I was on mobile when I reblogged this the first time, so was not able to research these quotes to find a source. I have now done so – they came from this thread on the Dragonsfoot.org forums, where he posted as Col_Pladoh.



Other lines from this thread

With regard to pacifism, that is aprpos, also with regards to athesim in the FRPG where there are active deities. Only idocy or mental derangement could explain such absurd beliefs in such a milieu.

And as a continuation of the “I am not going to waste my time and yours debating ethics and philosophy“ post, when asked “If it is perfectly acceptable in the game milieu for Lawful and Good characters to execute prisoners, then why on Oerth would any foe surrender to them? It seems as if we can pretty much throw out the Morale rules, as there is no reason not to fight to the death”:

As a matter of fact, to me this whole discussion is rather pointless. however, I’ll answer more of your questins and somments:



Pray tell how do humanoid foes know the alignment of their opponents?



Why is it that in actuality troops would surrender even knowing that the victors were prone to slaughtering captives. The Japanese did that as did the Nazis.



When I am DMing, humanoids do usually fight to the very last,



How you wish to run your game is your business, and debating my take on the matter is not going to validate how you choose to manage matters. that needs no validation. — [Q: If, however, even paladins – the paragons of purity and righteousness – have a reputation for executing their captives, I can’t see how any opponent would consider surrender an option. Every battle would be a fight to the death, it being deemed a better alternative to die fighting than to die on one’s knees pleading for mercy.]

If the foes of these humanoids are so foolish as to accept surrender and allow their prisoners to eventually go free and perform further depredations, your “Good” forces are really “Stupid.”



Neutral and Evil PCs in my campaign would indeed accept surrender of humanoids, enlist them to fight on their behlaf, and thus they would die for the profit of their human or demi-human masters. —

[Q: so why would anyone surrender?] Hope springs eternal. Fear, sheer exhaustion, and panic are all reasons for surrender. The surrendering troops have no certain knowledge of how they will be treated.



“An eye for an eye & a tooth for a tooth” – i.e., let the severity of the punishment be commensurate with the severity of the crime – was meant to restrict the amount of punishment/retaliation that was meted out, to prevent things like “you attack one of mine, I’ll attack ten of yours” (or “you are found to be in possession of a certain amount of a substance that the lawmakers have decided is vile, you go to prison for a minimum of several years and are forever marked as a felon”). It’s also been criticized as leading to a world of nothing but blind, toothless people…



But the problem is in figuring out what punishment is commensurate with a given crime (see: America’s drug laws, particularly in re: marijuana), and making sure that is applied equally to all citizens (see: how PoC get disproportionately harsher & longer sentences for various crimes compared to White criminals found guilty of the same crime). And as long as there is bigotry, prejudice, and greed influencing who makes & maintains those laws, problems will continue.



“But those disproportionate laws are Lawful Neutral at best, if not Lawful Evil, or Neutral Evil.” Oh, definitely, yes. But this is a problem for the Gygax’s LG Paladin: if he (of course Gygax’s Paladins are men) is in such a society, and he’s not immediately attacking every representative of that LN/LE/NE society – an almost certainly suicidal option – then he’ll lose his Paladinhood.

“Mercy is to be displayed for the lawbreaker that does so by accident. Benevolence is for the harmless.“ What definition of “lawbreaker” and “harmless” is Gygax using here? The laws and harm as decided by the society the Paladin’s working & living in, or the concepts of law & harm as deemed by an omniscient (or nearly so) LG deity a Paladin is sworn to?







And to expand a bit on one of the things he mentioned above: the Chivington Gygax mentions (who was quoted as saying “nits make lice”) was John Milton Chivington, a Colonel in the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. He’s mainly remembered for the 1864 Nov 29 Sand Creek Massacre, in which he lead 675 members of the Colorado U.S. Volunteer Cavalry to attack & destroy a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating between 70-163 Indigenous Americans, about 2/3rd of which were non-combatant women & children. (Why did Chivington attack? The short version is that some of the younger members of the village chafed under a treaty the village elders had signed with the U.S. government – singed under coercion, they believed – which stuck them in a nearly barren area of Colorado. These younger member went into neighboring U.S.-held lands to hunt for food, which lead to conflict. So Colorado’s governor, John Evans, ordered an attack on their village.) When some of Chivington’s officers protested the attack, his response was

“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! … I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians. … Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”



PBS did a film on this in 2001, called Who Is This Savage?



In that thread, Gygax was asked about a similar situation – PCs attacking an enemy (humanoid) camp, after they’ve killed the combatants, what to do with the non-combatant women & children – and this was his response

The non-combatants in a humanoid group might be judged as worthy of death by a LG opponent force and executed or taken as prisoners to be converted to the correct way of thinking and behaving. A NG opponent would likely admonish them to change their ways before freeing them. A CG force might enslave them so as to correct their ways or else do as the NG party did. CN and LN opponents would likely slaughter the lot. Evil opponents would enlist, enslave, or execute them according to the nature of the Evil victors and that of the survivors. Enlistment would be for those of like alignment, slaughter for those opposite the victors’ predisposition to order or disorder. Enslavement is an option for any sort of Evil desiring workers.

So, to summarize: NG (”justice tempered by mercy”) characters would admonish any Evil prisoners they capture before letting them go… but if those prisoners continue to do evil, the NG character is really Neutral Stupid. CG characters can do the same, or might enslave Evil prisoners “so as to correct their ways.” LG characters would either execute prisoners then & there, or take them as prisoners in order to convert them to Good… and then maybe execute them anyway to make sure they don’t slip back to Evil. LN, CN, and Evil characters will either slaughter prisoners or enslave them, or maybe enlist them if they’re of similar alignments; “enlisted prisoners” (conscription/draft) would “die for the profit of their… masters”.

