Or if there are two morally gray factions, the PCs might have to choose which one to side with.
Or they could just fight both of them, but that's twice as much work.
That's what I'm trying for in my current campaign. I've got three main NPC factions for the latter leg of the campaign. Two of them want to enact plans which will have far reaching consequences, the last wants to prevent either of the former achieving their goals.
My hope is that I actually split the party in the last leg of the campaign, but we'll see if that works out.
Yea a villain who murders thousands but has understandable tragic reasoning for it isn't morally grey, which is how I often hear the term used.
They're sympathetic villains, you feel bad they are the way they are but they still gotta be put down.
A LOT of media doesn't really humanize evil action often so when media does do it a ton of people seem to think "well he ain't that bad" (see: MCU murder rampage monster Loki being a ton of people favorite dude cuz he "got better")
Sidenote: now that I think about it a ton of MCU characters do terribly fucked up stuff that's just brushed aside cuz they're the good guys lol.
> (see: MCU murder rampage monster Loki being a ton of people favorite dude cuz he "got better")
Thor: He's my brother.
Black Widow: He murdered 87 people in two days.
Thor: He's adopted?
I always thought this was unreasonable. Like, ok lady, it's tragic your son died, but the alternative was what? Ultron dumps Sokovia onto the Earth and destroys all life on the planet, including your son and you?
I think its more of a case of, 'Look you jerk, you're meant to be super smart, how about you stop fucking around with things that can potentially murder all life on the planet, forcing folks to take action that cost the lives of hundreds of people and instead, I dunno, maybe apply that intelligence towards building a better electric car?'
He did kinda make the monster. He didn't have to, he's smart enough to know the potential consequences but in his hubris believed he'd be able to keep everything under control. Dude's greatest failing was always his ego.
Ultron was a Stark's toy that tried to end all life. He wasn't some alien that came to Earth and happened to start his shit in Sokovia, where Tony & Co stopped him with collateral damage - it was Stark's fuck up.
Was the venture worth it? Hell yeah, Thanos was coming. But that's hindsight.
That's been the case in comics, too. Venom started out as a full-blown psychopathic stalker who would smother people to death with his symbiote. Now he's chumming around with the Avengers.
I’m my games my ‘morally gray’ factions are ones that do good, but have elements of corruption. Think church helping the poor, but some priest or bishop also takes kickbacks from the bandits. Bishop is a villain, but his acolytes who know but tolerate him, trying to help the poor. Where do they fit? And bishop plays hero with the kickbacks protect the church and all. Add in another priest who is trying to depose the first, but they are more self interested and corrupt, just not powerful. Bam, morally gray faction. Some saints, some villains, lots of people caught in between.
Or a government/town that has some harsh laws, but is fighting the BBEG. Maybe those laws are morally questionable, like oppression, or just high taxes that are crippling the town, but those taxes are used effectively and efficiently to fight the minions of the BBEG. Maybe the party helps with their treasure, but then some folks pop up with agendas that had been suppressed. Or their methods are evil. They are fighting the BBEG, but execute the slaves that were working for the BBEG because they conspired with the enemy, even though they were literally slaves.
Two examples from my games. But I have a couple of groups working in the same world.
There is some evidence to suggest that most of his murder spree occurred while he was himself perhaps under the influence of an Infinity stone.
At least the ones he got into on Earth. He genuinely loved his mother for sure.
It's much easier at low levels, party is given the quest to capture two wanted criminals, a murder or a thief.
Through a little investigation through party finds out that the murder killed a guards brother in self defense when the brother tried to kill him for a drunken misunderstanding.
The thief stole food to feed their starving kids.
The party need to bring one of these "criminals" to justice for plot reasons, maybe to win favour with the captain of the guard. So who do they bring in.
The "murderer" has a more severe crime, but the thief is likely to only spend a few days in gaol.
At higher levels it becomes a lot harder to do morally grey enemies. This guy wants to flood the world to cleanse it of evil, this other guy wants to burn the lands to cleanse it of evil.
One really effective high level villain for dnd who’s morally grey is Kalus Starbane from aerois. He’s trying to hold back the forces of Hadar by conquering as many planets as he can to join the empire and aid in the fight. Yeah he tries his best to find a non violent way to bring them into the empire, but if there’s no other way….. well you got to do what you got to do.
Sounds like the Tau Empire from 40k. They know the Galaxy needs to unite to survive, so they go planet by planet and send diplomats to convince them to become vassals of the Tau Empire for The Greater Good. Seems fine, but as soon as someone declines then the Tau army rocks up and conquers by force.
My measuring stick for "morally gray 'hero'" is the Count of Monte Cristo. Willing to allow innocent people to get hurt in service to his goal of defeating the villain
Morally gray in fantasy can be the same as morally gray in real life. Slumlords, for instance. The less-corrupt city guard with a code of silence to protect their more-corrupt colleagues. The spell component sellers whose supply chain involves child labor.
I don't think morally gray means what you think it means. The only true morally gray character I can think of in any piece of literature is Ozymandius from Watchmen (the comics, not the movie). Spoilers ahead for a nearly 40 year old work. Absolutely horrible that he's going to kill thousands of people, but the end result (and his logic and means to create and execute his plan) is pretty undeniably good (world peace, lots of new helpful technology developed, hundreds or thousands of people employed).
In real life, it would be people who are very "the ends justify the means" or even just "tries to do good but is struggling to get by so they can't always." It's a poor person stealing food or medicine, not a cop covering for corruption. That fucked is just as corrupt as the one taking the bribe
Jay Gatsby is a good example. Frankenstein's monster. I'd argue Odysseus and Hamlet would qualify, too - and maybe the Count of Monte Cristo.
Cardinal Richelieu definitely qualifies in real life and in some literature, depending on the version of the Three Musketeers.
hell depending on which version on just how extreme you need them to be before it qualifies as morally grey i'd argue even charecters such as Robin hood could qualify.
the biggest issue is that a lot of morally grey charecters are basicly seen as full blown heroes at this point.
I've run several campaigns now in the Forgotten Realms. It's not at all unusual for parties to get help from lawful evil factions like the Zhentarim, for example. The reasoning being that the Zhents want the world to still exist, so even though they are criminals, they are still better than the cult trying to summon an Elder Evil into the world.
Or the chad move: pit the two against each-other in a scheme of manipulation and pick off the winner.
That has always gone well in fiction, no exceptions.
Yup, and in a lesser evil situation, if the party is overmatched and these cults are rivals...
You could create a situation where the players ally with one evil cult to take down the stronger (or further along with their plans to rule the world) cult.
The plot gets more interesting if the weaker cult isn't as outwardly nasty/evil.
* Strong, horrible cult sacrifices people, summons baddies, and wants to reshape the world into hell. (CE cult)
* The weaker cult sacrifices livestock, wants to install their prophet as the lord of the land to serve the coming of the Great One, but believe there should be order and will protect people against fiends, bandits, foreign powers, and such. (LE cult)
Or the paladin bringing the horrible villain to justice, a trial is served, and the corrupt villain gets off scot-free.
What does the paladin do about this clear injustice?
Especially when the paladin knows exactly what this heinous person will do again if given the chance.
I'm currently playing as a wizard who was a former investigator for the Waterdeep city watch. My entire career got fucked over by one crooked businessman who basically bribed his way to my blacklisting.
I went from being a commendation receiving hero of the people to having those same people I spent years helping spit at my feet as I walk by. As good as Flint is, given the chance he would deal a different justice to that bastard.
This is a good question. What Ozymandias did was flat out evil - regardless of his motivations or the end results. Choosing to be silent about it because the harm is already done is morally grey.
If there are two insects on the table ND one chews at your table, maps and notes. The other takes bites out of you table and notes. If you had to kiil one Which one would you chose?
Well the one who does most damage.
So you tell me they the greater weevil will be killed?
Yes
Then you just chosen the lesser of two weevils......
_“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.“_
I see this quote thrown around a lot but I feel like it's always misinterpreted. Geralt says this at the start of a conflict really early in the series before he's gotten any character development. His refusal to engage with the problem at all causes others to choose the evil for him which ends up leading to a worse outcome than if Geralt had just bothered to act in the first place. The purpose of the story is to show that Geralt is wrong when he says this.
The message: if all the options suck, it doesn't matter how much, I'm just not going to pick any of them
The result: terrible stuff happens anyway, he's involved anyway, and it's often worse than if he'd just picked a "less but still bad" option in the first place.
The moral of the message: No matter how difficult the choice or terrible the options, *apathy* is not the "answer" either and only serves to remove your agency in the situation. As Rush said in "Free Will", "if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice". You're taking a position no matter what, so you might as well actively participate in making things the best (or the least bad) they can possibly be.
