Axis of Actions

[Captnq]

I'm putting this in it's own thread because I can then refer to it later with greater ease. It is a discussion about the underlying nature of actions.

There are three axis on which an action can be judged.

Intent (Right - Wrong)
Morality (Good - Evil)
Legality (Permitted - Prevented)

Intent is completely subjective and internalized. It is normally parallel to morality, but does not need to be.

Morality is based on the agreement of the society that the individual dwells in. While there can be some consensus, the axis of morality does drift based on the changing times and demographics of a society. Therefore morality has some grey areas and can be considered partially subjective.

Legality is objective almost. Unfortunately, communication can be nailed down fairly well, but there is always some room for argument. The goal of legality is to be completely objective and go ONLY with what is WRITTEN (or however the rules are codified). The goal is to make something that is not normally changed. A set of rules or laws that define what is allowed and what is not permitted.


1. Intent - An individuals intent is often based on his personal perceptions. Normally murder is wrong. However, an individual can come to the conclusion that one murder may be "right" if the outcome is "right". The classic example is:

You are on a bridge. A train car is rolling towards a group of school children on the track. They are tied down and cannot escape. There is a very fat 800 pound man next to you. If you shoulder check him onto the track, it WILL stop the train, but it WILL kill him. If you do nothing, the children all die. There is no other choices besides push or don't push for purposes of this example.

How do you choose and what choice do you make?

In the end, it boils down to what the person thinks is right or wrong. Another case:

You know you are prone to hallucinations on Tuesday. You lost track of the date and it might be monday or tuesday, you have no idea of which day of the week it is. You might be murdering a man for no reason. Do you do it? What about if you don't know which day of the week it is? At what point does the statistical chance of none of this being real do you not take the risk?

It's this sort of situation that helps to understand a personal axis of intent. The goal is to do "right", but for most people it is hard to define. You can only split hairs so much until you come up to the point where you simply aren't sure and you just flip a coin.


2. Morality is defined by the society in which we dwell. For example, murder is usually wrong. However, killing witches might be the right thing to do in some cultures. Some nazi's individually thought murdering jews was wrong, but the morality of the society they were in told them otherwise. This is a case of the individual basing his internal axis off the Society's axis and simply choosing to go with the group because of his inability to make a choice on his own. It's more complicated then that, but I'm simplifying for the sake of space.

This is what determines good and evil. Now in D&D, we view these forces as Objective when in the real word it's subjective. This is the major point of conflict with the game system and ruling what is good or evil. Something I'll get back to in another post.


3. Finally, we come down to legality, or the rules.

Notice I use the terms permitted and prevented. Legality does not always have to be enforced, and at times is ignored. Rules that are written and ignored are termed as corruption. This usually has a bad connotation, but not always is a bad thing. Ignoring an unjust rule is corruption of the system, but it does not make it "bad". But corruption is not the same thing as judging.

A system where multiple sides of a case are argued for and against, then a third party passes "judgement" is part of the system, not a corruption of it.

For example, I can argue that "X is Y", and someone can argue "X is NOT Y". If everyone just ignores that "X is Y", then that is corruption. But if a judge, someone part of the system says, "X is NOT Y", then the system changes and adapts. The rules change and what is legal and illegal are redefined. This is the system working, not corruption.

Also, this runs into the problem that laws are nothing more then an attempt to codify morality. No amount of writing can ever equal the complexity of human thought. The problem is that, as a society, we believe that every situation can be defined, if we just have enough time, paper, and "if-than" statements. If we ever succeeded in making a legal system that actually was flawless, I imagine it would be like an AI that existed on paper.



I have to get to work, so I'll get back to this later. But I will leave you with this:

Should 3.5 be seen in terms of Legality, with only Individual DMs being the ones to choose what rules are altered and changed? Thus "Federal laws" are always superseded by "Local Laws"?

Should we have a "higher court" where individual rules can be argued and discussed with a panel of experts who choose what the final ruling of something is?

Should D&D be viewed in terms of "Lawyer/Legality" or in terms of "English/Morality"?



I got to go. Later.

[IlPazzo]

Wow, that is a long textwall.
I see this argument arose from another thread.
However, I would like to point something that is both RAW, RAI and common sense, about 3.5 .

