Lots of people (and a bunch of fiction obviously) play Good aligned

>>45268351
>Isn't it just being a fanatic / insane person
We call it having strong moral fibre. And yes, it's admirable.

In the eyes of evil it would be fanaticism or insanity, but resisting the temptation to bend a few rules or take the easy way out is seen as quite heroic to most people.

>>45268351

As opposed to abandoning your convictions the moment things get hard and join the winning team, yeah it is.

It can be misguided, but by itself is definetely an admirable trait.

>>45268565
Found Ted Cruz.

Strong convictions are what leads the world to be a terrible place.

Holding to positive ideals is generally viewed as a positive trait - in part because it is easier, generally, to accept a popular evil than a difficult good.

>>45268616
>Evil strong convictions are what leads the world to be a terrible place, coupled with people who lack conviction altogether.

Fixed that for you.

>>45268519
>>45268565
>>45268640

Strong convictions in and of itself is not an admirable trait if it becomes rigid and inflexible.

Sometimes, you need to be willing to look at another perspective in order to gain an understanding of the greater picture.

When you hold onto convictions that are no longer relevant, it just makes you look like a pious fucktard whose unwilling to accept change or rather, it makes you look like someone who just enjoys fighting evil rather than actually making the world a better place.

>>45268700

What's evil to you is good to others.

It's all about perspective really.

>>45268730
show me on the doll where the paladin smote you

>>45268616

>Comparing me to el rato

Ouch anon.

I'm not saying that you should treat your convictions as 100% the truth just because. You might find yourself changing your mind if you learn more or get blown the fuck out in a debate by simple logic, but holding true to the morals you believe in when you could step on them for your own safety is a sign of strenght.

In my opinion at least, I'll listen if you want to prove me wrong.

>>45268730

Again I never said you can't change your opinion, just that abandoning your beliefs at the first sign of adversity shows how weak your belief is. At least put the effort to prove it right before that.

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>>45268753

>all morality is subjective
>there are no values we, as a species, cannot agree are "good"

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>>45268730
>who just enjoys fighting evil rather than actually making the world a better place.

They are one in the same

You can't make the world a better place when some cocksucker comes along and shits in your cereal, therefore removing him is a benefit

>>45268806

>there are no values we, as a species, cannot agree are "good"

Exactly.

All morality is subjective but laws are a construct which differs from place to place.

>>45268753
>Adolf Hitler thought that killing Jews, gypsies, and gays was morally correct and it is not our place to say he was wrong.
That's how retarded you are.

>>45268766

Can you really call someone who falls a "paladin" anymore?

>>45268806
There are naturally some things benifical to most societies and so pop up in most moral codes. However none are universal.

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>>45268887

>falling for the double-negative

And thus the revelation that you are not, in fact, thinking.

>>45268914
shit man, everyone falls sometime

just gotta get back up again

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>>45268351
I simply like to play a famatic because it's fun.

Besides, a devoted follower of Zarus os most definitely not, Good.

>>45268773

>just that abandoning your beliefs at the first sign of adversity shows how weak your belief is.

And what constitutes that in your mind?

Is it agreeing to let a horrible person live because their death would cause more turmoil than if they were left to live?

Is it accepting that some forms of evil can lead to good actions and some well-intentioned actions can lead to evil?

Is it questioning your position and the objectivity of your order, who will burn entire villages to the ground just to make sure that all heretics have been slained?

At what point does it become less "abandoning your beliefs" and more "opening your eyes to the world around you?"

>>45268941

Piousness is not an opponent you can simply stab away, it takes introspection and acceptance that your morality is not something that's always objectively correct.

Paladins who are too pious to accept the truth will never rise above the occasion because they've been drilled since they were young that good is good and evil is evil.

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Does a hero need to suffer to truly be heroic?

>>45269006

I wasn't really talking about that man, that's stuff is more complex.

In short I just said that if you claim that something is good/bad, then someone comes and says he'll beat you up unless you say it's bad/good, and you comply, then you simply lack a spine, and that at least staying firm in your belief unless you are proven wrong by wisdom instead threats is more admirable than crawling in the floor.

>>45269100

Heroes are those who respond to adversity, so yes, they do need to suffer in some sense. Else, they wouldn't have anything to define them as heroic.

>>45268830

>They are one in the same

No they are not.

