignment, whether law or chaos. A few played Chaotic Neutral, and very few actually set down Evil as a component. And we always looked askance at them, anyway; they were just like that.

But today, it seems that being the "good guy" is passe.

And I don't understand this.

For me, wargames simulate battles, and role playing games simulate stories. And I like the stories about the good guys, thank you very much. You want to be the bad guy? Set up your screen and DM, then!

Anyway, that's my (admittedly ranty) 2 coppers.

[Deleted]

I'll throw a copper into the mix. This might take a bit, so just follow me here.

IMO, one reason is the proliferation of available media (ie, MMOG's) that eschews the alignment system--just go wade on in & kill things. That's it. From rats to peasants, it's all about the XP. For (most) younger participants in our hobby, they were simply raised on this concept. When that is transferred to a table-top game, alignment becomes abject, & not really necessary anymore. One thing that turned me off to the "newer" games (& turned me back on to older RPG's) was the people I was forced to game with. Now, they aren't bad people at all, just younger, & with a different mindset than myself & my older friends. When your adventuring with a party of all chaotics & they still are happy to help the serf recover his flock of sheep stolen by goblins for nothing more than a pat on the back & a few silvers, that just seems wrong. That's not playing your alignment well. That's because they really don't know what alignment means. Of course, different campaigns & DM's have different rules as well. And it would be unfair of me to only include only younger gamers (I'm probably one of the youngest on this forum [just a couple months shy of 30]); some older gamers do this, too. It could be that alignment isn't a key part of the table-top experience anymore (if it really ever was to a sizeable majority), but I think it goes a little deeper that that.

I won't ever get into socio/political discussions here on this board (it's just bad form, IMO), but I need to touch on a couple of things in a very broad sense to make what I'm getting at clear enough.

When I was little, I would love to watch TV with my dad. Programs running the gambit from "The Lone Ranger" & "Gunsmoke" to "The A-Team & "The Smurfs" all had one thing in common: a clear distinction between who the "good guys" were & the "bad guys" were. My friends & I would go outside & play "Cops & Robbers"or whatever, knowing that the cops were the good guys & the robbers were the bad guys. It's that simple. We don't really have that in society anymore today. It's now accepted, even fashionable, to be "The Bad Guy" nowadays. It's glamorous, dangerous, thrilling, & just seems more fun. To be honest, the missus & I don't even see kids outside playing anymore, period.

IMO, we also live in a world of fence-sitters. When forced to take a side, people are too hesitant to do so, & would prefer to remain "non-committed". At work, heck, even when not at work, I'm always the guy who has to make the "command decision", even when it comes down to where we're all going out for lunch-- people are afraid to step on the toes of others. I don't consider myself a natural leader; to be honest,I don't even like making the "command decision"--but nobody else will, so I step up to the plate & do it, for good OR for bad. Flip-floping & indecisiveness annoys & disgusts me on a primative level.

So in all, the point I'm trying to make here is this: there is no longer a clear line of distinction between who or what is good or who or what is bad--I personally blame media & "the media" for this. And when people are forced to take a side, most will either (a) "stay neutral" (opportunists & profiteers) or (b) choose the side that has the least chance of toe-stepping--even if it's chaotic, because chaotic is cool.

There's my rant. I owe you more coppers...

[gsvenson]

The last time I DMed, all of the players wanted to be evil. And they just didn't understand when the local constable came after them. I have not wanted to DM since...

[greentongue]

Maybe the "Good Guys Finish Last" saying has been repeated too many times.
Many players want to "Win" and finishing last is not considered winning.

Maybe another reason is that "evil" isn't really "EVIL" in the games. I created a Pulp One-Shot called Fresh Meat with a true EVIL situation. I have not heard anyone complain they couldn't play the "bad guys".

I agree that if people do want to play the bad guys, Everyone in the game world that "knows" they are evil should be opposed to them.

= My page with the Pulp adventure(s)
home.earthlink.net/~djackson24/Delbert5.htm

[makofan]

I think many of us older guys came to the game after having had our minds filled with books. The books usually had a good hero and the good guy winning. So we translated that book experience to the games when they were invented. Younger people don't read as much (too many other distractions) so they come to the game without teh same background, and without our built in assumptions.

