City is covered with permanent epic Zone of Truth

Yeah we did, and before that, this is some old pasta

It's a bad idea since anyone raised there would be unable to function outside it

I'm probably remembering the details wrong but isn't this more or less what Paragon is like in Exalted, probably?

>city is actually giant mecha
>rival city is giant turtle
>battleground is the moon
>OP's shitty post doesn't exist here

anything wrong with this city?

Being incapable of lying under any circumstances and defend yourself.

The thing is the moment there is someone who can get around the abilities everyone subject to them are severely boned.

So, basically this I don't see the problem.

Probably pretty dull

that city is likely the biggest target to exist, and you can bet your ass every shade of evil is gonna at least semi-cooperate to tear it down brick by brick.

Didn't we already come to the conclusion that this city isn't really economically or socially viable? It's a shame I don't have the matrix photo stored to my phone

I like that the edgemeisters are all "Evil would obviously tear down this bastion of virtue" while ignoring that there's a heck of a lot of people who would find that oppressive and extreme despite being law abiding citizens.

Plot twist, the city was the villains all along.

That's the thing: what trader or merchant is going to go somewhere where they can't tell a little white lie for a little more profit? What happens to relationships when you can't say "no, your butt looks fine in those pants" or even "good to see you". this city may be viable for a select few, but a vast majority of people will choke under these conditions

also a red dwarf episode

TURTLE CITY FOREVER

FUCK YOU BEEP BOOP BLORP BOOPS

TURT IS SUPREME

Replace the turtle with a Tarrasque and you've got city of salt and wounds

What if the city developed under the zone of truth?

It would become a society quite different from ours, which largely consists of bullshit.

It would really fuck up players, one way or the other.

What happens is people start saying things like "I love you and think you're beautiful but I think you should find better pants". This is what real adults do in relationships when neither party is emotionally broken.

You can be honest and supportive at the same time, even when delivering bad news.

"Why does it hurt daddy?"
"You have supremely advanced canceraids, you will experience a slow and excruciating death over the next four weeks"
"..."
"Just like your mother"

So the system would greatly benefit those who can weasel their way around the rules without directly lying.

Still leaves room for abuse.

That city would probably collapse by itself, anyway.

Yeah, the underlying laws of the society within.

My Lawful Evil cleric just found something to do for the rest of the campaign

It's a bandaid over a gaping chest wound.

You're stunting people's philosophical and emotional growth. Not one person, or a handful, but a city of thousands, all coaxed into a lie.

They will not be truthful because they are virtuous, but because they physically cannot do otherwise. They will not be nonviolent because they hold non-aggression as a universally preferable behavior, but because they physically cannot act otherwise.

You would be coddling and constricting and entire population, creating a horde of adult children. A people so horribly stunted in their mental faculties that they'd resemble the terrifyingly Orwellian wet dream of some hyper-statist that would rather narrow their existential experience to that of a diapered and coddled infant, or to be the vile master of such.

You're protecting people from their own free will. You're protecting them from their own humanity.

You can say that of modern civilization in general. How many weeks would the typical city-dweller last in the Alaskan wilderness? The point of civilization isn't to make you good at living outside civilization, it's to enhance your life inside civilization.

>can't hide crucial information from people that'd use it for evil

Freedom to care for yourself in some way without the doctrine of others ruling you? I mean the city is the equivalent of an angel on everyone's shoulder dictating what they have to do. That may seem well and good but as others have said it stunts your growth. Eventually you're just a machine doing a routine and leaving the door wide open for a group of Morlocks to come in and take over.

Strike a blow for freedom, will you?

Now I have the movie Demolition Man stuck in my head...

Except demolition Man was about repressing human urges. No one has said you can't swear and fuck in this LG city.

In a LG society prostitution is legal and legitimate for unmarried individuals

The problem isn't that it stops you from lying and killing. The problem is it turns you into a living machine obeying arbitrary rules of "don't lie" and "don't kill" because you are either physically/mentally unable to, or are afraid of punishment. A decent human being doesn't lie or kill because of the urges of his conscience and empathy, not because he is restricted by rules and punishments.

And to add to this, you are basically robbing people of their morality, because morality loses its meaning when there is no freedom of choice involved. So, people living in that city aren't really human, I guess? Or rather, they aren't really adult. You basically have a bunch of manchildren on your hands who don't understand the difference between right and wrong, because the function of understanding said difference is delegated to the government of the city.