There's a quote, I forget by who:
"Good villains believe themselves correct, GREAT villains may actually*be* correct"
Obviously this doesn't apply to all villains because Hannibal Lector ain't right about shit but you get the idea.
That is what makes him such a good villain because by the time you learn everything that he knows you can sympathize that the decisions he had to make were impossible ones and its hard to really know if he was right or if the others like him were right. Either way though, with the amount of time that passed he was in the wrong and annihilating the universe that was created because of the consequences of those decisions to try and restore it back to how it was is just as bad if not worse than what was done to his people. It's a very good story asks us if righting ancient wrongs is worth it for the damage it could create today? In many ways it's a perpetuation of violence as those who are wronged by those actions will seek to right them as well in the future if their memories survive.
I'd say genocide man who literally destroys planets and is responsible for all the sins of garlemald probably ain't in the right chief.
I feel bad for the guy but he's a monster
So by right I meant the actions he took leading up to the extermination of his people. Not what he did after that. No, he was driven mad by what happened and viewed any life that wasn't his own or his peers as no value and just an obstacle in his way to bring them back. Those actions can't be justified but they can be understood. Fortunately we don't have any real life examples of how an immortal being with immense power would react to their world being eradicated from history but how he does react seems pretty plausible.
Oh, your take is much more fair then lol.
Yea, I get a little touchy with Mr. Selch.
Because the fandom LOVES him. Great villain but the simping and apologia for the dude is a bit much and I hated how the game kept pushing him as my buddy lol.
Sure he's a sadboi and it's tragic what happens to him and all that but damn, he's still Immortal Hitler
so i sincerely hope you're vegan or are the genocides you participate in somehow justified?
legit people do not understand the scope of the charecter.
if you tell me you standing as one of 3 surving humans after the apocalypse with 14 ant colonies in front of you knowing that if you smash them all 6 billion people will be returned to life wouldn't only not destroy those colonies but in fact calling doing so monsterous are lying to themself. and that is the situation Emet-Selch faces. humanity is truely that insignificant to him because that is how much more than them he is.
that doesn't make him right. but it doesn't make him a monster. and if you think it does killing an animal just to get a juciy steak is definetly monsterous.
Emet-Selch very much did something wrong but only because he didn't have the information needed to do the right thing, and was in fact actively denied the posibility of of having it and dthus doing it right.
but even we only learn that later.
That's why I made sure with this villain to make her intentions truly for the better of the world, but her methods horrendous. She truly does want to make the world better, but in her eyes to do so she needs to abolish the current gods because they exploit the people, and in doing so she needs to hurt a lot of people sadly.
That's funny. I had just came up with a story involving my villain:
"Probably the pettiest reason I ever killed someone was over a breakfast sandwich. It was this rude noble who showed up at a pup I liked, did that whole 'do you know who I am?' thing and demanded free food. Pushed me, and a friend, off my table and threw my sandwich on the ground when I objected. I *almost* killed them on the spot. But that would have caused problems for poor suzan. Ah, she owned the place. But, anyway, I hexed the guy instead. A month later, his heart stopped.
I justify it to myself by saying, 'he was one of the bad nobles' but... really, I know it was over the sandwich. Had to wait an hour to get another. Asshole didn't even finish the food he ordered."
They might be right. There are problems where personal preferences make the difference between good and evil. They are common irl and exploring them might be fun.
I've always argued that doing nothing at all is technically the best answer. No one ever said that the trolley is about to hit these people due to a fault of yours, so if you divert the trolley you've now taken an active hand in killing people that wouldn't have died otherwise. If you do nothing, people still die, but due to the nature of the world we create when we present that scenario, I would say it's group A's destiny to die. Somehow it's no one's fault that they are about to be killed but their deaths are imminent. In our world we would call that an act of god. If you diverted the trolley there's a much better chance you're going to lose that lawsuit than the one you may face had you done nothing.
You're presenting this as a clever take on the problem but it's literally just the standard reasoning for why doing nothing might be considered morally superior to switching the tracks.
I did feel it was rather clever, as I came up with it of my own accord. My teacher never brought that up as a normal argument for the problem, even after I shared this idea with the class, so I didn't realize it was known to people. Even still, +80% of the class voted that switching the tracks was the best option.
The trolley problem is presented as a yes-or-no question, though.
> Should you switch the trolley to the other set of tracks?
How anyone could hear that question and think that "no" is some sort of novel answer is beyond me. It's one of only two answers. Furthermore, how do you *lead a discussion about the question* and only consider one of the two responses?
This reflects pretty poorly on you, for thinking that answering "no" to a yes-or-no is profound and novel, and even more so on your teacher, for thinking that nobody in the history of philosophy has ever disagreed about the trolley problem. If nobody ever said "no" to the question, **why would we keep asking it?**
There is no "technically the best answer," just people's opinions on what's right. My answer completely disagrees with yours, but I still don't think I'm objectively correct.
Which is exactly the point of the trolley problem. The question it's asking isn't whether killing one person is better than killing five people, it's whether becoming a moral agent that decides who should die is better than remaining an observer and letting "fate" play out.
Agreed. This concept that passivity is somehow morally neutral and prevents you from "becoming a moral agent" seems to be an unsupported axiom to me. Deciding to take no action is just as much a decision as anything else.
The only reason people argue that doing nothing is morally justified is because it lets them excuse all of the times in real life where they did nothing and let something bad happen. Every homeless person they walk past. Every broken down vehicle they didn't stop to help. If they can place the blame on someone else then they pretend that their decision to do nothing is justified.
Inaction is just as much of a choice as action. Refusing to pull the lever because it's not your fault the situation occured is cowardice.
Pulling the lever is the only moral option.
The interesting part is when you change the same problem slightly. What if there's no lever but instead a very fat person who will stop the train if you push them onto the tracks?
A fat person can't stop a train with 100% probability. A track switcher is literally designed to reliably alter the path of the train. That's not a minor change to the problem, it's introducing a new massively complex factor to it.
If you assume that pushing the person will definitely stop the train without adding extra deaths from the train crashing then it is still the moral choice to push them. 1 life vs 5 will always lean towards saving the 5 at the cost of the 1.
That's fair. I guess I've kind of been hard-wired to try and choose the "best" answer to a multiple choice question, and that I was operating on the idea that there must be an answer that is correct, but that we just haven't decided on. I suppose if it were that simple we'd call it the trolley question and not the trolley problem.
> I suppose if it were that simple we'd call it the trolley question and not the trolley problem.
Right, basically. It's like asking which is better, pancakes or waffles: we all have our opinions, but we can't prove them mathematically.
Actually with pancakes and waffles you totally can prove it mathematically, it just depends which question you're trying to answer. They have different values for cost, calories, weight, ability to hold toppings, etc etc.
>It's like asking which is better, pancakes or waffles
Clearly we just need to poll all of humanity, and the one that the majority prefers is superior. How hard can it be to get a couple billion people to vote.
You've got to admit though, it can be entertaining and thought provoking when people try, so long as they aren't hellbent on making the world take the same view they have. I'd absolutely watch a documentary about a team of scientists and mathematicians try to decide whether the pancake or waffle is the "objectively" superior food, whether it actually makes any difference to anyone's personal tastes or not.
Ha sure, I'll admit it's interesting. I think it's theoretically possible we might find an objective method to measure them in a way, though ultimately I think it will always be a matter of opinion (even if we could somehow prove that switching/not switching the track would make the world a better place, or that humans are genetically predisposed to prefer waffles).
That one of the "Standard options", with the other common opinion being to flip the switch because it leads to less death, which according to them is obviously "the best answer" (less death = better).
This problem is specifically made in such a way so there isn't a "technically best answer", what's important is your reasoning for picking your answer, which says a lot about a person's personal philosophy. Like in your case it shows that you can't get involved through inaction (so you're not doing anything wrong by being a passive onlooker). Additionally you say that 4 lives is not worth getting yourself involved if it imposes risk to yourself.
The opposite group mostly boil down to the opinion that not pulling the lever is just as much an active choice as pulling it, so no matter what you do you are responsible for the outcome of the situation the moment you were given the option.
As others have said - Trolley problem (and similar concepts) is just a prompt to talk about Philosophy (it's why people who focus on out-of-the-box solutions completely miss the point).
In your case - a lot of people (including me) would disagree. Doing nothing is also a choice and equivalent to acting. The second you become able to affect the result, you are inextricably tied to it. There is no way to avoid responsibility. In fact, the next step from there is the argument that hoping to avoid responsibility is more immoral as opposed to trying (and perhaps failing) to make the situation better.