[Finarvyn]

There are a couple of issues here, and it starts in part with the "mysterious stranger" archetype in literature. Many find Strider to be much more interesting than Aragorn because we don't know Strider's history, even if they are the same character in Lord of the Rings. People have always been fascinated by the “mysterious stranger” and often want to play them in games, but a party of these characters is very dysfunctional. Robin Hood is clearly a “bad guy” but he’s a bad guy with honor. Han Solo is the same, a self-serving rogue who returns to save the day when he is needed. Spin ahead in literature to Elric, clearly an anti-hero, or more recently Raistlin the dark mage of DragonLance or Drizzt the misunderstood drow. These guys are clearly dark characters who are not totally evil but have that dark side. Powerful and mysterious. Bad but not really.

They are great characters in literature, not quite as fun as RPG characters since they may not fit the party goals. The whole “I can be bad but maybe you can save me” mentality might be fun to play (for that one guy -- the rest of the group may hate it), but an entire party of these characters would be excruciating to a DM like nails on a chalkboard. That’s part of what annoys me about White Wolf’s whole World of Darkness setting where everyone plays the part of a historically nasty monster, but we’re all misunderstood and really not bad guys at all.

More recently (at least in my life) my son has encountered Warhammer where he immediately wanted to play the Dark Elves. His best friend wants to be the army of Chaos. Its somehow neat to be the bad boys with the great toys and blood spraying everywhere, even if in real life they aren’t apt to fight with other kids and certainly have always seemed squeamish around the mention of blood in the real world. Games like Warhammer are designed so that half of the participants are bad guys and the GW folks work very hard to make these armies as neat as possible. Now my son is fixated on the concept of playing an Assassin in one of my OD&D or C&C games. When I ask him what an Assassin does I get a vague notion that they’re great slayers and combatants, not the “sneak up and stab them in the back” sort at all.

Evil characters are powergamers. Evil characters are munchkins. Fun adventures occur when the Fellowship is clearly overmatched against Sauron, but now the kids want to play Sauron so that they can smite the weaker goodie two-shoes Fellowship. Clearly the days of playing the Paladin to smite evil-doers have faded. Why play VanHelsing when you can be the vampire instead (and this time the vampire can win!).

I want to be the knight fighting the dragon. I want to be the vampire slayer. I want to be scared of the Nazgul but somehow go toe-to-toe with the guy. I want to slay the evil wizard. To me, that’s the point of gaming – to do heroic stuff that I can’t do in my day job.

Maybe I’m getting old, too.

[greentongue]

Yes, wanting to be the BadA$$ and able to beat your opponents seems to equate to "Evil" in games terms, while still not "being" EVIL.

Maybe there needs to be a rethinking/ new definition of "Evil" to fit the modern usage.

More a "Rule following" / "Rule breaking" slant but not LAWFUL/ CHAOTIC.
=

[Wothbora]

I remember reading an article in Psychology Today, back in the early 80's that (if I remember correctly) said something to the effect that D&D allowed one to play-act (rather than act-out) alternative behaviors. In a game setting choosing the wrong actions is a means of learning the consequences for our actions without having those actions effect us in our normal day-to-day life.

I found this quoted on the net and tend to agree.

From: www.rpgstudies.net/hughes/therapy_is_fantasy.html

On a fundamental level, a gamesmaster must establish a world view that directs the game action and which represents the implicit philosophy or ideals by which the world operates - what Geertz would characterise as the game’s “ethos”.

Fine (op cit:76-77) provides an example of such an ethos from a Dungeons and Dragons game characteristic of what I have described as the first wave of roleplaying. He saw the “ethos” of that particular game as comprising the following themes:

1. The Principle of Unlimited Good. Success is open to all, and one person’s success does not imply the failure of another.
2. The dichotomy of Good and Evil. There is no middle ground.
3. Evil as any action outside the moral boundaries of a given society.
4. The thematic importance of Courage.

Fine, G. A. (1983). Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games As Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

My my 11-year old wanted to play Chaotic, until I explained the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys concept. He has no problem playing Lawful now -- Although I must admit, he still wants to capture a monster and "encourage" them to tell him where the treasure is... Not necessarily a truly Lawful Character, but look at the society our kids are growing up in (not necessarily a "Lawful" society even though we have a ton of laws).

[korgoth]

Some of it may have to do with media and culture... I'm not sure to what extent.

