A Game Of D&D

I was thinking about a game of Dungeons and Dragons I played, years ago.

I was the Dungeon Master at the time, and was rather pleased with myself. I'd come up with an adventure I thought was interesting and challenging. Our heroes are visiting the city of Al-Wazuun, in the faraway land of Fateem, a place of genies and flying carpets, efreeti and court intrigue!

And the pasha had a problem he was rather hoping our heroes could help him with.

Y'see, towards the center of the great city stood a mighty minaret, a tall onion-domed tower, which had once housed a school of magic... until the wizard who dwelt there lost his mind completely, and NOW he'd cast a number of spells distorting space inside the tower... up might be down, north might be west, and a fruit hurled in a third floor window might come sailing out the front door. And periodically, he'd wander out onto one of the several balconies and hurl fireballs and lightning bolts at the surrounding buildings as punishment for transgressions imagined or real... mostly imagined.

The downtown and market districts were paralyzed. No one dared set foot outdoors. The pasha had sent in his personal guard to arrest or kill the wizard; the lucky ones escaped in the same shape they'd had when they went in. What was to be done? Can these brave and powerful outlanders, perhaps, with powers and wizardry unknown in the land of Fateem, enter the Tower of Madness and put an end to this chaos?

Well, the players were amenable. Wizards' towers tended to be rich and lootable, and the pasha was paying a reward. So they scouted out the tower as best they could, and began to make plans. Wizard analyzed the spells used to confuse the interior, and worked out that the best place to enter was via the top of the tower. Rogue prepared his sneakiest approaches and untangled his garrote, with an eye towards sneaking up and silencing the wizard. Cleric prepared healing spells, lots of them. Ranger changed his arrowheads from "armor piercing" to "maximum unarmored damage." Everyone prepped for tackling an insane wizard.

And Warrior thought about it and said, "Why don't we just level the building?"

Everyone looked at him.

"I mean, he's IN there, right?" Warrior continued. "No matter how he's tangled up space-time, he's IN THE BUILDING. If we just collapse the building with him IN it, he's DEAD, right? Drop a building on him, collect the reward!"

Everyone looked at him.

"That would make sorting out the loot sort of difficult," said Rogue.

"So? The pasha's paying us, anyway," said Warrior. "Either way, we can't lose, and the problem is solved."

"Seems like that would be sort of hard on the downtown district," mused Cleric. "That's a big minaret!"

"So we rig it to collapse straight down," said Warrior. "Controlled demolition."

"And how do we manage that?" said Wizard. "Do YOU know how that works? I don't. How, precisely, do you rig a building to collapse straight down? Particularly when one does not have access to the foundation or sub-basements."

Warrior paused to think.

I grinned. "Well, if you blow the building, I'll roll a die," I said. "Natural twenty? It collapses straight down. Otherwise, I check to see which way it falls. On a one, it comes apart and falls in three separate directions at once. Risky, I think."

"So we evacuate the downtown area," said Warrior. "Get everyone clear, THEN drop the building."

Everyone looked at him.

"And... how do you propose to do this?" I asked. "Going to go door to door? What about the people who refuse to move? Are you going to give them time to collect all their worldly possessions? Their mercantile stock? This is not a simple operation," I said. "And even if you pull it off, it occurs to you that the reward the pasha is paying is WAY less than it would cost to rebuild whatever the tower falls on."

"The pasha will pay for it," said Warrior.

"Mighty free with the government's money, aren't we?" said Ranger. "Is this just an assumption, or did you ask him while the rest of us weren't looking?"

"Look, it's OKAY," said Warrior. "We're COVERED! We're the GOOD guys, RIGHT?"

Everyone looked at him. And at that moment, a terrifying realization hit me, hard.

The game went on, of course. The rest of the group talked Warrior out of it, and a battle plan was adopted, and undertaken.

But in all the years since then, I have not forgotten about the Good Guys.

Y'see, Warrior... was operating under the assumption that to be the Good Guys was to be RIGHT. Because anything the Good Guys do, is by definition, GOOD. It's the RIGHT thing to do. Because the GOOD GUYS are the ones DOING it.

No matter WHAT the collateral damage.

And it wasn't the CHARACTER saying this. It was the PLAYER. Who BELIEVED this.

And on that day, a great deal of American foreign policy, politics, and religion suddenly made perfect sense.

The players successfully defeated the evil wizard. But the ramifications haunt me still.