Out of alignment
Jan. 23rd, 2026 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseThere are D&D characters around who are inclined to solve most problems by killing someone. That type of character is known in gamer circles as a "murderhobo", and it's a mercilessly accurate description. While I have no problem with the term "murderhobo", I am more inclined to pigeonhole them in my own mind as "Clint Eastwood characters". Clint Eastwood was notorious for playing jerks in films who thought they were the hero; I was once induced to sit through The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which I did not enjoy, and my reaction at the end was "he's supposed to be the good one?!" I was told that, actually, pretty much all of Eastwood's protagonists were like that. He was a good actor. I just didn't like watching him.
The advantage that "Clint Eastwood character" has over "murderhobo" is that it's a little bit more specific. These D&D characters, generally speaking, have a good alignment. They don't kill simply for the sake of it (that's what evil characters do). They kill because they think they've got a good reason. If you're the hero, you obviously get to kill the villain... don't you?
D&D is a great game, but unfortunately it's rather easy to give it problematic ethics. (Of course, the game doesn't actually force you to do that. While it is quite black and white on the surface, there's enough wiggle room to allow you to play a much more nuanced and properly thought out ethical system.) So, for example, most of the races tend to certain alignments. I have no problem with undead being invariably evil; anyone who deliberately creates undead is going to be a pretty unpleasant character to start with, and so they're not going to make non-evil undead (although, having said that, the main plot driver in the book I'm currently writing is a vampire who inexplicably turned out not to be evil). I have rather more of a problem with "everyone from this [non-undead] race is evil", or indeed "good", for that matter. It seems to negate personal choice (and, again, undead don't tend to have that). Granted, if you look carefully, you can often find exceptions; drow (a subterranean race of elves) are normally considered evil, but then you find that there are some good ones who tend to escape to the surface to be safe from their evil kindred, and they usually worship a Chaotic Good goddess called Eilistraee. Gnomes are normally good, but according to one of the rule books "evil gnomes are as frightening as they are rare". But still, it's a little bit dispiriting to go through the Monster Manual and keep finding "Alignment: always [X]", whatever X may happen to be.
And then, to return to our Clint Eastwood characters, there's a big question mark over what it actually means to be "good" in this game. Generally speaking, evil characters are the most straightforward: they'll attack anyone they can for the sheer hell of it (possibly literally). That includes one another. Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil cannot stand each other, whereas Lawful Good and Chaotic Good can usually work pretty well together. The devils of the Nine Hells of Baator and the demons of the Infinite Layers of the Abyss are constantly at war. The only way those two types will work together is if it's for mutual advantage (my Chaotic Evil archlich has a powerful Lawful Evil vampire as second-in-command, which does work well for both of them, though they don't appear to like each other very much). Neutral characters will generally side with good characters when the chips are down, unless the evil ones can give them a good incentive not to do so, because neutral characters are more concerned about just getting on with their lives to best advantage, and they know the good characters won't randomly attack them. One of the major elements in my current story is both sides trying to pull in the neutrals as far as possible, which leads to some interesting times in the moral middle, as it were.
But good characters? In D&D, that's more complicated, and the way I see it, the bottom line is "do you kill evil characters just because they are evil, or do you not kill them unless they have actually done or are about to do something evil, and if so, how evil do their actions or intended actions have to be before you make the decision to kill them?" My personal opinion on this is that if you kill anyone just because they have an evil alignment, you're actually no better than they are; and this, obviously, has real-life ramifications. It's very easy to decide that you're the good guys and the other lot are the bad guys, so therefore anything goes; and it never even occurs to you that they've come to the equally valid conclusion that they're the good guys and you're the bad guys, so, again, anything goes.
Seriously. No, it doesn't.
In my story, the archlich and the vampire have taken over an abandoned tower in the middle of a wood; as the story goes on, the protagonists find out more and more about this tower in several different ways, and quite late on in the story they discover it has a lot more basement than anyone realised. And this basement is full of drow (as mentioned above) and duergar (who more or less are to dwarves what drow are to elves), who are all either creating or recording spells, forging armour and weapons, or doing military training. It seems very clear that the archlich is planning an attack against the nearby city. So some bright spark says "we could bore a shaft through from the river and flood out the basement levels, end of problem."
This is where your classic Clint Eastwood "good" D&D character goes "yay, perfect!". Mine are not cast in that mould. My characters go "ehhh... we may possibly have to do that as a last resort, but let's see if we can avoid killing well over a hundred people who haven't actually hurt anyone yet, though they're probably planning to". And then someone else points out that there is probably going to be another exit at some distance from the tower, because these folks aren't stupid. There is great relief all round. The exit is duly located, and only when the protagonists are satisfied that it does indeed exist do they go "right, yes, this is good, we'll flood them out, that'll get them out of the tower; then we'll shepherd them back to the entrance to the Underdark [the subterranean level whence they came], and when they're all home again we'll block it off". They will kill the archlich, but even for the vampire they have a plan that doesn't involve killing him. I was really delighted when I came up with that one. He's an arrogant blighter, like most vampires, but he's also a very interesting character.
As a GM, I absolutely will take advantage of all the flexibility I'm allowed (which is a great deal). I will mentally strike through that word "always" every time I see it following the word "alignment". At the moment I'm replacing it with "mostly", for cultural reasons: if orcs, as a culture, worship an evil god called Gruumsh, then evil traits will be valued in orc culture and so most orcs will tend to be evil, but not all of them. Some of them will rebel. Similarly, it's not hard to imagine a criminal dwarf who is outcast from their community (dwarves worship the Lawful Good god Moradin, and tend towards that alignment). People - well, living people, anyway - get the option to think for themselves. I'm thinking of having one of the goblins gradually change her alignment as she realises that it's better to work for someone who both cares and pays than to work for someone who - as she succinctly describes the vampire - doesn't care but does pay.