[the DM is] the final arbiter of  the rules within the game

Then it goes on with suggestions on how to be a good DM (or a good player) by not arguing too much about rules and sticking to what is the common sense at your gaming table, discussing everything in a peaceful manner. As it is a game.

With that being said, let's generalize to a broader community, like this one: there is no "DM", here, so nobody gets to decide who is right and who is wrong about a rule argument. There are, however, common sense and, most importantly, politeness.

What I want to say is that, being there no judge to decide who is right, if everyone else tells you you're wrong, you shouldn't make an argument of that. You don't agree with what everyone else say? Fine. Just ignore them. There is no point starting a flamewar over such a thing.


Now to answer your question of how the game should be... it's a game, the only rule that should always be followed is fun.
That may sound childish but it's not.

Disclaimer: I always see arguments on "lawyer language/logic" vs "scientist language/logic" vs "common language/logic" because of family reasons. Sometimes the best thing to do is not to decide who is right and who is wrong, as that won't matter, like in your case.

[Amechra]

Well, to use your terms:

(For the sake of brevity, I will be using acronyms; henceforth, AL is defined as "Axis of Legality", AM is "Axis of Morality", and AI is "Axis of Intent". Additionally, each category is to be understood as being from a player's perspective - they would, by necessity, be different from the perspective of the DM or the people who wrote the game.)

1. The game rules themselves act on the AL (as a "code of law").
2. The DM acts on both the AM (as upholder of the game's social construct) and on the AL (as arbiter of the rules).
3. The players act on both the AI (as arbiter of their character's actions) and the AM (as upholders of the game's social construct).

OOC problems arise when someone either fails to act on one of the axes OR acts on an axis they aren't supposed to act on. For example, a rules-lawyer is a player that acts on the AL, a DM is railroading when they act on the AI, a rule is bad if it fails to act on the AL in a way that makes sense, a player is an jerk if they fail to act on the AM, a DM is poor if they fail to act on the AL, and so on.

This is not to say that acting on a "wrong" axis is a route to guaranteed failure; any party that already acts on that axis can extend access to a different party (asking the DM or a fellow player to help you make a decision, the DM asking one of the players to be in charge of a subset of rules, and so on and so forth.)

An interesting observation is that a game doesn't actually need to have all three of the above roles; it just needs to have at least one party acting on each axis. So you could remove 1 (having a game without codified rules) or 2 (having a game without a DM); while this might require some rejiggering, it is certainly doable. However, removal of 3 causes the game (at least, as a group exercise) to fail miserably; playing a "solitaire" game simply requires the single player to act as both 2 and 3 (or requires using a pre-generated aid to "act as" 2).

Another observation is that a healthy game dynamic "filters" through the levels; if a player wants a rule to change, they approach the DM. Similarly, if the DM or a player has an issue with an in-game choice another player made, they approach them. It is vital to note that, while each party can only act on 1~2 axes, they can be acted ON through all of them.


So, to answer your "stuff to think about":

1. The first question is already covered by the role of the DM as an arbiter of unclear or undesired rules; they act on the proper axis. Now, if they revise a rule in such a way that it annoys or offends a player, that player can act on the AM to get them to reconsider. (So that's a "Yes, with the caveat that the 'local law' is subject to critique by the party.")

2. The second question is actually nonsensical; any ruling made by such a panel of experts would, logically, fall in category 1 above, and would therefore be superseded by the DM (unlike in an actual legal system, where the categories are divided very differently). It's equivalent to asking "Should the rules be well-written in the first place?" (Also, how would such a panel of experts be picked?)

3. The third question is, I think, based on an erroneous belief that "lawyer English" and "English" are conceptually distinct. You see, when a lawyer argues a technicality, what they are actually doing is arguing that the intent of the law does not cover that situation. This is why precedent is so important in legal systems; it helps the judge determine whether the intent of the law is applicable in this situation (which in turn tweaks the future applicability, and so on and so forth.)

In the microcosm of the game, the rules should be read in a way that gives you the most reasonable intent. If a rule is well-written, the intent will clearly flow from the text itself; if a rule is poorly written, and produces a nonsensical or ambiguous "RAW", interpretation is required. Now, at the table the DM works to pick up any slack left by "bad" rules; however, on forums such as these we have to invent a DM "system" that can pull off that arbitration for us.