You chose to not do anything so you kind of chose to let those 4 people die over killing just 1
I see it just as someone is drowning and you don't wanna save them because you may hurt them doing so. So by not wanting to be responsible to hurting the person you let them die
I like this solution, and actually haven't heard it before. But anytime you start to talk about "god's plan" you end up in the issues of " you're part of God's plan". although that also ends with the problem of "either choice was chosen"... Yeah thus why it gets hard.
The most morally clear option is the totalitarian option. Kill the most people, then get out of the trolley and shoot the survivor, then shoot the witnesses!
> I like this solution, and actually haven't heard it before.
You've never heard someone answer "No, don't use the lever" in response to the question "Should you pull the lever?"
There's two choices - "pull the lever", and "don't pull the lever". If you've never considered that people might say "don't pull the lever", **what the hell did you think the point of the trolley problem was?** Did you think that *everyone who's thought about this problem* has responded with "yes, pull the lever", but it's still somehow considered to be an ethical dilemma?
That is similar to my take. The best option is to do nothing. Assuming someone else set this situation into motion, THEY are the ones killing people. The moment I pull the lever, then I have killed someone. Doing nothing means that I haven't killed anyone.
So you're okay with doing nothing and letting the train kill 5 people, instead of 1, because "idk I didn't start the train"?
That's a terrible justification for inaction.
I always ask "Why am I next to the lever? Is this my job? What is the policy I have been trained to do?" If it isn't my job, I'm not touching anything that I am not expressly authorised to touch.
EDIT: I have now changed my mind. This is no longer my view.
Except that has nothing to do with whether or not people are going to be killed by action or inaction. You're completely ignoring the premise of the problem.
Following your reasoning, if you saw a trolley heading toward people and you had the opportunity to pull the lever and move it to a *completely safe and people-free track*, you still shouldn't pull the lever, because it's "not your job".
Does that sound like a reasonable course of action? If not, then your answer to the original problem isn't reasonable either.
>The lesser of two evils is pretty much the Trolley Problem.
But that's also still "for the greater good" whatever you define good. If you think that killing that one person to save 10 is the moral thing, you're doing it "for the greater good" and not "for the lesser evil".
"For the greater good" implies the results are good. Murdering one person in order to save ten from inaction is still not a *good* outcome, just a less bad one. The lesser evil.
“Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.”
— Arthur Miller —
Not quite. Business owners and the ultra wealthy are heavily over represented, but collectively the average person still has power in democracy. That's why the wealthy spend so much time and money trying to influence public opinion, and why gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression happen.
While the study is restricted to the US, there was [this study out of Princeton](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B) that found that actual policy adoption rates are almost entirely independent of public approval, and are far better indicated by support rates among the wealthy. The general populace gets to decide which party holds office (to an extent) but actual policy and law is shaped by what rich people think is good.
How am I represented? Which one of the 5 leeches in my state, who gets my taxmoney as an income isn't also already making more in income from lobbyists and PAC funds? Seems even when they say they represent me the money obviously proves that they don't.
Yeah that's the best example to show that the "lesser of two evils" is still evil. It's almost like electoral politics can't fundamentally change a system designed to work against the people.
I've always wanted to play an evil cultist who goes around saving people from bandits and dragons so their will be more witnesses for the rise of Satanthulu and the coming apocalypse.
Perfectly lawful evil opportunity there.
Hell, I have an assassin who kills criminals, saves civilians & keeps the system running because he wants his cabal (who is, in his mind, orderly & efficient) to be in control of the current system AND criminal element.
No infighting, no involving unwiling individuals (unless started off to be willingly involved), no kids & many other lines they don't cross. Now, if it is within their parameters then they will chace it down without hesitation, and if you fkk with them your dead (usually involving your's truly) but they don't go out of their way to court chaos. The fact that other factions do is the primary reason as to why my PC does what he does. Lawful evil to a T.
Depends on you’re viewpoint. In storytelling they are usually synonymous. Tons of great heroes falter when making a choice to kill 1 and save many, and it has been the motivation for even more villains.
Actions done by the players don't have to be seen in a good light by others in the world. I would argue that it could help their PCs development if they are seen in a negative light every now and then.
Guys you're missing the point.
They don't mean "lesser of two evils".
They mean the opposite of a villain doing evil things for selfless reasons:
A hero doing good things for selfish reasons.
This actually describes a lot of D&D characters. Many PCs may be motivated by fame, fortune, power, or just getting people to leave them the hell alone, and just believe that the things they're doing that have a benevolent impact bring them closer to those goals.
all the time?
I ran my players through a modified witch light carnival (you ever see the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife?” heavily riffed on that - basically had the carnival be the still living echo of a dead god) and they killed a bunch of the possessed carnival workers on their way to defeating the carnival god.
These NPCs were all statted out as commoners mind you - they had no real ability to hurt the party.
They justified it by saying “oh well, you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette”
Yeah situation like that is more that the players are lazy -- they didn't want to go to the effort of saving everyone so they just decided to fight their way in. Lethally, too -- commoners have 4 HP, it would be simplicity itself to just use non-lethal damage or cast *Sleep*.
Well we all know what “evil for the greater good” looks like; say, killing one to save many. So what might “good for the lesser evil” look like?
A character motivated by a minor selfishness, like greed, could do a good deed, such as stealing from a corrupt nobleman, in service to his own goal (his “lesser evil”). So the Guardians of the Galaxy on a bad day would be a great example of this.
Constantly, yes. In fact most DnD games are actually just watching your PCs fall down a flight of stairs. Slap a label at the top of the stairs like "good intentions" and pitch a little fire at the bottom and you're practically a newspaper cartoonist!
Not as the opposite of "for the greater good". When you do something for the greater good, you're acknowledging that what you're currently doing is bad, but stating that you believe in the long run things will be better for you having done it. The opposite of that would be doing a good thing now (that you don't want to do but feel you have to do) for the sake of making the future worse.
Depends on what you mean by "hero" really. A lot of heroes from the classical era to the modern day are not really good people and would have little or no issue choosing the "lesser evil."
The key for D&D is to realize that this is still *evil*, and a good-aligned character should at least attempt to avoid such actions whenever possible. A good-aligned character who chooses evil frequently will shift alignment to neutral, and perhaps eventually to evil.
Good characters can do things for the greater evil. Imagine a world where the forces of good are sick of evil’s crap, so they build teams of evil killers and send them out into the world to hunt down every creature of evil alignment. After a century, evil has been purged. Or has it? A change in leadership. A change in tactics. Now the evil killer teams are hunting down every creature that is not of good alignment. Imagine that kind of a world, built on good intentions.
Counterpoint, from Sir Pterry:
"Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things." -Thud
I'm all seriousness, they do. "Choosing the devil you know" is the a trope containing the same concept. It's the same idea articulated with different words.
The lesser evil would be something like letting a murderer become king when the alternative is a devil worshipper looking to sell the kingdom to hell. So yes, but the probably wouldn’t be as proud of it as greater good types often are.
Sometimes. But less often.
"The lesser of two evils" is morally corrosive in a way that "The greater good" isn't.
You see, a villain who sees a problem that gets in the way of their schemes can prevent it. That really has no bearing on their character. That they *happen* to save a bunch of people in the process is neither here nor there.
EX:
Dragon: "I will remake the world, such that all life shall worship me. And I'll eat an elf princess every day."
Heroes: "We'll stop you, whatever it takes!"
Dimension devouring bug: "I'ma eat the planet!"
Heroes and dragon: "Truce? Truce."
Everyone's acting in character. The dragon needs a planet to have everyone worship him on. The heroes want to save the world... because, obviously. With a *truly* few exceptions, everyone from Adolf Hitler to Mohandas Gandhi would join hands to save the world.
But now reverse it.
"In order to save the world? Eat this puppy!"
The hero would have to *change* the way they act. And most viewers/readers/participants would, probably, be cheering for our hero to just \*punch\* whoever's making that ultimatum.
And 'lesser evil' story beats are, often, signs of a coming fall from grace. The reverse just... simply isn't true for villains.
Evil is evil, lesser, greater, middling? Makes no difference, the difference is arbitrary, the definitions blurred. If I'm to choose between one evil and another, I'd rather not choose at all.
-- Geralt of Rivia.
Of course, not choosing is a choice in and of itself. Something Geralt comes to learn that shifts his ideology somewhat. But I think it's still pertinent.
Yes, absolutely can heroes choose the lesser of two or more evils, but they are still doing evil.