I do think it's proper to mention a comparison of the visual literature on TV. It hasn't all changed, but there have been definite developments. For example, in yesteryear's "Run for Your Life" a guy is diagnosed with a terminal illness... so he decides to go around the world doing all the crazy stuff he always wanted to do, and helps people (and fights evil, of course!) along the way. In today's "Breaking Bad", a guy is diagnosed with a terminal illness... so he decides to cook meth and murder people. Likewise, even the edgy cop shows of yesteryear like "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story" pale in comparison to todays "The Shield", wherein the protagonist is a dirty cop who helps drug gangs, murders people, tortures people, cheats on his wife, etc. And of course you've got "24" in which the main character regularly violates the law, the Constitution and probably every moral principle in the book all for the 'greater good'. I'm not saying that any of these shows are good or bad shows... just that there's a striking difference in content.

I don't have any demographic numbers to back this up, but I would guess that the number of Americans (for example; I don't know about other countries) who believe in "moral absolutes" is steadily declining. When you stop believing in morality, "Good" or "Lawful" and "Evil" or "Chaotic" become little more than party affiliations.

That being said, there's some good fantasy fiction that stars basically amoral heroes. Conan, for example, has a code, but that doesn't make him moral. All you need for a code is pride, which ain't exactly a virtue!

[edsan]

Yes, of course we all getting old. As is everyone else and every living being on the planet. ;D

The real issue is that apparently most of us around the age of 30, while growing up recieved a moral baggage (wether from our educators, tvs shows, reading, etc) that includes a clear notion of distinction between "good" and "evil" behaviour, the concept that individual actions and choices have consequences and the importane of standing up for and acting upon one's belief's (whatever they might be).

This is apparently getting outdated in today's world. Not that surprisingly, considering the world tends to change evermore faster.

I think the way this affects tabletop fantasy gaming, for GMs at least, is that these days you have to be prepared, unless you adress the issue from the beggining and place boundaries on character creation, to take on players which run their characters on a moral compass which has the settings of "Coolness & Uberness" vs. "Lameness" and might not fully realise (or fail to realise *at all*) that their PCs live in a society and like ours that society will strike back at those that constantly fail to abide by its values and norms.

If you have particular assinine players this might include effectively ending the campaign when the whole party gets cracked down by the authorities and the powers that be. Then, hopefuly they will learn and start running more balanced PCs.

If you are unwilling to do this it just means you have to be careful on who you pick as your players. This usualy means restricting the minimum age around the gaming table.

I go for this last option. In the past I've played several (many) times with people of tender ages and quite frankly I was rather put off it.

Now, I'm not an ageist, it's just that quite simply I don't have the time and patience, nor do I think it is my job, to educate younger people about morality, good and evil and the consenquences of antisocial behaviour. If whoever is raising these people failed to transmit these concepts to them it sure as heck is not my job to do it. I run games to be entertained, not to educate others.

[casey777]

coffee said:

What I'm wondering is this: When did it become unfashionable to be the good guy? When I started playing, in the early 80s, it was pretty much assumed you'd play a good alignment, whether law or chaos. A few played Chaotic Neutral, and very few actually set down Evil as a component. And we always looked askance at them, anyway; they were just like that.

But today, it seems that being the "good guy" is passe.

Many decades before any of us here were born. My pick is either John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Goethe's (Faust), 1808, Lord Byron's Manfred (1817) but I'm sure there were predecessors. Drizzt is hardly a truly new concept, nor is Elric. See anti-hero or Byronic hero.

Kids are kids, part of growing up is rebelling and asserting yourself. D&D is and has been part of that process for many of its players. It's also an opended game. If players weren't supposed to be able to play Neutral or Chaos then the rules would have said so.

Personally, white hat and black hat characters are a tad too simple for me these days. I prefer a dose of grey, at least a bit more depth and complications.

Note: that does not mean I don't enforce implications of actions, in fact it means I enforce them all the more. More options with the path less clear and each with consequences.

[kesher]

Note: that does not mean I don't enforce implications of actions, in fact it means I enforce them all the more. More options with the path less clear and each with consequences.

For me, this is the key thing; following through on consequences. Back when I taught high school, I ran games with groups of teenagers for three years in two different schools. We were usually playing either Moldvay Basic or a weird homebrew the kids in one school helped me create, a mash-up of Tunnels & Trolls and the Fighting Fantasy rpg. Most of the time, the kids either played "good" guys, or just weird guys. One time, though, in the last group I GM'd, one kid wanted to play a vampire who worshiped Vecna. Normally I would've said no, simply because it had such a huge pain-in-the-behind potential, but this time I said yes.