It's not all black and white. You don't always need to kill the villain. And if you think you do, maybe you should take a long hard look at whether perhaps you are the villain.
The advantage that "Clint Eastwood character" has over "murderhobo" is that it's a little bit more specific. These D&D characters, generally speaking, have a good alignment. They don't kill simply for the sake of it (that's what evil characters do). They kill because they think they've got a good reason. If you're the hero, you obviously get to kill the villain... don't you?
D&D is a great game, but unfortunately it's rather easy to give it problematic ethics. (Of course, the game doesn't actually force you to do that. While it is quite black and white on the surface, there's enough wiggle room to allow you to play a much more nuanced and properly thought out ethical system.) So, for example, most of the races tend to certain alignments. I have no problem with undead being invariably evil; anyone who deliberately creates undead is going to be a pretty unpleasant character to start with, and so they're not going to make non-evil undead (although, having said that, the main plot driver in the book I'm currently writing is a vampire who inexplicably turned out not to be evil). I have rather more of a problem with "everyone from this [non-undead] race is evil", or indeed "good", for that matter. It seems to negate personal choice (and, again, undead don't tend to have that). Granted, if you look carefully, you can often find exceptions; drow (a subterranean race of elves) are normally considered evil, but then you find that there are some good ones who tend to escape to the surface to be safe from their evil kindred, and they usually worship a Chaotic Good goddess called Eilistraee. Gnomes are normally good, but according to one of the rule books "evil gnomes are as frightening as they are rare". But still, it's a little bit dispiriting to go through the Monster Manual and keep finding "Alignment: always [X]", whatever X may happen to be.
And then, to return to our Clint Eastwood characters, there's a big question mark over what it actually means to be "good" in this game. Generally speaking, evil characters are the most straightforward: they'll attack anyone they can for the sheer hell of it (possibly literally). That includes one another. Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil cannot stand each other, whereas Lawful Good and Chaotic Good can usually work pretty well together. The devils of the Nine Hells of Baator and the demons of the Infinite Layers of the Abyss are constantly at war. The only way those two types will work together is if it's for mutual advantage (my Chaotic Evil archlich has a powerful Lawful Evil vampire as second-in-command, which does work well for both of them, though they don't appear to like each other very much). Neutral characters will generally side with good characters when the chips are down, unless the evil ones can give them a good incentive not to do so, because neutral characters are more concerned about just getting on with their lives to best advantage, and they know the good characters won't randomly attack them. One of the major elements in my current story is both sides trying to pull in the neutrals as far as possible, which leads to some interesting times in the moral middle, as it were.
But good characters? In D&D, that's more complicated, and the way I see it, the bottom line is "do you kill evil characters just because they are evil, or do you not kill them unless they have actually done or are about to do something evil, and if so, how evil do their actions or intended actions have to be before you make the decision to kill them?" My personal opinion on this is that if you kill anyone just because they have an evil alignment, you're actually no better than they are; and this, obviously, has real-life ramifications. It's very easy to decide that you're the good guys and the other lot are the bad guys, so therefore anything goes; and it never even occurs to you that they've come to the equally valid conclusion that they're the good guys and you're the bad guys, so, again, anything goes.
Seriously. No, it doesn't.
In my story, the archlich and the vampire have taken over an abandoned tower in the middle of a wood; as the story goes on, the protagonists find out more and more about this tower in several different ways, and quite late on in the story they discover it has a lot more basement than anyone realised. And this basement is full of drow (as mentioned above) and duergar (who more or less are to dwarves what drow are to elves), who are all either creating or recording spells, forging armour and weapons, or doing military training. It seems very clear that the archlich is planning an attack against the nearby city. So some bright spark says "we could bore a shaft through from the river and flood out the basement levels, end of problem."
This is where your classic Clint Eastwood "good" D&D character goes "yay, perfect!". Mine are not cast in that mould. My characters go "ehhh... we may possibly have to do that as a last resort, but let's see if we can avoid killing well over a hundred people who haven't actually hurt anyone yet, though they're probably planning to". And then someone else points out that there is probably going to be another exit at some distance from the tower, because these folks aren't stupid. There is great relief all round. The exit is duly located, and only when the protagonists are satisfied that it does indeed exist do they go "right, yes, this is good, we'll flood them out, that'll get them out of the tower; then we'll shepherd them back to the entrance to the Underdark [the subterranean level whence they came], and when they're all home again we'll block it off". They will kill the archlich, but even for the vampire they have a plan that doesn't involve killing him. I was really delighted when I came up with that one. He's an arrogant blighter, like most vampires, but he's also a very interesting character.
As a GM, I absolutely will take advantage of all the flexibility I'm allowed (which is a great deal). I will mentally strike through that word "always" every time I see it following the word "alignment". At the moment I'm replacing it with "mostly", for cultural reasons: if orcs, as a culture, worship an evil god called Gruumsh, then evil traits will be valued in orc culture and so most orcs will tend to be evil, but not all of them. Some of them will rebel. Similarly, it's not hard to imagine a criminal dwarf who is outcast from their community (dwarves worship the Lawful Good god Moradin, and tend towards that alignment). People - well, living people, anyway - get the option to think for themselves. I'm thinking of having one of the goblins gradually change her alignment as she realises that it's better to work for someone who both cares and pays than to work for someone who - as she succinctly describes the vampire - doesn't care but does pay.
It's not all black and white. You don't always need to kill the villain. And if you think you do, maybe you should take a long hard look at whether perhaps you are the villain.