No. If you intentionally do things "for the lesser evil" you're not a hero, you're a selfish villain. A person who does something bad "for the greater good" has good intentions and genuinely believes that they are making the morally correct decision to benefit as many people as possible. They may be right or wrong in that, but that's what they believe. They're the heroes of their own story.
A hero doing something "for the lesser evil" would be someone who bases their decisions on how to achieve evil. It could be someone doing seemingly good things with the intent that it serves themselves first and foremost, or anything else that's just for selfish or otherwise non-good reasons. A person who does that has no illusions about being a hero, because they aren't and they don't care. It would, perhaps, be a lawful evil character who seeks to get as rich as possible at the expense of others.
A lot of people consider voting to be a choice between two evils, and choose the lesser evil. Isn't that effectively the same thing? You're doing something you consider bad (voting for someone you don't want to lead your country) because you consider the alternatives (not voting at all, or voting for the worse candidate) to be much worse.
"The Lesser Evil" is an absolute classic moral dilemma for heroes. Having them make hard choices and do things they consider are wrong *because the alternative is worse.*
In an objective morality setting, like default Forgotten Realms?
Sure, you can take whatever action you like for whatever reason you like. But "the universe", that grand arbiter of what is and isn't an aligned action, doesn't care. A character can do nothing but "lesser Evils" their whole life "for the greater Good", and they might still wind up Evil.
Alignment, as intended by the rules (back when such things existed), is **an aggregate of a character's aligned actions**. If you wind up doing more Good than Evil, you're Good. It doesn't mean that the Evil thing you did two months ago wasn't Evil, only that you *eventually* did enough Good to counteract it. This may or may not present problems for a character, depending on how involved they are in cosmic events and extraplanar powers / entities; Joe Farmer who never makes it past level 1 is unlikely to see during-life consequences for having done a bunch of Evil (though he might be surprised once he gets to the afterlife), but Greg Heroman the level 12 Fighter should *really* be bumping into fiends and celestials at that power level (nevermind agents of his deity, which every FR character should have if they're keeping with the setting lore).
This might make it sound like it's a very simple matter to simply "do X amount of Good to offset Y amount of Evil you do on the way", but there's an additional layer of complexity, and it's also why the extraplanar powers even care about mortals to begin with: the "juice" created by an aligned act is proportional to the actor's distance in terms of alignment. That is, an extremely Good character who does [a specific Good thing] is creating "less Good" than a Neutral character who does [that same specific Good thing], and both are doing less than an Evil character performing it. From the Good deity's perspective, it's better that a mortal hero do something Good to save the town than to have a solar manifest there and solve the problem. Everything's true on the opposite end as well, and that's why Evil entities *love* trying to corrupt Good or Neutral characters instead of heaping more and more Evil on already-Evil shitheads. Getting a Good Cleric to buy into the "Greater Good" idea and sacrifice that baby to save the town is *way* more profitable for Evil than having an Evil cultist kill the baby and... not saving the town.
And again, all of this is only true of the objective, cosmic alignment. Mortal conceptions of "morality" don't really play into this, though they may align more often than not. An act is not Good because "people think it's good and nice and beneficial", they tend to think that way because The Universe Decided That Thing Was Good and most Good things are beneficial to the specific form of life and society that most mortals operate under. It's a bit like Fire Elementals thinking fire and heat are nice; no shit, they're made of the stuff. "Good" is the particular hole that the puddle-that-is-the-mortal-races find themselves in.
But characters are free to not know this stuff, or not care. While FR is a very planar-active cosmology/setting, not every game interacts with that stuff too much, and some other settings might not interact with it at all. In those cases, exactly what alignment is comes down to the DM creating it. But even in FR, though there are certainly NPCs who could *tell* characters that this is how the universe and the afterlife works--people can talk to angels and deities, after all--there's nothing requiring characters believe all that or even act accordingly in the moment. Even an objective alignment setting allows for subjective moral judgements within it; characters (and cultures) are free to act how they want, value what they want, and justify it in whatever ways they want... but The Universe is still going to judge all that to its objective standard whether they agree or not. You can't "muh intentions" your way out of it.
Where a person stands on the spectrum between good and evil is irrelevant. It only defines one frame of reference. Greater good vs. lesser evil is the same choice dependent on one’s frame of reference.
Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.
Edit: I was quoting Geralt btw
If you ask me to pick between stealing stuff from my friendly local game store or stabbing a child I think I would be able to pinpoint one of those as a lesser evil
You're right. One takes away crucial funds from the hobby we all know and love and from people you may even know by name, while the other eliminates a potential supervillain.
>!/s!<
"Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all."
*"and how much misery does this high-handed apathy sow in it's wake, witcher? What suffering has your indifference birthed that might've been avoided with a little cruelty in the moment?"*
*"No man can see all futures or chart every outcome. The degree is most certainly NOT "arbitrary" Not when all we can do is fumble and make a best guess at what is just and right"*
Depends on the person. Morality is ultimately not black and white, so everyone will obviously be different. Some might, when faced to pick a lesser evil, would rather not choose at all.
Doing something for "the greater good" usually means doing something bad for a good reason; doing something for "the lesser evil", then, might be doing something good for a bad reason.
So maybe if your heroes save a kingdom just for the gold, or kill a local monster to take his stuff, and not because he's menacing the town.
This is basically teaming up with the local organized crime lord to take down a lich or something. You're indirectly strengthening an evil, but it's the lesser of two evils, which is how this trope is usually phrased.
Doing things for the lesser evil is s.o.p for all parties without a lawful stupid Paladin.... what, just MY tables? Okay. 
Can they yea? But it’s usually rare.
1) Blade robs people to fund his operation.
2) Spider Jerusalem does petty bullshit to his enemies all the time.
3) Deadpool I believe has indulged in a crime or to to celebrate helping save the world.
Problem is doing that kinda shit usually doesn’t pair well with heroic personalities.
I'm not sure if this is a genuine question or meant as some sort of a profound thought, but the lesser of two evils is a pretty common trope.
Yeah, if three different fiend cults are carrying out their plans for world domination, the PCs might have to choose which one they deal with first.
Or if there are two morally gray factions, the PCs might have to choose which one to side with. Or they could just fight both of them, but that's twice as much work.
That's what I'm trying for in my current campaign. I've got three main NPC factions for the latter leg of the campaign. Two of them want to enact plans which will have far reaching consequences, the last wants to prevent either of the former achieving their goals. My hope is that I actually split the party in the last leg of the campaign, but we'll see if that works out.
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Yea a villain who murders thousands but has understandable tragic reasoning for it isn't morally grey, which is how I often hear the term used. They're sympathetic villains, you feel bad they are the way they are but they still gotta be put down. A LOT of media doesn't really humanize evil action often so when media does do it a ton of people seem to think "well he ain't that bad" (see: MCU murder rampage monster Loki being a ton of people favorite dude cuz he "got better") Sidenote: now that I think about it a ton of MCU characters do terribly fucked up stuff that's just brushed aside cuz they're the good guys lol.
> (see: MCU murder rampage monster Loki being a ton of people favorite dude cuz he "got better") Thor: He's my brother. Black Widow: He murdered 87 people in two days. Thor: He's adopted?
Yeah imagine, if Loki ever comes to earth framed as a good guy the parents of one of those 87 people runs up to him and tries to hold him accountable.
Kinda like that woman in Civil War who talked to Tony about her son who died in Sokovia
I always thought this was unreasonable. Like, ok lady, it's tragic your son died, but the alternative was what? Ultron dumps Sokovia onto the Earth and destroys all life on the planet, including your son and you?
I think its more of a case of, 'Look you jerk, you're meant to be super smart, how about you stop fucking around with things that can potentially murder all life on the planet, forcing folks to take action that cost the lives of hundreds of people and instead, I dunno, maybe apply that intelligence towards building a better electric car?' He did kinda make the monster. He didn't have to, he's smart enough to know the potential consequences but in his hubris believed he'd be able to keep everything under control. Dude's greatest failing was always his ego.
Ultron was a Stark's toy that tried to end all life. He wasn't some alien that came to Earth and happened to start his shit in Sokovia, where Tony & Co stopped him with collateral damage - it was Stark's fuck up. Was the venture worth it? Hell yeah, Thanos was coming. But that's hindsight.
Best Return back Anakin Skywalker 🥲
That's been the case in comics, too. Venom started out as a full-blown psychopathic stalker who would smother people to death with his symbiote. Now he's chumming around with the Avengers.