None of the other characters knew that he was a vampire, though the players certainly did, so I figured we'd just play it out according to his actions. He ended up turning a horse into a vampiric steed, stealing an idol from another character and summoning up the Wolf God avatar it contained, all at the behest of Vecna. The other characters figured out his deception and ended up killing him along with the avatar in the climactic battle.

My point here is that the kid played the character the way he'd envisioned him and, gleefully almost, let him suffer the consequences of his actions. All the other participants thought it was cool, and he immediately rolled up, I don't quite remember, a dwarf of some sort, definitely NOT evil. From my pov, it's what fantasy gaming, especially ODD, is about--- he came up with a fun character idea and played it to the hilt. When that was done, he came up with something else, completely different, and the game rolled on.

[edsan]

kesher said:

Note: that does not mean I don't enforce implications of actions, in fact it means I enforce them all the more. More options with the path less clear and each with consequences.

For me, this is the key thing; following through on consequences.

What they said.

Sadly, as I have stated sometimes players have to learn about action and consequence the hard way, with a few TPKs on the way.

Now, I know I'm too much of a nice GM sometimes, and I don't like killing off characters just because the player had a stressful day and can't think straight.
So after running CoC for a bit I decided to adapt the Idea and Knowledge derived rolls to every other game I GM. While I try not to overuse them, I do call for them to see if the *characters* pick up a clue the players failed to notice.
They might also be used to see if a character comes up with the idea the player had using out-of-game knowledge. (i.e. would a barbarian recognise a trebuchet when he sees one?).

This gives me the chance to say to a player "Your character has the feeling that plan of action is stupid." instead of just throwing at his face the statement "That idea is stupid!".

[greentongue]

edsan said:

This gives me the chance to say to a player "Your character has the feeling that plan of action is stupid." instead of just throwing at his face the statement "That idea is stupid!".

I don't believe that you should tell a player their plan is stupid.
The most you should do is have them confirm that it is the plan they actually want to do.
Actions have consequences. Impartial application is the correct way.
If they have always been shielded from the results of their actions, time to stop.
IMHO.
=

[edsan]

greentongue said:

edsan said:

This gives me the chance to say to a player "Your character has the feeling that plan of action is stupid." instead of just throwing at his face the statement "That idea is stupid!".

I don't believe that you should tell a player their plan is stupid.
The most you should do is have them confirm that it is the plan they actually want to do.=

I'm sorry, I should have been more specific on my posting.

What I meant to say is, sometimes a player will come up with a silly idea or course of action because *he* lacks some form of knowledge that is pretty standart in the setting or that the character he is running would usualy know. In this case I allow for these rolls. A good example would be attacking a creature that is immune to normal weapons when you don't have any. Just because the players have not memorized the Monster Manual it does not mean their PCs might not know a thing or two about beasties they have never met.

Sometimes players specificaly ask "would we know X or Y?". If it is not stated on their character sheet that they have acess to that info but the nature of character allows for some chance of having it (i.e. a priest might know some legends/rumours about a foreign nation's religion) then its time for a Knowledge roll.

Last but not least,. when players are information-gathering and debate who goes where to ask what to whom (uff!) if they miss the most obvious option on their 50+ NPC contact rooster I gently grant them an Idea roll to see if any character pipes in "Hey! What about Bodacious Bob? He usualy knows about these things."


I just use these rolls to cover I disagree and avoid being a
decree-master. Rather than deciding wether the Paladin in the new, shiny plate-mail recognizes the rust-monster for what it is I let him roll for it. I want players to blame the dice, not me.

[brumbar]

I consider myself to be an older player, having been involved in many campaigns in the last almost 30 years. I have in the past occasionally played evil chracters in AD&D and 3rd, and in other sysytems, and sometimes as a member of an evil party. It's fun to experiment with speels and such that you would never get to try otherwise as a character. This doesn't mean that you let the orcs continue to raid the village. It means you defeat the orcs and either make the village your base with them as your serfs. In other systems with a broader alignment stucture a lawful evil type party has many of the same goals as a good party withone exception - they are generally trying to put themselves into power, where as this should not be a goal of a good party.