Generally, we design one that reads the rules literally (with some small, agreed-on rule tweaks) - this causes the breakdown we refer to as TO, where rules that would normally be revised or disallowed are applied to devastating effect (You can actually do this with any sufficiently heavy system; D&D is just a game whose rules have been the most heavily dissected.)


Some other little tidbits that I couldn't fit in the body of the post:

Wow, RPGs are very much a theocracy; you've got one or two guys handling both the laws and arbitrating moral right and moral wrong. Huh.

Rule 0 is not technically a fallacy; it's only a bad idea because it overloads the DM, and because it reflects a failure to act on the AL on the part of the game rules. So bad idea, not fallacy.

"But wait, aren't players supposed to know the rules? Otherwise, the game gets so bogged down." and "What, players aren't allowed to know the rules? WTF!" are some responses I expect to get due to how I categorized things. I would just like to say right now that my categories only cover who has the ability to decide stuff on a given axis.

Ideally, players should know at least the rules necessary to play their character, just like how a private citizen should have an idea of what laws apply to them - however, they don't have the ability to decide whether something is rules-legal or not. Similarly, the DM should be aware of what any given player wants to do in-game, but can't decide what their character does without some permission.

Yes, this makes rules that allow the DM to claim a player's character by Imminent Domain (Imminent Actor?) bad unless they are ultimately an outcome of player intent. This applies to both removing a character from the game (killing someone's character) and abruptly converting a PC into an NPC.

[Unbeliever]

I can appreciate the desire to fix terms for a discussion, but virtually everything the OP says about the meanings of Intent, Morality, and Law is well ... wrong.  Or, at the very least controversial and non-obvious. 

It's a lot of throat clearing, and inflammatory throat clearing at that, just to get to question about table rules v. book rules. 

Amechra, I think, mostly has the right of it, especially the ability of internal critique.  You can, after all, always leave, though that naturally comes with its costs.  The game rule provide necessary structure, backbone, and language.  But, they are themselves highly imperfect and often vague.  It's part of the (fun) difference between in person RPG and computer game.  So, you can't stray too far from them without it seeming inconsistent, weird, or nonsensical.


P.S.:  it's "eminent" domain.

[Amechra]

It's imminent when I do it! 

Thanks though (I can never get that right.)

Realistically, though, the OP's questions are going to be controversial regardless of what terminology he brings in (and some of us like coining fancy terms.)

[Unbeliever]

I know it's pedantic, but it's how we do. 

I have a kind of kneejerk anti-jargon reaction.  To some extent jargon is unavoidable, but I find it often obscures rather than clarifies.  The OP is a pretty good example, actually.  I was too busy worrying about intention and socially derived morality and trolley problems that by the time I got to the actual questions I was completely distracted.

[Amechra]

To be fair, I've used set theory in forum arguments before (hey, it was the fastest way to get my point across!) So I have no right to complain about coining terms. Though I have noticed that Captnq has a tendency to like coining terms in rambly ways (talking about zones of control in context of 3.5).

He also stacked the trolley problem and didn't provide the full context (it isn't about whether that murder is "good" or not; it's all about whether your intentional murder is worse than the incidental murders (the deaths caused by you not doing anything.)) But that's beside the point.

To be entirely fair, I skimmed the first post and then went back to read after the "supreme court of D&D" question (which was phrased in a bit of a silly way.) Also, most of my (too long) response isn't D&D-specific; my own arguments reminded me of something Vincent Baker wrote about how he designed Apocalypse World.

Namely, he talked about concentric game design; in other words, his game is built in a layered fashion, where you can lose higher layers without the whole thing being unplayable (vice versa isn't true, though). I'd suggest giving it a read; it's short and sweet.

Now, how is that relevant? D&D is also written that way. Ultimately, as long as you remember that you roll d20 + modifier, have a few "typical" DCs memorized, and have an adventure idea, you have everything you need to DM. Everything that stacks on top of that only exists to make your life easier.

Heck, all you need to play an RPG, period, is some rules (no matter how rudimentary), a DM (or equivalent), and some players. Everything else is gravy. Fun gravy, tasty even, but gravy all the same - and gravy isn't a meal.