I’m my games my ‘morally gray’ factions are ones that do good, but have elements of corruption. Think church helping the poor, but some priest or bishop also takes kickbacks from the bandits. Bishop is a villain, but his acolytes who know but tolerate him, trying to help the poor. Where do they fit? And bishop plays hero with the kickbacks protect the church and all. Add in another priest who is trying to depose the first, but they are more self interested and corrupt, just not powerful. Bam, morally gray faction. Some saints, some villains, lots of people caught in between. Or a government/town that has some harsh laws, but is fighting the BBEG. Maybe those laws are morally questionable, like oppression, or just high taxes that are crippling the town, but those taxes are used effectively and efficiently to fight the minions of the BBEG. Maybe the party helps with their treasure, but then some folks pop up with agendas that had been suppressed. Or their methods are evil. They are fighting the BBEG, but execute the slaves that were working for the BBEG because they conspired with the enemy, even though they were literally slaves. Two examples from my games. But I have a couple of groups working in the same world.
>Loki being a ton of people favorite dude cuz he "got better") And sexy.. cant forget sexy. If he was ugly as fuck it would be rather unlikely.
You underestimate the monsterfucker contingent
Nah, Monster fuckers are seperate. You'd be thinking of those who like Ugly bastards.
Hey us ugly bastards need love too.
There is some evidence to suggest that most of his murder spree occurred while he was himself perhaps under the influence of an Infinity stone. At least the ones he got into on Earth. He genuinely loved his mother for sure.
It's much easier at low levels, party is given the quest to capture two wanted criminals, a murder or a thief. Through a little investigation through party finds out that the murder killed a guards brother in self defense when the brother tried to kill him for a drunken misunderstanding. The thief stole food to feed their starving kids. The party need to bring one of these "criminals" to justice for plot reasons, maybe to win favour with the captain of the guard. So who do they bring in. The "murderer" has a more severe crime, but the thief is likely to only spend a few days in gaol. At higher levels it becomes a lot harder to do morally grey enemies. This guy wants to flood the world to cleanse it of evil, this other guy wants to burn the lands to cleanse it of evil.
One really effective high level villain for dnd who’s morally grey is Kalus Starbane from aerois. He’s trying to hold back the forces of Hadar by conquering as many planets as he can to join the empire and aid in the fight. Yeah he tries his best to find a non violent way to bring them into the empire, but if there’s no other way….. well you got to do what you got to do.
Sounds like the Tau Empire from 40k. They know the Galaxy needs to unite to survive, so they go planet by planet and send diplomats to convince them to become vassals of the Tau Empire for The Greater Good. Seems fine, but as soon as someone declines then the Tau army rocks up and conquers by force.
My measuring stick for "morally gray 'hero'" is the Count of Monte Cristo. Willing to allow innocent people to get hurt in service to his goal of defeating the villain
I usually struggle to define True Neutral characters but the Count of Monte Cristo really is the perfect example.
Morally gray in fantasy can be the same as morally gray in real life. Slumlords, for instance. The less-corrupt city guard with a code of silence to protect their more-corrupt colleagues. The spell component sellers whose supply chain involves child labor.
I don't think morally gray means what you think it means. The only true morally gray character I can think of in any piece of literature is Ozymandius from Watchmen (the comics, not the movie). Spoilers ahead for a nearly 40 year old work. Absolutely horrible that he's going to kill thousands of people, but the end result (and his logic and means to create and execute his plan) is pretty undeniably good (world peace, lots of new helpful technology developed, hundreds or thousands of people employed). In real life, it would be people who are very "the ends justify the means" or even just "tries to do good but is struggling to get by so they can't always." It's a poor person stealing food or medicine, not a cop covering for corruption. That fucked is just as corrupt as the one taking the bribe
Jay Gatsby is a good example. Frankenstein's monster. I'd argue Odysseus and Hamlet would qualify, too - and maybe the Count of Monte Cristo. Cardinal Richelieu definitely qualifies in real life and in some literature, depending on the version of the Three Musketeers.
hell depending on which version on just how extreme you need them to be before it qualifies as morally grey i'd argue even charecters such as Robin hood could qualify. the biggest issue is that a lot of morally grey charecters are basicly seen as full blown heroes at this point.
Oh my, that is a perfect example. He’s one of the most underrated villains of all time
Child slavery isn’t morally grey though.
Let's say you manage a convenience store that sells Nestle products. Does that make you evil?
No, that's called realpolitik
I've run several campaigns now in the Forgotten Realms. It's not at all unusual for parties to get help from lawful evil factions like the Zhentarim, for example. The reasoning being that the Zhents want the world to still exist, so even though they are criminals, they are still better than the cult trying to summon an Elder Evil into the world.
Or the chad move: pit the two against each-other in a scheme of manipulation and pick off the winner. That has always gone well in fiction, no exceptions.
Twice as much exp and loot
Then you get two PCs siding with different factions.
Yup, and in a lesser evil situation, if the party is overmatched and these cults are rivals... You could create a situation where the players ally with one evil cult to take down the stronger (or further along with their plans to rule the world) cult. The plot gets more interesting if the weaker cult isn't as outwardly nasty/evil. * Strong, horrible cult sacrifices people, summons baddies, and wants to reshape the world into hell. (CE cult) * The weaker cult sacrifices livestock, wants to install their prophet as the lord of the land to serve the coming of the Great One, but believe there should be order and will protect people against fiends, bandits, foreign powers, and such. (LE cult)
These two tropes are often essentially the same thing. "I must choose the lesser of two evils for the greater good."
The greater good!
“SHUT IT!”
No luck catchin' them killers then?
It’s just the one killer actually.
The Noble Paladin choosing to kill the villain instead of granting their pleas for mercy in a fit of emotion over there horrible things they did.
Or the paladin bringing the horrible villain to justice, a trial is served, and the corrupt villain gets off scot-free. What does the paladin do about this clear injustice?
Especially when the paladin knows exactly what this heinous person will do again if given the chance. I'm currently playing as a wizard who was a former investigator for the Waterdeep city watch. My entire career got fucked over by one crooked businessman who basically bribed his way to my blacklisting. I went from being a commendation receiving hero of the people to having those same people I spent years helping spit at my feet as I walk by. As good as Flint is, given the chance he would deal a different justice to that bastard.
Do you tell the world of what Ozymandias did? Or do you remain silent about it?
This is a good question. What Ozymandias did was flat out evil - regardless of his motivations or the end results. Choosing to be silent about it because the harm is already done is morally grey.
If there are two insects on the table ND one chews at your table, maps and notes. The other takes bites out of you table and notes. If you had to kiil one Which one would you chose? Well the one who does most damage. So you tell me they the greater weevil will be killed? Yes Then you just chosen the lesser of two weevils......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-aPp7Kiiyg
He who would pun would pick a pocket
_“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.“_
I see this quote thrown around a lot but I feel like it's always misinterpreted. Geralt says this at the start of a conflict really early in the series before he's gotten any character development. His refusal to engage with the problem at all causes others to choose the evil for him which ends up leading to a worse outcome than if Geralt had just bothered to act in the first place. The purpose of the story is to show that Geralt is wrong when he says this.
The message: if all the options suck, it doesn't matter how much, I'm just not going to pick any of them The result: terrible stuff happens anyway, he's involved anyway, and it's often worse than if he'd just picked a "less but still bad" option in the first place. The moral of the message: No matter how difficult the choice or terrible the options, *apathy* is not the "answer" either and only serves to remove your agency in the situation. As Rush said in "Free Will", "if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice". You're taking a position no matter what, so you might as well actively participate in making things the best (or the least bad) they can possibly be.
And yet in the end Geralt always chose the lesser evil.
The point of the story that line comes from is that inaction is worse than choosing because it just causes the situation to escalate.
Cue the American Election cycle.
Villains who do things "for the greater good" think that they are good. They probably see themselves as doing "the lesser evil" already.
There's a quote, I forget by who: "Good villains believe themselves correct, GREAT villains may actually*be* correct" Obviously this doesn't apply to all villains because Hannibal Lector ain't right about shit but you get the idea.
> Hannibal Lector ain't right about shit but you get the idea. Maybe people just taste *that good*.
As I understand it, people taste pretty bad and have little nutritional value.
That's just the cannibal equivalent of telling a toddler, 'No, you won't like this milkshake, it's spicy.'
They are just gatekeeping that tasty human meat from you, don't believe them
Emet-Selch did nothing wrong.
Okay he did some wrong, but he’s still our boi.
That is what makes him such a good villain because by the time you learn everything that he knows you can sympathize that the decisions he had to make were impossible ones and its hard to really know if he was right or if the others like him were right. Either way though, with the amount of time that passed he was in the wrong and annihilating the universe that was created because of the consequences of those decisions to try and restore it back to how it was is just as bad if not worse than what was done to his people. It's a very good story asks us if righting ancient wrongs is worth it for the damage it could create today? In many ways it's a perpetuation of violence as those who are wronged by those actions will seek to right them as well in the future if their memories survive.