Well, if anything important is normally taken care of by any Chaos-aligned gods in the pantheon and their clerics, they might have to struggle along without the blessings others are accustomed to, even those granted by the Chaotic Good gods.

>anything wrong with this city?

>be a lawful good paladin
>know [something] is wrong with city and you can fix it ONLY by illegal actions
>you gonna do it cuz you paladin and gotta help the helpless
>sensors do nothing cuz you good and lawful guy

Voila

>Zone of Truth
Permits save, permits omission of information, favors those capable of careful and precise phrasing.
>Mark of Justice
What is the exact contract / condition of the mark?
>every visitor is subjected to aligment scan.
Angelskin garments 4lyfe
>Mass Protection from Evil and Mass Protection from Chaos
Seems overly cautions, what fool would dare to start any ruckus in such a place? Still, better safe than sorry.

>anything wrong with this city?
Not in the slightest, it's a place of great opportunity.

Nah, nothing wrong, except that politics, ambassadors and diplomats will have a severe mental breakdown after the second month of work.
Also pray to Pelor, Lathander, Heironeous or whoever your generic LG god is to have enough natural resources to survive on your own because no one will ever begin trading with you.

Yeah, no trade or commerce no travellers, shanty towns outside the walls, etc.

Politicians*
A thousand curses upon you, phoneposting.

I enjoyed this exchange.

As for plot-hook regarding city: it is shadow-governed by evil that has ways around the fields, wards and guards.

Isn't that kinda cliched? Bad guys abusing the 'greater good' argument to enforce their control over the people? Plus we already live with that in real life, so it ruins the escapism.

Do you want fae? Because that's how you get fae.

This. Those fucking lawyers are going to start shitting up your city within SECONDS

You would get this.
youtube.com/watch?v=vn71hYvyqCA

So any high enough CL Bard casts Glibness and instantly runs the goddamn show.

Nah, I bet all the commerce with outsiders would just be done right outside the city walls.

I'm with this guy.

I'd say that prostitution is more on the chaotic side of scales

Sauce?

Turtfuckers in full force I see.

I think you are missing the other huge applications such a place would have.

This city is basically begging to be the ultimate neutral ground. Major deals and political meetings would be held there specifically because lying or backstabning is off the table.

Sure, the other guy can refuse to go into the city. But that tells you he was a teamkilling fucker or a liar who cant afford to be caught in the lie. Anyone who wont deal by the city is, by definition, someone you cant trust at all anyway.

This place is going to be a huge place for trade and diplomacy, as well as settling legal disputes.

they'd just recognize you as evil and destroy your plans and probably you on that basis alone.

sunless sea

>"Muh, muh frands! Dey evil n chaotic, but dey mah frands! No persecuterino pl0x!!!!1!"

>>"Muh, muh frands! Dey evil n chaotic, but dey mah frands! No persecuterino pl0x!!!!1!"
I apologize, I should elaborate.

No, there's nothing wrong in the city- the city is wrong for PC's.

It's an oppressive police state that scans you for wrongthink and denies its residents and visitors part of their free will.

Good, evil, law, chaos, are all objective qualities in D&D. It doesn't matter what any given person or organization thinks good or evil are. The city essentially doesn't create its own laws, since all they've done is apply an outside set of laws to the city.

Would you reccomend it?

That's bullshit. Morality being objective doesn't make enforcing morality through draconian measures moral.

The story and lore is amazing and dumps you headfirst into a weird as fuck setting. The actual game is a slow roguelite where you will spend your first two hours scrabbling for money enough to buy food and fuel and dying repeatedly to giant crabs, which starts it all over again. Fortunately, the entire game is coded in unencrypted 4-bit static addresses, so it's ludicrously easy to hack in Cheat Engine if that's your jam. It's also 10bux, so on the whole, yeah, just be aware of its issues.
Beware the Liberation of the Night. Beware the Dawn Machine. Do not GO NORTH

This guy gets it.
Fuck your magical nanny state OP.
Outside of d&ds simplistic morality system the world isn't governed by moral absolutes. It is governed by the fundamental forces of the universe and physics. From what we humans can observe and prove via science regarding morality we can say this, we seem to have the power to chose what actions we take in this life. In the interest of avoiding the free will/puppet on strings we can't see debate again i ask you to re-read my previous statement and make note of my word choice.
Moving on.
The nanny state proposed in this stale pasta actively hinders our perceived ability to shape our own destinies by simply denying parts of the human psyche deemed "bad" or "harmful to this society". Setting aside the morality of this, as such subjective measures are shifting sand at best. To outright deny the ability to lie or inflict harm trains the brain never to consider these options, as they have been effectively removed from one's list of perceived options. Should an individual trained in said manner ever leave the protection of said city they will be woefully unprepared for the harsh realitys of life in the rest of the world.

