Thursday 25 August 2016

When PCs Act Morally

Long-term readers will know I am a big fan of the podcast Econtalk. If you consider yourself to be a thinking person, you ought to be listening to it - Russ Roberts is in my opinion the best interviewer currently working today, and his guests are fantastic. This week sees a regular guest, Mike Munger, taking on the topic of slavery in the antebellum Southern US. It is exceptionally interesting and you should listen to it now.

It coincides with slavery appearing in a recent game I was involved in. My character in the game (a mute white ape) is the slave of another PC. Slavery in the setting is also a completely ordinary thing with no real moral opprobrium attached, and slaves appeared in the first session. And the session itself already had me thinking quite a bit about slavery - because my character had quite a strong reaction when he came across some captive slaves and decided to lead a bit of a rebellion of sorts - and I started wondering why I had gone down that road. If slavery is normal in the setting, and my character himself is a slave, was it really a very realistic or setting-sensitive thing to try to foment slave rebellion?

Let me say straight away that I don't have a problem with slavery or other "dark" topics appearing in games, particularly. I am not one of those people who thinks that fiction or imaginary worlds really matter and nor am I massively squeamish. Grown-ups, and adolescents to a lesser degree, are perfectly capable of dealing with subjects like that sensibly, and even if they don't, I don't care as long as they don't actually go around physically enslaving people.

Let me also say straight away that, let's face it, Yoon-Suin is full of slaves and slavery is completely normal there. PCs can even trade in slaves if that's what they want to do. If conspiracy to commit imaginary slave trading is a crime, I must plead guilty of it.

But that said, I think (and this is a new thought for me) I want to make a moral statement of sorts: there is always space for PCs in games to push the moral envelope of the setting. In other words, while a fantasy setting may be based on all manner of repugnant assumptions - slavery is okay, torture is acceptable, genocide is a leisure activity - I think it is cool for PCs to challenge them, even if it might not appear totally realistic.

That's because, to put it in the context of the Munger Econtalk episode, I suppose I am a Smithian rather than a Humean. Hume was a moral positivist in the sense that he seemed to think that basically any norm can arise in a given society - you can get a society that exists in which people think that slavery is not just a necessary evil but a good thing (the antebellum South being an example) and there is no real external standard to judge this against. Adam Smith wasn't so sure. He understood that such societies could arise, but he also thought that those societies could be judged against abstract moral standards and that you could get at those abstract moral standards if you imagined what his famous"impartial spectator" might think. While your imagining of an "impartial spectator" is itself influenced by custom, culture, fashion, and so on, there is an impartial spectator of posterity who is better positioned to judge. While most white Southerners convinced themselves that slavery was good, some were able to consider the institution as though an impartial spectator looking at the practice through the lens of posterity - and freed their slaves as a result. They were able to see that an impartial spectator looking at them from the future would see an inconsistency in the institution of slavery: that it couldn't be justified even accepting its initial premises. (This is a sort of reformulation of Montesquieu's thought experiment: get everyone, slaves and slave-owners, in a room and mix them all together. Now tell the slave-owners that once everybody leaves the room, it will be randomly determined who gets to be a slave and who gets to be an owner. If slavery is such a good thing, they'll be fine with that, right? You can get this concept even if you have been brought up in a slave owning society.) You cannot really be a Christian or a good person or a believer in freedom and also own slaves, and you can understand that if you judge your own beliefs taking the perspective of a person outside of the culture and time in which you live - even if that person is imaginary.

Can a white ape slave in a nightmare sea do the same thing? Can he look at the practice of slavery, which he has known all his life, as though an impartial spectator looking at it through the lens of posterity? Can his owner and other characters around him, who are not themselves slaves?

I like to think so. Not that they ought to, of course (I am not being a bore about this). Nor should they do so in a way that will fuck up the setting, or get in the way of what the DM wants to do, or annoy the other players. But there is a justification, I think, for a PC to act outside of the moral box in which he exists within the setting.