There's a difference between someone who causes harm who doesn't understand that what they did was wrong and someone who purposefully causes suffering and doesn't care about the people that they've harmed.

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>>45268902

>Using Poe's law unironically

>>45269068
>your morality is not something that's always objectively correct
Good thing god's morality is.

>but god isn't
Right, but this is a game where good and evil are objective truths, and where especially pious individuals can get literal visions and boons from their patrons.

>>45268934

What moral dilemmas are objective?

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>>45269100
you wouldn't have posted the Rider if you didn't already know the answer

>>45269100
>>45269239

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utqe2epkhZc

>>45268351
Look at it like this. Someones about to beat up your best friend/partner/kid. You know you can beat the fucker but someone is trying to convince you not to. Would you fight or let them get beaten up anyway?

If you take the second option, you're not a good guy.

To look at it another way, if you have dedicated your life to fighting evil then battling overwhelming odds becomes a great opportunity. If you act as a rear guard, the party can get away and rally the people or they may even be inspired and turn the tide for you. If you go down fighting a horde of skeletons, you sacrifice your life to lessen the threat to others. It is fundamentally good.

Is it logical? If one assumes logic includes no emotional input, then no as it prevents self preservation for no gain. But we are not purely logical, nor are the characters we play. And choosing a side is especially illogical unless the Evil guarantees wiping out all life.

>>45269229

>Right, but this is a game where good and evil are objective truths, and where especially pious individuals can get literal visions and boons from their patrons.

These same individuals are also tied to strict codes and rules of engagement and are also supposed to only engage if the individual is unwilling to surrender and consider a life of good.

A paladin isn't just a holy warrior whose job is to stab away every evil person he encounters, he's a paragon, a symbol that represents his lord as well as the concepts that they represent. If their god wanted people who used "the greater good" as a license to murder everything that smells of evil, then he would employ neutral individuals who look at the end goal and not the means in which they've reached it.

To put it another way, if you murdered a guy who used necromancy to save someone's life, does he deserve to meet your blade just for using necromancy, even in knowing that doing so would cause him to die at your hand?

>>45269124

I can agree with that then.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

>>45269423
Considering the necromancy is going to damn that person's soul, yeah I'd say a stabbing is perfectly justified.

>>45269232
instigating harm against family, especially as the leader of said family, is looked upon pretty unanimously as "shitty."

That's not to say it's something that is universally confronted. Lots of people turn the other cheek out of convenience or apathy, or simply not feeling like it's their place to intervene.

Same thing goes for cruelty to animals. Think of those occasional threads where some shit-disturber posts a bunch of animal cruelty gifs. Think of the unanimous rage that inspires. If a person or an animal hasn't done you harm or offense, and you go out of your way to attack it anyways, you are doing something evil. Acting not out of hunger or self-defense, but out of pure malice. Attacking something that doesn't deserve it inspires hard-wired outrage in those that witness the deed.

Unless you want to be a fucking edgelord and say "I feel nothing when I see that shoveldog gif" in which case congrats on being a misanthropic psychopath.

Morality and the concept of Law, believe it or not, wasn't settled on because humanity would run amok without some outside perspective's book of "shit you're not allowed to do" but because most of the shit on that list are things that people just know on a collective level to be fucking bad.

You can take your social nihilism and proclaim the evils of humanity until you're blue in the face, but the hard truth is that a person knows when they've done wrong, and that knowledge strikes at us on a more fundamental level than "oh I'll be in trouble if someone finds out I did this," at least in the beginning.

>>45269468

Even when his action saved another person's life at risk to his own?

Even when his action was noble and would've otherwise been good?

It's justifiable to stab a dude for doing the right thing, even when it's obvious that he's an otherwise decent person?

>>45269423
Not that guy but how I like to look at it is, if it was then only option at the time, then fine. However, if it wasn't then this person has willingly dealt in raw evil, possibly strengthening evil entities, wastefully because they were not strong enough to do otherwise.

Regardless of good or evil, someone willing to undertake such a grim deed purely because its the easiest option having such power is a threat to the people of the world. If they will not listen to me and do such things repeatedly, they need to die lest they should endanger others in the future. I may temper my judgement based on how they act otherwise, such as if they only show a disregard for their own life/soul, but my tendency is to lean towards stabbing.