In OD&D with only three alignments this is diffrent and it needs to be defined by he DM what his definition of Law and Chaos are: good vs evil, change vs stability, etc.

For Dm's a powerful tool is the xp the characters earn if they don't like an "evil character" rescuing the maiden and not asing for a reward. Award or punish good or bad roll playing and that includes playing your alignment.

[Melan]

Shady characters have been a staple of exactly the kind of fiction old D&D draws from. Jack Vance's Dying Earth - one of Gary's favourites - is chock full of characters who would be classified as chaotic, including those we could call the "protagonist" of the story. Moorcock's Elric, although he fights against chaotic forces, would likely also be chaotic himself - and what's more, a really pitiful personality. Am I correct in assuming that lots of teenage losers wanted to be Elric 'back then'?

The rest were usually either reluctant heroes, who were only heroic because they faced opponents who were far, far worse... inhuman or totally depraved. Conan, Ffahrd and the Mouser fall into this category. None of them are "good" character types, but their attitude would make them great D&D characters. Sure, there were other influences, if not on Gary, then on the wider player base. Tolkien, for example, or you could mention John Carter (but if we go on to Eric John Stark and other pulp characters, he would be much more ambigious).

All in all, since when has this been news?

[edsan]

melan said:

Shady characters have been a staple of exactly the kind of fiction old D&D draws from. [SNIP]
All in all, since when has this been news?

You are right, this is hold hat.

There is a difference however, between playing shady rogues with codes of honour (however warped they might have been, Conan and Elric certainly had them) plus an unforgetable personality and playing chaotic *evil* bastard just for the heck of it.

There is also a difference between wanting to play a shady rogue, or even a CE psycho once in a while for novelty value and being unabale to contemplate playing a "good guy" character because it sounds lame...or whatever.

I think coffe's original post is refering to a possible current day tunnel-vision problem in character choices; he is not claiming that there is anything wrong in *not* playing characters that are whiter than white.

[Toxic Sarcasm Alert --- Please have your grain of salt handy]

I mean, just look at commercial fantasy art these days. If it ain't got spikes, leather, chains, piercings and tribal tatoos it ain't "on". Necromancers are the new heroes of the age and if your PC does not have glowing eyes, paper-white skin or horns sprouting from his head he's a looser.

Chainmail bikinis. Remember those? d**n, they have chain mail & plate *garter belts* these days...rant, rant, etc.

[Now Re-entering Breathable Atmosphere Area]

Ultimately the whole "Yeah...I'm eeeevil...Blood for the blood God!" routine gets stale after a while. The quicker looser teens get over it the better.

[calithena]

There have always been many players, especially younger players, attracted to chaos and evil in D&D. I saw many games in my youth that were the seventies equivalent of Grand Theft Auto in elf-dwarf-magic drag, to be honest. So I don't think there's been a big social change if people still do that - on the contrary, when I play with younger people these days I think more want to be good guys than did back in California in the seventies.

[doc]

I never really liked Elric. He reminded me of the swotty sissy kids we used to beat up in the schoolyard. Moonglun, though. HE was kinda cool.

The point of heroes like Conan, Elric, Grey Mouser, etc. is that what made them the hero of the tale WASN'T that they were the good guy, but rather that they WEREN'T the bad guy.

Keep in mind that Law and Chaos are really less about moral fiber and more about the way a hero approaches life. You can be a cruel, ruthless SOB and yet still believe in honor and discipline. You can be the nicest guy in the world, but have no concept of "individual property" and go about your daily life in a random way. Law= order and tradition. Chaos= randomness and change. Or, if you want to look at it another way, Law= civilization. Chaos= the savage wilderness. Neutrality is right in the middle, borrowing from each if need be, but taking only the parts that they deem useful.

I play a Lawful Evil character in one of my games named Sir Dethek. Despite his alignment, he is the most honest and forthright member of the party. He believes strongly in tradition, honor, and the importance of keeping one's word. He isn't a homicidal killing machine who gets off on slaughter and torture. He HATES that sort of stuff. However, he iS the guy who strongly believes that the powerful should rule the weak and that the weak must either submit or perish. In OD&D terms, he would still be considered Lawful.

Doc

[edsan]

calithena said:

I saw many games in my youth that were the seventies equivalent of Grand Theft Auto in elf-dwarf-magic drag.