20 comments:

  1. "Let me say straight away that I don't have a problem with slavery . . . "

    uh oh

    ". . . or other "dark" topics appearing in games, particularly."

    Phew.

    Interesting post though. I tend to bristle because other players in my default game nearly always adopt contemporary moral attitudes. For a while now I've run an elf noble PC who is (comically) self-assured and narcissistic. But aside from being a fun character to run, he's interesting because he honestly believes that a monarchy is the best system and he really is better than the commoners, and that he, with his inborn sense of justice and wisdom, .

    It strikes me that this would be a pretty common attitude in most D&D worlds. But the other damn PCs (and even most NPCs) have absolutely no truck with it. Always fomenting democracy and assuming that my serfs are downtrodden and ill treated. Harumph!

    I guess this is all to say that I've found that it's more common for gamers to import modern moral sensibilities by default rather than the other way around. Perhaps you play with a more sophisticated set than I do.

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    1. There is definitely virtue in that as well. I completely agree that too many modern sensibilities introduced into a game is a massive pain in the arse.

      I suppose the key is to do things sensitively. There were slave owners who gave up their slaves. So it's not that being anti-slavery is totally anachronistic or jarring in a slave-owning setting. It just has to be done right.

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  2. Slave rebellions were pretty common throughout the histories of slave-owning societies, as I'm sure you're aware, so I think it would be more common for a slave PC to act on an abolitionist streak than for a free PC to do so. Perhaps as a household slave your white ape has lead a fairly comfortable life, given the harshness of the setting, but exposure to the Underdark equivalent of Roman field or mining slaves has clarified his vague unease into more direct action.

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    1. Definitely. In another life I was planning to do my PhD on slave rebellions and quilombos in Brazil. In the end I ended up doing on in law instead...

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  4. Great post! Serious thought about serious topics instead of the all-too-common these days melodramatic hand-wringing.

    Also, the first issue of the Peridot was aces. I hope it continues and thrives.

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    1. Thanks. I am thinking of doing a different issue of The Peridot between major releases. Issue 1 came after Yoon-Suin. Issue 2 will come after Behind Gently Smiling Jaws.

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  5. Very well written, and well thought out post. Great thoughts overall, but I had to chuckle as the odd man out in old school gaming circles. Things like...

    "In other words, while a fantasy setting may be based on all manner of repugnant assumptions - slavery is okay, torture is acceptable, genocide is a leisure activity - I think it is cool for PCs to challenge them, even if it might not appear totally realistic."

    First...realistic fantasy gaming. Let those words splash around in your mouth a bit. Gargle them. Let them sit on the tongue a moment longer before swallowing.

    In a fantasy setting, we have magic, dragons, and rarely is anyone pouring out their piss pot on your head from the second floor window. Not never perhaps, but rarely.

    People get waaay to caught up in the realism of their highly unrealistic campaign settings.

    Second, and I'll hold your hand as I explain this is you need me to...you may want to sit down...but it's OK to think slavery is bad. You might also enjoy knowing that killing every last intelligent, living thing that was simply living its underground warren when you, and your friends came in, murdered them, and took their money is also pretty evil. It's OK to think that's being the villain. It is.

    I'm sorry for the snark (OK, not entirely), but I simply find it amusing that someone who now, in the year 2016, note that it's OK to disavow evil acts in a fantasy game. To say it's OK to be a good guy, like it's some new, and special concept.

    Since there is very little of medieval Europe in most fantasy games beyond the imagined decor, it is fine if you don't act like a medieval European. The same goes for made of Asiatic lands that don't exist.

    A good rule of thumb is that if it isn't really a place, no one is going to berate you about being unrealistic or insensitive to it's culture.

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    1. This post is about trying to respect what your DM is trying to achieve with his or her setting while at the same time acting morally (if that is what you are of a mind to do). The true insensitivity is riding roughshod over the setting your DM has created by imposing your own values on it - a phenomenon which is all too common, as Ivan said above.