Then again, if Im playing a paladin or an LG character, I tend to get suspicious of anyone whom takes the easy route and endangers others needlessly. The Wizard used a fireball in the middle of a village of thatched buildings? Im gonna start keeping a real close eye on them, deliver a few lectures on our Duty and Responsibility as heroes.

>>45269524

>instigating harm against family, especially as the leader of said family, is looked upon pretty unanimously as "shitty."

Some people have different definitions on what counts as abuse.

Spanking a kid for being a brat could be seen as perfectly wholesome discipline while others see it as morally abhorrent and on the same level as beating them until they have a black eye.

>Same thing goes for cruelty to animals.

Again, it depends on who you ask.

Some people see animals as dumb creatures who aren't aware of the world or as food that's going to be killed anyways so we could consume it.

Some would even argue, why care about a creature who was literally born to die as a thanksgiving turkey?

>You can take your social nihilism and proclaim the evils of humanity until you're blue in the face, but the hard truth is that a person knows when they've done wrong, and that knowledge strikes at us on a more fundamental level than "oh I'll be in trouble if someone finds out I did this," at least in the beginning.

What I'm arguing though is that different people have different perspectives on the same moral dilemmas.

Keep in mind, I don't support any of the shit mentioned above and find it as equally abhorrent as you do. Yet, there are people out there who will argue similarly because that's simply their feelings or it's what they've been taught since they were children.

If you took a child, told them that murder was okay, and everyone around you shared your fucked up mindset (as in being a member of a murder cult or helter skelter) would you think that the child was wrong to gut a bum of the side of a street?

No, because from your perspective, the bum deserved it for existing and getting stabbed in the first place. It's a shitty thing to do and nobody should ever murder unless it's a last resort yet people find ways to justify murder all the time.

And that's just one of many crimes.

>>45269589

That's fair then.

>>45268730
A true hero doesn't care about how they're doing looks. They just care about doing what's right.

>>45269811

"What's right" isn't always the best option though.

>>45269871

And it's from that disparity that the hero emerges. The hero still does what's right, even if it's harder.

>>45269984

But what if their actions causes a greater evil to emerge upon the world?

Like, the hero defeated the king of evil but now there's millions of untamed demons running about because he killed the one person who was capable of keeping them in check.

The road to hell is paved in good intentions after all.

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>>45270037

>but what if
>but what if
>but what if

Sorry Socrates, but I've already answered your question. So long as we're dealing with hypotheticals, the goalposts can keep moving to infinity. That's not a discussion worth having.

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"subjective" and "objective" morality are philosophical distractions from the empirical fact that people act by different moralities, some of which are incompatible and become more irreconcilable the better they are understood.

>>45269871
Deontology is a patch for consequentialism, which is a patch for utilitarianism.

In a sterile and unsophisticated world of homo economicus, where no problem is iterated and every dilemma happens in a blank white room, utilitarianism may function.

IRL, pragmatism and realpolitik are often decidedly...unpragmatic.

>>45270178

You didn't answer anything, you're basically assuming that the hero is right just because they're the hero.

I mean, what, you think that someone could've seen communism ending up the way it did after the people staged a revolution and took back power from the Tsar?

>>45270309
A number of people did predict it.

But I'm guessing that if your grasp of history sees the white revolution as "the people" "taking back power" you've never heard of them.

>>45270362

>A number of people did predict it.

Who and when?

Because everyone has 20/20 in hindsight.

>>45268351
You are all overthinking it. Being true to your beliefs doesn't require zealotry or an inability to consider another's point of view.

A good person wants to make the world better. We could argue the specifics of what would make it better and how until the heat death of the universe. So that's pretty much beside the point.

You find your definition of good and you uphold it. If you begin to see it causing more harm than good, of course you should revise your moral character. But you should never lose that first intention of "Make the world better."

>>45270424
Marx. I won't even get into the varied anti-populist royalists and conservatives stretching back all the way to the French Revolution, Marx (and Lenin) predicted bloody and total expropriation leading to a hegemonic state security apparatus.

>>45270309
>>45270362
>I mean, what, you think that someone could've seen naziism ending up the way it did after the people voted in Hitler and took back power from the Jews of Weimar.

FTFY for you two. National Socialism killed dramatically fewer people (and only when the war forced their hand, Hitler originally wanted to deport the Jews, not murder them). By utilitarian standards they were obviously the lesser evil.