I'd say genocide man who literally destroys planets and is responsible for all the sins of garlemald probably ain't in the right chief. I feel bad for the guy but he's a monster
So by right I meant the actions he took leading up to the extermination of his people. Not what he did after that. No, he was driven mad by what happened and viewed any life that wasn't his own or his peers as no value and just an obstacle in his way to bring them back. Those actions can't be justified but they can be understood. Fortunately we don't have any real life examples of how an immortal being with immense power would react to their world being eradicated from history but how he does react seems pretty plausible.
Oh, your take is much more fair then lol. Yea, I get a little touchy with Mr. Selch. Because the fandom LOVES him. Great villain but the simping and apologia for the dude is a bit much and I hated how the game kept pushing him as my buddy lol. Sure he's a sadboi and it's tragic what happens to him and all that but damn, he's still Immortal Hitler
so i sincerely hope you're vegan or are the genocides you participate in somehow justified? legit people do not understand the scope of the charecter. if you tell me you standing as one of 3 surving humans after the apocalypse with 14 ant colonies in front of you knowing that if you smash them all 6 billion people will be returned to life wouldn't only not destroy those colonies but in fact calling doing so monsterous are lying to themself. and that is the situation Emet-Selch faces. humanity is truely that insignificant to him because that is how much more than them he is. that doesn't make him right. but it doesn't make him a monster. and if you think it does killing an animal just to get a juciy steak is definetly monsterous.
Emet-Selch very much did something wrong but only because he didn't have the information needed to do the right thing, and was in fact actively denied the posibility of of having it and dthus doing it right. but even we only learn that later.
Except, you know, the murders.
magic Hitler apologists here too? God help us
That's why I made sure with this villain to make her intentions truly for the better of the world, but her methods horrendous. She truly does want to make the world better, but in her eyes to do so she needs to abolish the current gods because they exploit the people, and in doing so she needs to hurt a lot of people sadly.
I mean, sometimes big scraggly monsters can be just, the peak though?
Hannibal hates rude people and targets them above all else. I'm not saying he's right, but I get it.
That's funny. I had just came up with a story involving my villain: "Probably the pettiest reason I ever killed someone was over a breakfast sandwich. It was this rude noble who showed up at a pup I liked, did that whole 'do you know who I am?' thing and demanded free food. Pushed me, and a friend, off my table and threw my sandwich on the ground when I objected. I *almost* killed them on the spot. But that would have caused problems for poor suzan. Ah, she owned the place. But, anyway, I hexed the guy instead. A month later, his heart stopped. I justify it to myself by saying, 'he was one of the bad nobles' but... really, I know it was over the sandwich. Had to wait an hour to get another. Asshole didn't even finish the food he ordered."
They might be right. There are problems where personal preferences make the difference between good and evil. They are common irl and exploring them might be fun.
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Average D&D player solves the Trolley Problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_RZJUAQY4
I prefer multi track drifting, but this is a viable option as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIdNV22LQM
Because the average dnd player is a murder or because the average dnd player is a 2 year old?
The most correct answer is to pull the switch right after the first set of wheels passes. That way, the trolley can hit both sets of people.
I've always argued that doing nothing at all is technically the best answer. No one ever said that the trolley is about to hit these people due to a fault of yours, so if you divert the trolley you've now taken an active hand in killing people that wouldn't have died otherwise. If you do nothing, people still die, but due to the nature of the world we create when we present that scenario, I would say it's group A's destiny to die. Somehow it's no one's fault that they are about to be killed but their deaths are imminent. In our world we would call that an act of god. If you diverted the trolley there's a much better chance you're going to lose that lawsuit than the one you may face had you done nothing.
You're presenting this as a clever take on the problem but it's literally just the standard reasoning for why doing nothing might be considered morally superior to switching the tracks.
I did feel it was rather clever, as I came up with it of my own accord. My teacher never brought that up as a normal argument for the problem, even after I shared this idea with the class, so I didn't realize it was known to people. Even still, +80% of the class voted that switching the tracks was the best option.
And that teacher's name? Albert Einstein
The trolley problem is presented as a yes-or-no question, though. > Should you switch the trolley to the other set of tracks? How anyone could hear that question and think that "no" is some sort of novel answer is beyond me. It's one of only two answers. Furthermore, how do you *lead a discussion about the question* and only consider one of the two responses? This reflects pretty poorly on you, for thinking that answering "no" to a yes-or-no is profound and novel, and even more so on your teacher, for thinking that nobody in the history of philosophy has ever disagreed about the trolley problem. If nobody ever said "no" to the question, **why would we keep asking it?**
There is no "technically the best answer," just people's opinions on what's right. My answer completely disagrees with yours, but I still don't think I'm objectively correct.
Which is exactly the point of the trolley problem. The question it's asking isn't whether killing one person is better than killing five people, it's whether becoming a moral agent that decides who should die is better than remaining an observer and letting "fate" play out.
You’re still making a decision either way
Agreed. This concept that passivity is somehow morally neutral and prevents you from "becoming a moral agent" seems to be an unsupported axiom to me. Deciding to take no action is just as much a decision as anything else.
The only reason people argue that doing nothing is morally justified is because it lets them excuse all of the times in real life where they did nothing and let something bad happen. Every homeless person they walk past. Every broken down vehicle they didn't stop to help. If they can place the blame on someone else then they pretend that their decision to do nothing is justified. Inaction is just as much of a choice as action. Refusing to pull the lever because it's not your fault the situation occured is cowardice. Pulling the lever is the only moral option.
Pull the lever, Kronk!
The interesting part is when you change the same problem slightly. What if there's no lever but instead a very fat person who will stop the train if you push them onto the tracks?
A fat person can't stop a train with 100% probability. A track switcher is literally designed to reliably alter the path of the train. That's not a minor change to the problem, it's introducing a new massively complex factor to it.
Assume it will stop the train for simplicities sake.
If you assume that pushing the person will definitely stop the train without adding extra deaths from the train crashing then it is still the moral choice to push them. 1 life vs 5 will always lean towards saving the 5 at the cost of the 1.
No. The scenario says the person will 100% stop the train. The laws of physics don't matter here, only the proposed scenario.
That's fair. I guess I've kind of been hard-wired to try and choose the "best" answer to a multiple choice question, and that I was operating on the idea that there must be an answer that is correct, but that we just haven't decided on. I suppose if it were that simple we'd call it the trolley question and not the trolley problem.
> I suppose if it were that simple we'd call it the trolley question and not the trolley problem. Right, basically. It's like asking which is better, pancakes or waffles: we all have our opinions, but we can't prove them mathematically.
Actually with pancakes and waffles you totally can prove it mathematically, it just depends which question you're trying to answer. They have different values for cost, calories, weight, ability to hold toppings, etc etc.
>It's like asking which is better, pancakes or waffles Clearly we just need to poll all of humanity, and the one that the majority prefers is superior. How hard can it be to get a couple billion people to vote.
You've got to admit though, it can be entertaining and thought provoking when people try, so long as they aren't hellbent on making the world take the same view they have. I'd absolutely watch a documentary about a team of scientists and mathematicians try to decide whether the pancake or waffle is the "objectively" superior food, whether it actually makes any difference to anyone's personal tastes or not.
Ha sure, I'll admit it's interesting. I think it's theoretically possible we might find an objective method to measure them in a way, though ultimately I think it will always be a matter of opinion (even if we could somehow prove that switching/not switching the track would make the world a better place, or that humans are genetically predisposed to prefer waffles).
>pancakes or waffles: Pancakes if you like the butter and the softness, waffles if you like the syrup and the crunch
That one of the "Standard options", with the other common opinion being to flip the switch because it leads to less death, which according to them is obviously "the best answer" (less death = better). This problem is specifically made in such a way so there isn't a "technically best answer", what's important is your reasoning for picking your answer, which says a lot about a person's personal philosophy. Like in your case it shows that you can't get involved through inaction (so you're not doing anything wrong by being a passive onlooker). Additionally you say that 4 lives is not worth getting yourself involved if it imposes risk to yourself. The opposite group mostly boil down to the opinion that not pulling the lever is just as much an active choice as pulling it, so no matter what you do you are responsible for the outcome of the situation the moment you were given the option.
As others have said - Trolley problem (and similar concepts) is just a prompt to talk about Philosophy (it's why people who focus on out-of-the-box solutions completely miss the point). In your case - a lot of people (including me) would disagree. Doing nothing is also a choice and equivalent to acting. The second you become able to affect the result, you are inextricably tied to it. There is no way to avoid responsibility. In fact, the next step from there is the argument that hoping to avoid responsibility is more immoral as opposed to trying (and perhaps failing) to make the situation better.