To illistrate, take a kitten. Bottle feed it, keep it inside always. wean it onto store bought food as it matures. Declaw and nuter it. Wait for it to reach adulthood. Now abandon that cat in a rural area with few if any humans to support it and see what happens to it. Odds are it will die fairly quickly because it has not been prepared to fend for itself. In fact it has been actively discouraged from developing its own set of survival skills in lue of being a good friendly indoor cat. A lovely cat in the eyes of anyone who would keep it as a pet, but a disfunctional, broken mess in the eyes of another cat. It cannot hunt, it cannot mate and it has never encountered something that can and will do it harm.

The city produces docile victims of those not bound by it's magic laws.

it's too big of a target for asshole adventurers

Sounds cool, ill probably give it a try.
Any starting tips?

...

Tootle around the starting area for a while. Turning in port reports to the Admiralty will be your bread and butter for a long while (Literally). Pick up the Tireless Mechanic ASAP and do his storyline. Don't bother with trading too much until you find the Chelonate and/or the Khanate. Do something simple for your first Ambition, like Wealth. Don't try gor Your Father's Bones until you knoe the game. The further south and east you go, the harder the game gets, so stick to the northwest quadrant for the early game.

>Morality being objective doesn't make enforcing morality through draconian measures moral.

I disagree.

If you know for sure the the objectively right way to do things and you're acting in accordance with that then it would be the right thing to do. The moral thing, if you will.

Of course, I - someone in reality- disagree that the OP's 'utopia' would be a good place to live, or the right way to do things. But that's because I exist in reality, not an imaginary world governed by objective morality.

Though even in that case I would feel compelled to argue, against the premise if nothing else. But I digress.

In the D&D alignment system, by word of Gygax himself, a Lawful Good person is allowed, nay, obligated to murder other Lawful Good people who *might* possibly be tempted into Evil at some unspecified point in the future.
>"Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old adage about nits making lice applies. Also, as I have often noted, a paladin can freely dispatch prisoners of Evil alignment that have surrendered and renounced that alignment in favor of Lawful Good. They are then sent on to their reward before they can backslide.
If you meet someone who isn't Evil yet, kill them before they have the chance! Are you calling Gygax a liar?

I think Gygax's alignment system is stupid too, user, but nowhere in that statement is he implying what you're claiming he is. He's saying that you can a.) kill orc babies (who are already chaotic evil) to prevent them from growing up into threats, and b.) execute prisoners of a lawful evil alignment even after they've renounced their ways and become lawful good, so that they're sent immediately to their eternal reward and don't get the chance to revert back t their "natural" state of evil.

He never says you can just kill a good-aligned character on the chance that they might at some point become evil; the requirement that they're a RECENTLY good character that is NATURALLY evil is pretty explicit.

>after they've renounced their ways and become lawful good
That's the problem, you don't just "become Lawful Good" in a moment. It's not a baptism. You don't just say "aw man, you got me, I guess I'm Lawful Good now."
It takes a lot of introspection and a willingness to ACT as your alignment, even if no one forgives you. At the very least, such prisoners would have served a lengthy sentence for their crimes, otherwise they're just sorry they got caught.
Also, that excuse doesn't work in the case of humans and other creatures that don't NATURALLY have any single alignment.

...

It sounds like the system would probably be expensive and difficult to maintain.

After a single generation it's denizens are unable to function in the harsh reality beyond its walls. They are constantly cheated in trade with neighboring realms, and are unable to effectively defend the farm land the city depends on. Within 50 years the bulk of the population starves to death.

Not if it's beholden to laws and regulations.
Imagine whore house franchises subject to standards and practices. Mandatory health screening and remove disease spells. Customer tracking. Red Light district parking. And, dare I say it; coupons.

Good post

...

That is a copypasta and you know it.

I think it's less "killing a repentant man to make sure he dies with a clean soul" and more "not commuting the execution of an evil man because he repents" and "rejoicing that the condemned was cleansed of his evil in time to be admitted to the good aligned afterlife"

Cultural difference, meh. Not distracted by common problems they will develop their own set of problems and advantages. It's not like planars have problems with even greater lack of free will, as they still LG. I do wonder though how any of haters ITT will "fix" city. Maybe with paladins and good clerics teaching people how to lie and act selfish or something.