GTA OD&D?! What a priceless mental image you just gave me! ;D

Just picture...an elf pimp and dwarf shaven headed gangbanger come out of the woods and assault a passing wagon. While Gringo the dwarf pulls the driver from the seat and kicks his face into mush, Bobbo Malachias (the Halfling gang leader) waltzs in and adresses Slick Elf Steve.

"Yo Bro! Get them foo's jewels'n'sh*t. We ain't got all day ya'know?"

Ok, I'll stop now...

[greentongue]

This was an interesting article.
There really is a difference between the generations and how they play.
RPGs were extensions of "Old Style" play. The fundimentals they are based on are fading from the newer generations.
It also explains the bulking up of Rules in RPG games.

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
=

[redpriest]

Since I've trodden the game boards, only just a couple of years now, I've wondered if the age at which a player was introduced to D&D (or any RPG) affected their style of play. What got me to wondering about this, was that as I read through the forums, it became obvious to me that most of the now "older" players began the hobby back around 1980-ish at about the age of 12-ish. The observation surprised me a bit, because although I started in 1980, I was already in college and already a year beyond the legal drinking age (18 back in the olden days). I'd been playing wargames for about a decade by then, but it was in 1980 that I fell in with the D&D gamer crowd in college. I guess we were Gary's initial target group, only we picked it up a little later. Hey, we do things a little slower in the south. ;D

Now, as we began play, our alignments were fairly overwhelming biased toward chaotic, and although good wasn't uncommon, the prevailing alignments were neutral and evil. Now, we didn't choose evil because we wanted to go around playing screw ya buddy, or because we thought it would be kewl running around playing bad guys. No, we chose chaotic, neutral and evil, because we viewed those alignments as being the most flexible and therefore giving the characters a better advantage to survive and prosper. So, we managed to have fully cooperative parties, comprised primarily of chaotic, neutral and evil characters, and except for the occasional muggings (usually non-lethal, but not always) effected by party thieves, our characters usually managed to remain below the radar of local officials. We played evil, we didn't play stupid. Well, we managed not to play overly stupid. Every D&D player at one time or another does stupid things, albeit usually unintentionally.

It wasn't until the mid to late 80s that I began running into DMs that *forbade* evil characters in their campaigns. The usual reason being that evil characters are just too disruptive. Well, I tried to point out that characters can't be disruptive, but players can be, but that usually fell upon deaf ears.

I think when you have a bunch of young players running around playing EEEVIL characters, they have a different view of what that means. What did it mean to a bunch of college-aged, pre-Wow kids? Freedom. Freedom to cut corners and cheat when it's advantageous to do so, without risking level loss. Nothing in the alignments require a character to perform evil acts which would unduly attract the attention of local law enforement. Of course, on occasion it did, but heck, sometimes even lawful and good players run afoul of the Law.

The last real face-to-face D&D game in which I was fortunate to play was OD&D in B2. That was back in 2005 and guess what? All the characters were chaotic and all players over 25 (and half over40). Furthermore, no one got in trouble at the keep. It's easy to be chaotic in B2, most everything in the caves deserves to die. Yeah, and who knows what goods you recovered, or "didn't", from the caves.

[lordtwang]

I tried to get my players to play evil characters and they wouldn't do it. They do sometimes make immoral ones, though.

I think a lot of this is a frustration with the old world views that younger people feel no connection to. Also, the media they get. And also, there's a lot of stress and uncertainty in a teenager's life. It's healthy for them to unleash a bit of mayhem on a fantasy world and vent a bit.

[Stonegiant]

They did a study (now about ten years ago) that asked children their favorite Star Wars character, 8 out of 10 children chose Darth Vader. The theory is that Vader's appeal to children is partly there need for power, Vader represented unbridled power. Why? Because children have no control over their own lives in many ways (We adults tell them when to go to bed, brush their teeth, take a bath, eat dinner, etc. as we should as their parents. We even tell them what ideas are good and which aren't and we are all guilty of the I am older therefore I know better) so as part of their natural development and primal thinking they are naturally drawn to Darth Vader, it is through the parent that one hopes that they are taught that Luke is just as powerful as Vader but out of caring and responsibility he uses that power sparingly and also for the benefit of others and that Vader's unlimited Power was his downfall. They also went on to explain part of the appeal of Pokemon and Dinosaurs amongst children was the fact that they could learn and know more about this subject than their parents and thus they were granted a pseudo power in their lives. This is all in preparation for their eventual growing up and living on their own and the study was part of a large study about how the brain starts preparing for this eventuality allot earlier than was suspected.