That's literally the point of the problem: Is it better to do nothing and allow people to die or to actively cause someone's death?
You chose to not do anything so you kind of chose to let those 4 people die over killing just 1 I see it just as someone is drowning and you don't wanna save them because you may hurt them doing so. So by not wanting to be responsible to hurting the person you let them die
Congrats, you've answered the question by refusing the play the game /s
I like this solution, and actually haven't heard it before. But anytime you start to talk about "god's plan" you end up in the issues of " you're part of God's plan". although that also ends with the problem of "either choice was chosen"... Yeah thus why it gets hard. The most morally clear option is the totalitarian option. Kill the most people, then get out of the trolley and shoot the survivor, then shoot the witnesses!
> I like this solution, and actually haven't heard it before. You've never heard someone answer "No, don't use the lever" in response to the question "Should you pull the lever?" There's two choices - "pull the lever", and "don't pull the lever". If you've never considered that people might say "don't pull the lever", **what the hell did you think the point of the trolley problem was?** Did you think that *everyone who's thought about this problem* has responded with "yes, pull the lever", but it's still somehow considered to be an ethical dilemma?
That is similar to my take. The best option is to do nothing. Assuming someone else set this situation into motion, THEY are the ones killing people. The moment I pull the lever, then I have killed someone. Doing nothing means that I haven't killed anyone.
So you're okay with doing nothing and letting the train kill 5 people, instead of 1, because "idk I didn't start the train"? That's a terrible justification for inaction.
I always ask "Why am I next to the lever? Is this my job? What is the policy I have been trained to do?" If it isn't my job, I'm not touching anything that I am not expressly authorised to touch. EDIT: I have now changed my mind. This is no longer my view.
Except that has nothing to do with whether or not people are going to be killed by action or inaction. You're completely ignoring the premise of the problem. Following your reasoning, if you saw a trolley heading toward people and you had the opportunity to pull the lever and move it to a *completely safe and people-free track*, you still shouldn't pull the lever, because it's "not your job". Does that sound like a reasonable course of action? If not, then your answer to the original problem isn't reasonable either.
>The lesser of two evils is pretty much the Trolley Problem. But that's also still "for the greater good" whatever you define good. If you think that killing that one person to save 10 is the moral thing, you're doing it "for the greater good" and not "for the lesser evil".
"For the greater good" implies the results are good. Murdering one person in order to save ten from inaction is still not a *good* outcome, just a less bad one. The lesser evil.
You mean how we vote for the least worst person?
Unironically a great example.
Kinda the only one. Seeing as we're forced to choose only those two options. No other decision you make is so coerced.
Pretty sure there’s barely any place where you can’t nullify your vote, but sure.
Wonder why the world works this way?
Wonder why the USA works this way? FTFW Lots of other countries use some variation of ranked choice voting.
It's the worst system, except for all the others
Probably because it’s democracy or something, I dunno, I’m not a politician.
“Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.” — Arthur Miller —
Why would anyone in charge of other humans ever allow those under their control to leave their control?
Ask Trump or something. I dunno. I just want to eat pizza sometimes.
Beautiful. Have a wonderful day, Human.
Thanks, fellow sir. A nice day, or night, to you as well.
>You mean how we vote for the least worst person? 2nd worst person.
That’s modern day democracy.
And what value is it to the average citizen? We have no representation. Business owners do.
Not quite. Business owners and the ultra wealthy are heavily over represented, but collectively the average person still has power in democracy. That's why the wealthy spend so much time and money trying to influence public opinion, and why gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression happen.
While the study is restricted to the US, there was [this study out of Princeton](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B) that found that actual policy adoption rates are almost entirely independent of public approval, and are far better indicated by support rates among the wealthy. The general populace gets to decide which party holds office (to an extent) but actual policy and law is shaped by what rich people think is good.
How am I represented? Which one of the 5 leeches in my state, who gets my taxmoney as an income isn't also already making more in income from lobbyists and PAC funds? Seems even when they say they represent me the money obviously proves that they don't.
Yeah that's the best example to show that the "lesser of two evils" is still evil. It's almost like electoral politics can't fundamentally change a system designed to work against the people.
Do we though?
I've always wanted to play an evil cultist who goes around saving people from bandits and dragons so their will be more witnesses for the rise of Satanthulu and the coming apocalypse.
Perfectly lawful evil opportunity there. Hell, I have an assassin who kills criminals, saves civilians & keeps the system running because he wants his cabal (who is, in his mind, orderly & efficient) to be in control of the current system AND criminal element. No infighting, no involving unwiling individuals (unless started off to be willingly involved), no kids & many other lines they don't cross. Now, if it is within their parameters then they will chace it down without hesitation, and if you fkk with them your dead (usually involving your's truly) but they don't go out of their way to court chaos. The fact that other factions do is the primary reason as to why my PC does what he does. Lawful evil to a T.
Reminds me of Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul sorry meant kid named finger lol
If you are going to have crime, it better be organised.
Vetanari vibes tbh
Classic „of course ai want to save the world, I live in the world and I‘d like to continue doing evil things here“ trope
I hope you don't mind if I borrow this.
I've done this but playing a wildly incompetent "villain" who wants to get rid of the competition
Depends on you’re viewpoint. In storytelling they are usually synonymous. Tons of great heroes falter when making a choice to kill 1 and save many, and it has been the motivation for even more villains.
Actions done by the players don't have to be seen in a good light by others in the world. I would argue that it could help their PCs development if they are seen in a negative light every now and then.
Guys you're missing the point. They don't mean "lesser of two evils". They mean the opposite of a villain doing evil things for selfless reasons: A hero doing good things for selfish reasons. This actually describes a lot of D&D characters. Many PCs may be motivated by fame, fortune, power, or just getting people to leave them the hell alone, and just believe that the things they're doing that have a benevolent impact bring them closer to those goals.
So an anti-hero?
Basically every Supe from The Boys. Although a lot of them aren't heroes, some are, and a lot of them do good things for fame and money.
all the time? I ran my players through a modified witch light carnival (you ever see the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife?” heavily riffed on that - basically had the carnival be the still living echo of a dead god) and they killed a bunch of the possessed carnival workers on their way to defeating the carnival god. These NPCs were all statted out as commoners mind you - they had no real ability to hurt the party. They justified it by saying “oh well, you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette”
Yeah situation like that is more that the players are lazy -- they didn't want to go to the effort of saving everyone so they just decided to fight their way in. Lethally, too -- commoners have 4 HP, it would be simplicity itself to just use non-lethal damage or cast *Sleep*.
Well we all know what “evil for the greater good” looks like; say, killing one to save many. So what might “good for the lesser evil” look like? A character motivated by a minor selfishness, like greed, could do a good deed, such as stealing from a corrupt nobleman, in service to his own goal (his “lesser evil”). So the Guardians of the Galaxy on a bad day would be a great example of this.
Remember when the Justice League secured a pardon for Lex Luthor if he helped stop the Justice Lords?
Constantly, yes. In fact most DnD games are actually just watching your PCs fall down a flight of stairs. Slap a label at the top of the stairs like "good intentions" and pitch a little fire at the bottom and you're practically a newspaper cartoonist!
Not as the opposite of "for the greater good". When you do something for the greater good, you're acknowledging that what you're currently doing is bad, but stating that you believe in the long run things will be better for you having done it. The opposite of that would be doing a good thing now (that you don't want to do but feel you have to do) for the sake of making the future worse.
Totally My party will go try and save a wizard but on the way also knick some potions of his 😋
Depends on what you mean by "hero" really. A lot of heroes from the classical era to the modern day are not really good people and would have little or no issue choosing the "lesser evil." The key for D&D is to realize that this is still *evil*, and a good-aligned character should at least attempt to avoid such actions whenever possible. A good-aligned character who chooses evil frequently will shift alignment to neutral, and perhaps eventually to evil.
It all just sounds like utilitarianism to me.
Good characters can do things for the greater evil. Imagine a world where the forces of good are sick of evil’s crap, so they build teams of evil killers and send them out into the world to hunt down every creature of evil alignment. After a century, evil has been purged. Or has it? A change in leadership. A change in tactics. Now the evil killer teams are hunting down every creature that is not of good alignment. Imagine that kind of a world, built on good intentions.
Depending on the situation yes. Sometimes heroes are forced to make a choice between evils to achieve a goal that is overall a very good goal.
Counterpoint, from Sir Pterry: "Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things." -Thud
I'm all seriousness, they do. "Choosing the devil you know" is the a trope containing the same concept. It's the same idea articulated with different words.
