LotFP: The Nihilistic Game

This post from 5 Stone Games interested me quite a bit, what with its mention of two things I'm interested in, all in the same blog post: Philosophy and roleplaying games.

According to his article, there's a man named THOMAS who posts:

I read the back cover and hated the rejection of the concept of "hero" ala LotFP. It deliberately discourages the ideas of nobility, self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, honor, etc. Better to be non-committal philosophically, and let DMs create the tone they want. Game designers are trying to give their games a nihilistic bent, which I think is a mistake.
Sure, not purely for nihilism's sake, but the section on alignment demonstrates that good/evil are merely ideas or opinions. This makes all ethical ideals baseless, including valuing life and respecting others. The cosmology chosen in the alignment section leads to nihilism, which leads to the mercenary spirit, contra honor, nobility, heroism. Honor and nobility become opinions without base, no more intrinsically good than dishonor and evil. That cosmology stinks, and it is too bad that it is accepted by default.
I think this game, and LotFP, are both trying to make their games more unambiguously conformed to the nihilistic sorts of literary inspirations (e.g. Lovecraft). In other words, they are "purging" so to speak other works from Appendix N (Tolkien). AD&D was less committed to this nihilism than these two newer games.

And really, that's fair criticism but I think that it's being approached from the wrong direction.

What we have here is a clash of worldviews, and the basic misunderstanding of said worldview. I'm talking about theism vs non-theism, in roleplaying game form. It's pretty interesting to see the same arguments get applied to a roleplaying game that would get applied to a personal philosophy, and I'm really interested to see where it goes.

My personal view? Well, I'm not a theist, so you can probably figure out which way my ideas bend, but I will say that THOMAS is mixing up non-objectivity with pointlessness. Just because good and evil are culturually-ingrained ideas rather than handed down by some sort of all-powerful being doesn't mean that they're totally baseless. You don't need to be told something is good for it to be good. It's the sort of deal where in some cultures, it's ok to shove your elderly off on an iceberg and let them die by themselves, and in others, you stand by them until their life leaves. Neither one is more "good", but that doesn't mean that the rituals themselves have no meaning.

For what it's worth, I imagine that the supposed "nihilism" is a sort of broad stroke against the "you're a good guy so here's some cosmic good for you." People have been complaining about alignment for years now, or then ignoring it. What's the problem in making a game that doesn't just have alignments, it has non-alignments and tells you "There are no gods to tell you what to do."

That takes some brass balls, and I'm all in favor of it. That's real life for you. It's not some candy-land sort of deal where you don't have to worry about whether you're doing the right thing because you can ask your DM who will sagely shake his head that no, that isn't good, and your character won't do it even though it causes problems. You're left rudderless in a world without any morals of its own. What will you do?

It reminds me of a lot of people who encounter an atheist for the first time.
"But you don't believe in God, right? So why are you such a nice guy?"
"Because I like to be. Just because there's no gods doesn't mean that I don't have ethics. That's not where they come from, anyways. Have you read that book you talk so much about?"

So maybe this is THOMAS's first encounter with an atheist game. It might be the world's first encounter, and I think it's pretty cool.