>>45270517

Eh, fair enough.

>>45269582
>Even when his action saved another person's life at risk to his own?
necromancy doesn't save lives, though

>It's justifiable to stab a dude for doing the right thing, even when it's obvious that he's an otherwise decent person?
bringing back the dead isn't the right thing, even if little timmy really misses his mother

>>45268351
It's strong moral fiber.

However without enlightenment and perspective, it simply becomes pigheaded self-righteous stubbornness.

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You are still a good person.

>>45270662
Necromancy can cover enfeebling rays and shit. Using them to kill attacking bandits is gonna save lives.

You gonna off a dude for protecting his family because you dont like the tool he used to do it?

>>45270698
Not all tools are morally neutral; especially in fantasy settings.

In a world where actions like killing strangers and taking their stuff defaults to neutral how evil must necromancy have to be to get that [evil] tagvso often? Best case, it's amoral but unhealthy, like playing with radiation in a nursery.

Even mind control spells rarely have explicit [evil] tags, but creating undead does - in many settings [such as Howard, Leiber, Ashton - the sort of settings that inspired D&D] it's soul rape plus eternal slavery plus corruption of the cosmic ecology. Necromancers are basically the pedophiles of high fantasy. When you're a playing an NE brigand walking down to the execution block, you can still comfort yourself with the idea that despite being a thief and murderer, you had some kind of aesthetic standard - you're better than a necromancer.

>>45271324
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong here, its still deplorable and if the dude has any other viable means at his disposal he should exploit them first.

But a reformed necromancer trying to protect his family the only way he knows how, while skeevy, wouldn't earn a smite in my books. Hed earn a stern talking to, about the dangers and the responsibility he holds as a magic user etc, but not a smite.

>>45269212
That's Godwin's Law, though.

>>45269124
I am a false prophet and god is a supersition.

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I sense that op is a lich or some other sort of foul devilry, shall we smite him, brothers?

>Talking about morality on /tg/
>/tg/, land of edgelord paladin faggots and 40k memes
>Talking about morality on 4chan in general

Most of the people here wouldn't know goodness if it bit them on the ass.

>>45274166
Why would goodness bite someone in the ass?

>>45269871
>Being good isn't good

>>45268887
According to some Ted Talk, humans are hardwired with some basic ideas of morality, or what's good or bad. This will change as they grow and learn more about the world, but that does mean that there are some things that we can all agree are good.

I could link the talk if you wanted, but it focuses far more on political parties and how they get themselves into a sort of echo chamber.

>>45270695
See, that example only works until you realize that Walker was fucked up from the beginning, and no matter what happens he ends up even more broken by the end.

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>>45270695
Thanks bud.

>>45274335

Listen boy, if one day goodness comes bite you in the ass you bite the fuck back

Teach that bitch some manners

>>45268351

Better than hitting 100 stress and immediately going insane and betraying your party.

>>45268730
That would be true if the person wasn't already Literally Correct on a cosmic level.

Once you're right, and provably so, it's not like you can gain much by changing your mind.

>>45268351
>Is it heroic to fearlessly combat the Evils of Objectively Evil people instead of giving up like an absolute fag

Yes

>>45268351
Staying the course when other attempt to stop you from doing good is different from staying the course despite evidence that you aren't doing as much good as you think you are.
Also 'good' is pretty subjective.

>>45271324

So it's okay to effectively date rape someone using mind control but binding a zombie out of dark energy isn't?

I mean hell, way back in the day, healing was listed under necromancy spells. Does this mean that healing is now punishable by death since it's necromancy?

>>45275292
> Once you're right, and provably so, it's not like you can gain much by changing your mind.

There's no difference between the demonstrability of good in the real world and a fantasy world in the eyes of the faithful.

The faithful think that their beliefs are proven demonstrably.

>>45275167
It's more about the point that Walker was ultimately there to do a good thing, and if he had at any point stopped what he was doing and actually did his job instead of trying to do "good", he would have actually made the better choice.

He might not be the perfect example of a good character, but he absolutely fits what OP is talking about in being so stubborn that he pushes on with his quest long, long after it was obvious he should stop.

>>45279518
I'm curious what your point is, m8.
I think I just became born again after reading your post, too.