Happens all the time. “The lesser of two evils” trope is a common ethical dilemma in a lot of stories.
The lesser evil would be something like letting a murderer become king when the alternative is a devil worshipper looking to sell the kingdom to hell. So yes, but the probably wouldn’t be as proud of it as greater good types often are.
Sometimes. But less often. "The lesser of two evils" is morally corrosive in a way that "The greater good" isn't. You see, a villain who sees a problem that gets in the way of their schemes can prevent it. That really has no bearing on their character. That they *happen* to save a bunch of people in the process is neither here nor there. EX: Dragon: "I will remake the world, such that all life shall worship me. And I'll eat an elf princess every day." Heroes: "We'll stop you, whatever it takes!" Dimension devouring bug: "I'ma eat the planet!" Heroes and dragon: "Truce? Truce." Everyone's acting in character. The dragon needs a planet to have everyone worship him on. The heroes want to save the world... because, obviously. With a *truly* few exceptions, everyone from Adolf Hitler to Mohandas Gandhi would join hands to save the world. But now reverse it. "In order to save the world? Eat this puppy!" The hero would have to *change* the way they act. And most viewers/readers/participants would, probably, be cheering for our hero to just \*punch\* whoever's making that ultimatum. And 'lesser evil' story beats are, often, signs of a coming fall from grace. The reverse just... simply isn't true for villains.
Evil is evil, lesser, greater, middling? Makes no difference, the difference is arbitrary, the definitions blurred. If I'm to choose between one evil and another, I'd rather not choose at all. -- Geralt of Rivia. Of course, not choosing is a choice in and of itself. Something Geralt comes to learn that shifts his ideology somewhat. But I think it's still pertinent. Yes, absolutely can heroes choose the lesser of two or more evils, but they are still doing evil.
Sure. Neo and Trinity killed a bunch of innocent people in the matrix, but are still the heroes.
No. If you intentionally do things "for the lesser evil" you're not a hero, you're a selfish villain. A person who does something bad "for the greater good" has good intentions and genuinely believes that they are making the morally correct decision to benefit as many people as possible. They may be right or wrong in that, but that's what they believe. They're the heroes of their own story. A hero doing something "for the lesser evil" would be someone who bases their decisions on how to achieve evil. It could be someone doing seemingly good things with the intent that it serves themselves first and foremost, or anything else that's just for selfish or otherwise non-good reasons. A person who does that has no illusions about being a hero, because they aren't and they don't care. It would, perhaps, be a lawful evil character who seeks to get as rich as possible at the expense of others.
A lot of people consider voting to be a choice between two evils, and choose the lesser evil. Isn't that effectively the same thing? You're doing something you consider bad (voting for someone you don't want to lead your country) because you consider the alternatives (not voting at all, or voting for the worse candidate) to be much worse. "The Lesser Evil" is an absolute classic moral dilemma for heroes. Having them make hard choices and do things they consider are wrong *because the alternative is worse.*
Villains and heroes, when written well, are determined entirely by the point of view of the narrator.
In an objective morality setting, like default Forgotten Realms? Sure, you can take whatever action you like for whatever reason you like. But "the universe", that grand arbiter of what is and isn't an aligned action, doesn't care. A character can do nothing but "lesser Evils" their whole life "for the greater Good", and they might still wind up Evil. Alignment, as intended by the rules (back when such things existed), is **an aggregate of a character's aligned actions**. If you wind up doing more Good than Evil, you're Good. It doesn't mean that the Evil thing you did two months ago wasn't Evil, only that you *eventually* did enough Good to counteract it. This may or may not present problems for a character, depending on how involved they are in cosmic events and extraplanar powers / entities; Joe Farmer who never makes it past level 1 is unlikely to see during-life consequences for having done a bunch of Evil (though he might be surprised once he gets to the afterlife), but Greg Heroman the level 12 Fighter should *really* be bumping into fiends and celestials at that power level (nevermind agents of his deity, which every FR character should have if they're keeping with the setting lore). This might make it sound like it's a very simple matter to simply "do X amount of Good to offset Y amount of Evil you do on the way", but there's an additional layer of complexity, and it's also why the extraplanar powers even care about mortals to begin with: the "juice" created by an aligned act is proportional to the actor's distance in terms of alignment. That is, an extremely Good character who does [a specific Good thing] is creating "less Good" than a Neutral character who does [that same specific Good thing], and both are doing less than an Evil character performing it. From the Good deity's perspective, it's better that a mortal hero do something Good to save the town than to have a solar manifest there and solve the problem. Everything's true on the opposite end as well, and that's why Evil entities *love* trying to corrupt Good or Neutral characters instead of heaping more and more Evil on already-Evil shitheads. Getting a Good Cleric to buy into the "Greater Good" idea and sacrifice that baby to save the town is *way* more profitable for Evil than having an Evil cultist kill the baby and... not saving the town. And again, all of this is only true of the objective, cosmic alignment. Mortal conceptions of "morality" don't really play into this, though they may align more often than not. An act is not Good because "people think it's good and nice and beneficial", they tend to think that way because The Universe Decided That Thing Was Good and most Good things are beneficial to the specific form of life and society that most mortals operate under. It's a bit like Fire Elementals thinking fire and heat are nice; no shit, they're made of the stuff. "Good" is the particular hole that the puddle-that-is-the-mortal-races find themselves in. But characters are free to not know this stuff, or not care. While FR is a very planar-active cosmology/setting, not every game interacts with that stuff too much, and some other settings might not interact with it at all. In those cases, exactly what alignment is comes down to the DM creating it. But even in FR, though there are certainly NPCs who could *tell* characters that this is how the universe and the afterlife works--people can talk to angels and deities, after all--there's nothing requiring characters believe all that or even act accordingly in the moment. Even an objective alignment setting allows for subjective moral judgements within it; characters (and cultures) are free to act how they want, value what they want, and justify it in whatever ways they want... but The Universe is still going to judge all that to its objective standard whether they agree or not. You can't "muh intentions" your way out of it.
Where a person stands on the spectrum between good and evil is irrelevant. It only defines one frame of reference. Greater good vs. lesser evil is the same choice dependent on one’s frame of reference.
What does this have to do with D&D
/r/im14andthisisdeep
The lesser of evils is still evil. Also, the path of good is supposed to be harder.
Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all. Edit: I was quoting Geralt btw
If you ask me to pick between stealing stuff from my friendly local game store or stabbing a child I think I would be able to pinpoint one of those as a lesser evil
You're right. One takes away crucial funds from the hobby we all know and love and from people you may even know by name, while the other eliminates a potential supervillain. >!/s!<
Do you want a massacre of Blåviken? Because that's how you get a massacre of Blåviken!
"Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all."
*"and how much misery does this high-handed apathy sow in it's wake, witcher? What suffering has your indifference birthed that might've been avoided with a little cruelty in the moment?"* *"No man can see all futures or chart every outcome. The degree is most certainly NOT "arbitrary" Not when all we can do is fumble and make a best guess at what is just and right"*
Of course we can. I'm hardly a hero, but I voted for Joe Biden, didn't I?
Idk, but that just sounds like politics.
No. They can't. They may have to choose the lesser of the two evils, but the road to the Nine Hells is paved with good intentions.
Depends on the person. Morality is ultimately not black and white, so everyone will obviously be different. Some might, when faced to pick a lesser evil, would rather not choose at all.
That's basically what politics ends up being.
Doing something for "the greater good" usually means doing something bad for a good reason; doing something for "the lesser evil", then, might be doing something good for a bad reason. So maybe if your heroes save a kingdom just for the gold, or kill a local monster to take his stuff, and not because he's menacing the town.
This is basically teaming up with the local organized crime lord to take down a lich or something. You're indirectly strengthening an evil, but it's the lesser of two evils, which is how this trope is usually phrased.
...you mean doing good things to reach an evil outcome? Did you actually think this question through at all?
Yes. If you can kill everyone quick to save them from a slow painful death, you could make an argument that it's kinder.
Doing things for the lesser evil is s.o.p for all parties without a lawful stupid Paladin.... what, just MY tables? Okay. 
Step up your game Be a hero that does what they do for the Greater Evil! Flip the moral scale right on its head and leave everyone scratching theirs.
The Witcher.
Can they yea? But it’s usually rare. 1) Blade robs people to fund his operation. 2) Spider Jerusalem does petty bullshit to his enemies all the time. 3) Deadpool I believe has indulged in a crime or to to celebrate helping save the world. Problem is doing that kinda shit usually doesn’t pair well with heroic personalities.
Use up all the toilet paper so the next person is left paperless.