What I am getting at is the appeal of evil and chaotic characters may be part of this deeper quest.

my 2cps.

[castiglione]

Dunno - when I was a kid, my favorite Star Wars character was Han Solo. 'Cause he got the babe and shot first! And he was one of the good guys! He wasn't a boy scout, of course, but he wasn't a bad guy.

Frankly, I don't see the appeal of playing someone evil. Where's the appeal in sociopathy? I think I'd only feel comfortable playing someone evil if the game were "competitive" in that there would be good and evil characters running around pursuing their own agendas.

[korgoth]

stonegiant said:

They did a study (now about ten years ago) that asked children their favorite Star Wars character, 8 out of 10 children chose Darth Vader. The theory is that Vader's appeal to children is partly there need for power, Vader represented unbridled power. Why? Because children have no control over their own lives in many ways (We adults tell them when to go to bed, brush their teeth, take a bath, eat dinner, etc. as we should as their parents. We even tell them what ideas are good and which aren't and we are all guilty of the I am older therefore I know better) so as part of their natural development and primal thinking they are naturally drawn to Darth Vader, it is through the parent that one hopes that they are taught that Luke is just as powerful as Vader but out of caring and responsibility he uses that power sparingly and also for the benefit of others and that Vader's unlimited Power was his downfall. They also went on to explain part of the appeal of Pokemon and Dinosaurs amongst children was the fact that they could learn and know more about this subject than their parents and thus they were granted a pseudo power in their lives. This is all in preparation for their eventual growing up and living on their own and the study was part of a large study about how the brain starts preparing for this eventuality allot earlier than was suspected.

What I am getting at is the appeal of evil and chaotic characters may be part of this deeper quest.

my 2cps.

Interesting.

I always liked Luke as a kid. Way better than Han, and Darth Vader didn't really have an appeal for me.

And I still like dinosaurs! Triceratops for life, dog. [throws a three-pronged gang sign]

[Stonegiant]

Well like anything about human behavior its never a 100%

[busman]

I would definitely classify Han as Chaotic or at the very best Neutral.

It's curious to me that Law is seen as good and Chaos as evil. Personally, I think if that were what they were meant to be, they would be called Good and Evil. I don't think Gary was a guy to choose words lightly.

I would consider Conan, Robin Hood both to be Chaotic, Chaotic Good, most probably, but certainly Chaotic.

As for evolving attitudes, I don't necessarily think of it as being a terrible thing. We used to play Cowboys and Indians as kids as well, and the Indians were clearly the bad guys back then. But, as more than just an ignorant kid now, I don't know if we didn't have it completely the opposite.

I guess I'm not sure I see the problem with "kids these days", maybe I'm not old enough yet.

[korgoth]

busman said:

I would definitely classify Han as Chaotic or at the very best Neutral.

It's curious to me that Law is seen as good and Chaos as evil. Personally, I think if that were what they were meant to be, they would be called Good and Evil. I don't think Gary was a guy to choose words lightly.

I would consider Conan, Robin Hood both to be Chaotic, Chaotic Good, most probably, but certainly Chaotic.

There are different ways to play it, I suppose. You could play Law = good, Chaos = evil. You could play Law = order which is usually good, unless immoderate (then you've got a totalitarian outfit) and Chaos = anarchy which is usually bad (unless you're a bad@ss), and if taken to an extreme also devolves into some kind of tyranny. Or you could play them as purely methodological, as just being different approaches to doing evil or good (the AD&D approach).

If I end up running a Lyonesse 1000 AD game, Law will be the alignment of goodness, Judeo-Christendom, mom and apple pie. Chaos will be the alignment of people who are against those things. When I run Xulrua, my S&S sci-fantasy world, alignment won't even matter (if you write it on your sheet, it's just a methodological choice).


I think Han Solo starts out Chaotic or Neutral, but he becomes a convert to Lawfulness in the 1st movie (because he shows up and does his duty at the end). I always liked goody-two-shoes Luke Skywalker as a kid. I was a nerd among nerds.