[Unbeliever]

Mostly, I think I was bitching about using terms that already have contested, but important definitions.  It's one thing to fix relatively technical terms, or to import relatively technical or obscure ones by way of metaphor, etc. to elucidate a point.  But, whole books deal with the question of whether morality is socially determined, etc. 

re:  a Supreme Court of D&D:  given the lack of any authority worth referencing, it's likely to be something like consensus or persuasiveness of the account being proposed.  So, very democratic, then? 

I looked at the concentric game design.  That seems largely true, although the big thing that seems missing to me is the character creation bit.  Character creation can range from very simple to very complicated.  D&D's is pretty complicated, it'd be fair to characterize it as a mini-game unto itself.  But, I think, you need to include just how players can tell the game what they want to do and who their avatars are. 


P.S.:  damn you Amechra for linking me to that website since now I'm intrigued by Apocalypse World.  I usually don't love lightish games b/c I feel like they don't have as much room to play around in.  If that makes any sense.  But, this seems intriguing and not as restrictive as my previous forays.

[Fredgerd]

Intent (Right - Wrong)

Intent is completely subjective and internalized. It is normally parallel to morality, but does not need to be.

1. Intent - An individuals intent is often based on his personal perceptions. Normally murder is wrong. However, an individual can come to the conclusion that one murder may be "right" if the outcome is "right". The classic example is:

You are on a bridge. A train car is rolling towards a group of school children on the track. They are tied down and cannot escape. There is a very fat 800 pound man next to you. If you shoulder check him onto the track, it WILL stop the train, but it WILL kill him. If you do nothing, the children all die. There is no other choices besides push or don't push for purposes of this example.

How do you choose and what choice do you make?

In the end, it boils down to what the person thinks is right or wrong. Another case:

You know you are prone to hallucinations on Tuesday. You lost track of the date and it might be monday or tuesday, you have no idea of which day of the week it is. You might be murdering a man for no reason. Do you do it? What about if you don't know which day of the week it is? At what point does the statistical chance of none of this being real do you not take the risk?

It's this sort of situation that helps to understand a personal axis of intent. The goal is to do "right", but for most people it is hard to define. You can only split hairs so much until you come up to the point where you simply aren't sure and you just flip a coin.

I think what you are referring to with personal judgements of right and wrong action would be more correctly labeled as Ethics. The reason this distinction is important is that in many ethical schools of thought, intent does or does not factor into the right/wrongness of an action in various ways. For instance, some schools of thought (vanilla Bentham utilitarianism for instance) argue that the intent is irrelevant to the good or badness of an action and that only outcomes matter. Furthermore, Moral and Legal systems often factor intent in to the sentencing for crimes (such as the distinction between premeditated murder, 2nd degree murder and manslaughter in the U.S.)

[Amechra]

I looked at the concentric game design.  That seems largely true, although the big thing that seems missing to me is the character creation bit.  Character creation can range from very simple to very complicated.  D&D's is pretty complicated, it'd be fair to characterize it as a mini-game unto itself.  But, I think, you need to include just how players can tell the game what they want to do and who their avatars are.

If you've ever looked at Apocalypse World or its derivatives, character building is basically a checklist; you grab the booklet with your "class", pick one of 4 stat distributions, and check off two "moves". The games are based around creating a very focused game experience, after all. Still took my group an hour to build their Dungeon World characters.

But yeah, he left that bit out; it'd probably be on "the table", to use his example.

(Do you want to continue discussing game design theory stuff? If so, I'll probably start up a new thread to stop derailing this one.)

[Unbeliever]

(Do you want to continue discussing game design theory stuff? If so, I'll probably start up a new thread to stop derailing this one.)

I don't have anything more, particularly, to say about it.  But, if you've got some further thoughts or think it's best, go ahead.

[Mr. woop woop]

My question is. What if a robot where to kill a person?


It is a robot without A.I.. Therefor has no perception of right or wrong. It may not even know what good or evil is.

Therefor I would say that the action is good or evil, not the being.

Now then. If it were an A.I. we would be able to say it has an idea of good and evil/right and wrong. so now the A.I. can be Evil.

But if we say that good and evil/ right and wrong is in the brain. Then in humans(and creatures depending on your religion) who have a soul. It's soul can't be the cause for the evil and cannot be held for any of the brains wrong doing.

So there are no more people going to hell, or the abyss, because everyones souls are clean. so no more obnoxious demon or devil campaigns!!!(no need to thank me)