504 words of ignoring the prompt
So I’ve been thinking about werewolves. That’s probably a horrible place to start this, but since I really don’t remember where I was going to start it in the first place, I’m just going to go from here. Well, mostly I was thinking about werewolves and alignment, and how it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever according to the rules of D&D.
We’re supposed to believe that if you get bitten by some critter, you then (after you fulfill certain other prerequisites, such as figuring out what the heck is going on, which can take unrealistically long if you fail your will save, and then choosing to change shape voluntarily, which you might even do just to see if it’s possible) are no longer whatever alignment suits your personality, but some completely different alignment. The one that belongs to the critter you can turn into.
Not necessarily the critter that bit you, mind. The critter you can turn into. A critter that didn’t exist until you were bitten by that first critter. So shouldn’t your established alignment override, or agree with, or somehow relate to, the alignment of a critter whose entire existence is tied to yours?
Well, apparently not. Maybe there’s a preexisting database (or plane, if we’re trying to be all pseudo-cosmological and adhere to the theoretical setting of this stuff) of hypothetical were-creatures, and if you get bitten by a were-whatever the gods roll cosmic dice (or whatever. I don’t seem to be able to stick to one metaphor just now) and choose one for you, and then you get stuck with the alignment that this critter had. And it’s no longer completely pulled out of thin air, since the critter already existed in the land of hypothetical were-creatures.
But is a land of hypothetical were-creatures really a useful allocation of storage space? And how do they decide which were-creature goes with which person? And what happens if someone who’s already a werewolf gets bitten by a were-something else?
That one might be going a bit far. But if we say there’s a one-to-one correspondence between people in the world and hypothetical were-creatures, that implies that it’s predetermined what sort of were-creature each person will be bitten by, should they be bitten by any were-creature whatsoever. (Well, technically it doesn’t. You could probably produce an argument involving the distribution of were-creatures of a given species in the world and the distribution of were-creatures of each species in the land of hypothetical were-creatures, but I think it would still limit the possibilities severely.) And then we get into the whole debate about fate and predestination and free will. And you’re sure supposed to have free will in D&D-land, unless your DM is a little too fond of rail-roading. Spellcheck seems disinclined to think that’s a word, but since it doesn’t seem to think its own name is a word, either, I’m going to ignore it. (Well, I wasn’t exactly planning on paying attention to it just now, in any case.)
We’re supposed to believe that if you get bitten by some critter, you then (after you fulfill certain other prerequisites, such as figuring out what the heck is going on, which can take unrealistically long if you fail your will save, and then choosing to change shape voluntarily, which you might even do just to see if it’s possible) are no longer whatever alignment suits your personality, but some completely different alignment. The one that belongs to the critter you can turn into.
Not necessarily the critter that bit you, mind. The critter you can turn into. A critter that didn’t exist until you were bitten by that first critter. So shouldn’t your established alignment override, or agree with, or somehow relate to, the alignment of a critter whose entire existence is tied to yours?
Well, apparently not. Maybe there’s a preexisting database (or plane, if we’re trying to be all pseudo-cosmological and adhere to the theoretical setting of this stuff) of hypothetical were-creatures, and if you get bitten by a were-whatever the gods roll cosmic dice (or whatever. I don’t seem to be able to stick to one metaphor just now) and choose one for you, and then you get stuck with the alignment that this critter had. And it’s no longer completely pulled out of thin air, since the critter already existed in the land of hypothetical were-creatures.
But is a land of hypothetical were-creatures really a useful allocation of storage space? And how do they decide which were-creature goes with which person? And what happens if someone who’s already a werewolf gets bitten by a were-something else?
That one might be going a bit far. But if we say there’s a one-to-one correspondence between people in the world and hypothetical were-creatures, that implies that it’s predetermined what sort of were-creature each person will be bitten by, should they be bitten by any were-creature whatsoever. (Well, technically it doesn’t. You could probably produce an argument involving the distribution of were-creatures of a given species in the world and the distribution of were-creatures of each species in the land of hypothetical were-creatures, but I think it would still limit the possibilities severely.) And then we get into the whole debate about fate and predestination and free will. And you’re sure supposed to have free will in D&D-land, unless your DM is a little too fond of rail-roading. Spellcheck seems disinclined to think that’s a word, but since it doesn’t seem to think its own name is a word, either, I’m going to ignore it. (Well, I wasn’t exactly planning on paying attention to it just now, in any case.)