29: A Dungeon Crawl Through Moral Alignments

Abstract

Can necromancers be good people? Can dragons be feminist care ethicists? Why are we asking? In this episode, producer Eleanor Price asks resident ethics expert (and fellow role-playing game enthusiast) Andy Cullison about the moral theories behind games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. They guide producer Christiane Wisehart through the game mechanic called moral alignment -- an attribute that shows how good or evil you are in the game -- and how closely these imagined ideas align with real-world philosophy.