Defend yourself against what? No one in the city can harm you.

That's true of any advanced civilization, such a place would also be full of cautionary tales about what happens when you travel, it would be common knowledge after a generation.

Why do you need deceit and violence to have philosophical and emotional growth?

Anyone in the city that's evil would be marked, so you'd always know who to simply shut up around. Not being able to lie is not the same as being forced to always ell someone everything they want to know.

In the world (DnD) where this scenario is even possible, good and evil aren't abstracts or matters of opinion, they are cosmic realities.

Thanks friendo.

So its Tora from Detora Quest?

I agree with this dude.
While for other countries it would be great for negotiation and the like, anyone raised there would be gimped for life.

>Defend yourself against what? No one in the city can harm you.
The second someone bypasses the system everyone still under the confines of the system are boned.

I am thinking of several ways to do it. An example in pathfinder would be someone with Damnation feats, or the Unchained curse, or even just misdirection. Anyone with the magic to just ignore the system fucks everyone person in the confines of the system.

You know, jim knows, frank knows, everyone knows no one can lie or hurt people. Yet you just saw a guy strangle someone in front of you and say 'wasn't me'.

Well shit what do you do now?

durrhurr you have to be raised to survive being submerged in lava and never be aknowledged a man unless you survive nine days in Baator without letters of passage

Literally no one would ever go into that city

If you think making people incapable of lying for their entire lives wouldn't fuck their mental state then you're a retard.

Also jesus christ these people would be stunted and unable to survive if they ever leave the city.

>this is what anglosphere actually believes

How would someone who grew up and lived their entire lies unable to experience someone trying to swindle them suddenly get an ear for it the second they leave the city? Because any city like this would become famous for anyone outside of the city from there. You'd try and swindle them because they have literally no practice detecting falsehood.

What's more inability to lie in any capacity to the point zone of truth does would warp their culture. I suppose zone of truth doesn't forbid stuff like lying by omission because it literally just makes you unable to speak falsehood.

It would warp their society, not make people into better people.

Also the fucking fact you don't ping as evil until your have 5HD would screw up the entire "filtering people" attempt with alignment scanning.

No kidding. I mean if you need a nutral summit for negotiations, trade or whatever just do what OP proposed but skip the city part. No reason to mindfuck your citizens when you could just build a meeting place with those protectives for that shit.

I mean it's a useful thought experiment for a philosophy 101 class, it sounds good on its face and it's got that "hold hands and sing koombya" vibe that's super popular among academics. But anyone with half a brain and an inkling of how humans actually work is gonna see the holes you could sail an aircraft carrier through. I mean hit the nail on the head. Violence and self interest are part of human nature. We're animals after all and we evolved on a harsh world full of brutal compatition over resources, with other species as well as our own. Those instincts may be an uncomfortable part of us that we still struggle with, but that doesn't make them, or by extension us, evil. It's how we chose to act upon those impulses that defines us as individuals. To deny the choice is to deny the struggle for self determination and the possibility of overcoming our flaws. Struggle breeds strength in those who are able to overcome adversity. Those who can't die off and make room for those who can. It sucks to be the one that can't make the grade and the goalposts are always moving, but that doesn't make it good or bad, it simply is. It's a noble sentiment to want to better humanity, to see us rise above our animal nature. But that's not something you can force on others, you better humanity by bettering yourself. That's the only one you have any right to make that choice for. I've noticed that those that talk about OPs idea never want to change themselves, but rather desire the power to change others instead. If evil exists, that is the root of it.

How is that any different from a hundred other societies? Someone that powerful can hurt people either way, even in a city that doesn't have these spells and people are more used to defending themselves. The basis of your argument defeats it for me. Anyone who's that powerful/clever who wants to hurt people, is going to do it anyway. At least in this city with these spells it takes that kind of power and skill to still do harm, it still stops 99.99% of crime anyway, making it a win.

>it still stops 99.99% of crime anyway, making it a win.
By turning people into cattle.
I'm not even that guy, but society exists for the sake of individuals, not individuals for the sake of society.
The moment you are infringing upon one of their most essential personal freedoms under the pretense of maintaining security (security of what? Being cattle in a society devoid of dangers and being guided by the """benevolent""" hand of the Big Brother, who plays demiurge, shaping the defenseless individuals according to his arbitrary whims under the pretense of creating a "perfect" society?) is the moment where you lose my support.

>incapable of defending yourself
Not if the other person also has a Mark of Justice.