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  6. I think it is more telling that a powerful ideology invariably must be in place to assure slaveholders of their livelihood's moral permisibility. In'A Labyrinth of Kingdoms' (Steve Kemper's recounting of Heinrich Barth's expedition to the kingdoms of the Sudan) Barth is forced to accompany some Kanuri emirs on slave-raiding expeditions or 'razzias.' All the emirs & viziers claim that the enslaving of pagans is not only natural but a good thing, making an argument reminiscent of those made by slaveholders in the American South. Some of those attitudes haven't changed: https://blog.stevekemper.net/2011/12/21/royal-palace-royal-slaves/

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  7. One has to ask from where were these slaves collected from? Were they the enemies of your grand parents? Were they poor people who signed up for room and board long ago, but now their children have no says so. Are they casualties of money? Is it possible to earn one's freedom? How are slaves treated? Are they aware that they are slaves? Through this game we can examine this. Would it be fun to simulate a slave uprising? What would happen? Socially, the world would be turned upside down for generations, which typically is the main ingredient for an interesting campaign.

    Great Post!

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    1. Yes, it's really good grist for getting the PCs more invested in what is happening.

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  8. "This is a sort of reformulation of Montesquieu's thought experiment: get everyone, slaves and slave-owners, in a room and mix them all together. Now tell the slave-owners that once everybody leaves the room, it will be randomly determined who gets to be a slave and who gets to be an owner."

    I didn't realize Montesquieu had anticipated Rawls' original position so closely. That Rawls: what a copycat.

    The critique of this thought experiment, of course, is that the criteria to decide whom to include in the "everyone" is arbitrary and culturally determined. If slaves are considered to be subhuman, like animals, then of course they don't get to participate in that lottery, just as a modern moral reasoner (other than Peter Singer) isn't likely to include animals as participants -- a prejudice that some would argue is just as immoral and just as much a function of unjust and arbitrary cultural norms.

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    1. I've never managed to read more than a page or two of Rawls without feeling as though I need to go and have a long lie down.

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  9. Sean Robert Meaney25 August 2016 at 10:26

    I wouldnt worry too much. Even the protoindoeuropeans had a term for slavery. Its up there with their word for king (reg) which also means move in a straight line and combines with the word you (wos) as in 'You! Move in a straight line!' (reg-wos). Reg-wos as a word also means 'place of darkness'. Slavery has existed since civilization. It also sucked.

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  10. I appreciate the amount of careful thought that went into this post! It's worth keeping in mind, perhaps, that even without an imagined outsider, abolitionists opposed slavery on both abstract and visceral grounds in antebellum America, which is why there was casus belli at all.

    But in purely practical terms, you don't need a solid theoretical framework to justify a character bucking a social norm: people in the real world do that all the time, sometimes on a whim. Almost anything you can imagine - wearing clothing, eating chocolate, driving a car, consuming media, playing D&D - there are people who oppose it, not just for themselves due to personal preference, but in a general way on what they claim is moral or ethical grounds. So for a slave to suddenly try out a slave revolt in a society where slavery is common and normal isn't weird at all. In fact, there are probably plenty of historical examples to draw from, at least for an educated or street-smart PC.

    In the end, even if it's something completely off the wall, like a PC starting a crusade against hats, as long as it leads to fun gameplay, who cares? The fiction can be made to accommodate that kind of decision.

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  11. Yep, agree! A whil ago I had some thoughts on "player morality" - I guess from that I would conclude that not only is it possible but inevitable for players to bring their morality to the table.
    http://rolesrules.blogspot.com.es/2010/10/player-alignment.html

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  12. I doubt we can avoid bringing our modern sensibilities into games set in other eras, but even if they are 'fantasy' I'm not interested in settings that attempt to correct the crimes of our ancestors by editing them out... I'd much rather play amongst them and fight against them.
    That being said, I've gotten far more complaints when I've had my PCs go along with the coarser assumptions of various settings... such as purchasing slaves or dealing harshly with 'lesser' creatures. Playing as characters who have very different outlooks and values to mine has always been an enjoyable, sometimes enlightening, challenge.

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  13. Wasn't slavery just the gentle alternative to murder when two tribes went to war?

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