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GreatWyrmGold
2013-03-29, 07:42 PM
I was thinking about random stuff the other night, and my mind wandered to an oddly random question.

What would a "benevolent Tippyverse" be like?

To expand and be more specific...well, let's start with the name. How about GWGV, which stands for Great World of the GWGV Values?

In the GWGV, there is a party of adventurers...for specifics, let's say a NG wizard, a NG cleric, a CG bard, and an LG paladin. All are focused on making the world as close to perfect as possible. They're effectively immortal by various means, and basically as powerful as they can get. Should we need to be more specific for some reason, but this shouldn't be taken too strictly, they're epic-level and 3.5 D&D. Regardless, over their lengthy career they managed to stomp out essentially all major threats to the world, and have taught enough now-powerful apprentices to make sure no new ones pop up. Between their own treasure and the pull they and their vision has amongst the great and powerful, their resources are essentially infinite.
As for their plans? As mentioned, they want to make a perfect world. It needs to give everyone safe, fulfilling lives, capable of providing everything from food and shelter to leisure and meaning to anyone or everyone. They needn't rule it, of course, but it's also not forbidden. Whatever they do, it has to be able to survive should any or all of them die--it shouldn't be dependent on any individual. Um...basically, they try for utopia.
Bear in mind that pretty much everything in this scenario is a guideline; if your plan needs a druid or something not in any book, add a druid or explain what it is. Basically, answer the following question:

What is a "Utopia" that could be created?

Deffers
2013-03-29, 08:12 PM
Alright. First we need to kill off all the evil gods. Just, all of them. They're always scheming for more power, or vying for x throne, or... etc. etc. etc. There's always gonna be demons and devils that aspire to fill the power vacuum, so what you gotta do, is create and/or find some sort of optimized Good Outsider that can kick enough ass to rule the Hells and the Abyss with more of an adamantine fist than an iron one. Assuming "defeated all the threats in the world" includes the ass-kicking part, you just need some sort of Good entity to rule the Hells and Abyss to keep the transfinite number of demons, devils, weird-ass outsiders and damned from trying to pull a fast one. Maybe wish abuse and candle of invocation abuse to really, really make a sort of Giga-Solar? Or something with divine ranks at least.

Alternately, you can have good outsiders infiltrate the lower planes and intensify the Blood War to such a point that the demons and devils are threats only to themselves. This isn't really a perfect world since demons, devils, and the damned are suffering to the benefit of everyone else. Which seems OK, if they're evil, but it's basically The Ones Who Left Omelas but instead of a kid it's an evil jackass. Some would like it, some wouldn't.

Next, ensure the ring gates and teleportation abuse provide a fast shipping network. Maybe make some sort of specialized magic item of sending and distribute it through all the land? That way you basically have Divine Internet, and can therefore provide resources where they are needed.

Use wish trap abuse to manufacture the items, of course, and other lesser traps (maybe Fabricate? I'm not well-versed in this bit of things) to ensure you can make some quickly.

Now, there's gonna be some people simply born Evil. You gotta do something about them. I think a combination of warforged and shadesteel golems is what Tippy recommended for security, along with some shared-vision or mind crap to make a vast security network? That'll go a long way towards STOPPING evil. Now what to do with them to make them happy? Probably whatever the Good version of Mind Rape is. Anybody remember that?

Ideally, we'd change the planar system altogether. Since the Outer Planes are shaped by belief, you'll have to enact some sort of mass conspiracy to make people believe in punitive reincarnation of souls, and that demons aren't necessarily bad, nor are angels anything particularly special-- the true Final Reward lies somewhere from which you can't return. At least, I recall the Outer Planes working due to belief. I could be mistaken.

You're probably gonna need the help of both demons (and devils) and angels (and all the other good outsiders, and the gods) in making people believe this. Since you've got the demons bent over a barrel, they'll probably be more than glad to help to make their lives ultimately not sucky and ruled by Good Outsiders.

So while you're running that, concurrently you're shaping the world so there are villages and hamlets representing a vast quantity of different lifestyles-- from sleepy villages to the usual Tippyverse mega-cities. That way everyone can live in the type of house they like, in the kind of environment that they like. And they can raise families this way, and it's all quite pretty. You get druids to essentially maintain national and state parks so people can interact with nature in a safe way if that's what they're into.

Those're some of my ideas, at least. What do you all think?

Marcelinari
2013-03-29, 08:45 PM
Pretty solid plan there, from what I see. Towards the 'identifying evil' issue, though, detect spells exist for a reason. Have all those good-aligned (and neutral-aligned, actually, because you probably own those too) churches have a guy on watch at the entrance scanning the crowds for anyone who pops up evil, taking them aside, and -boom- Sanctify the Wicked.

As for people who are irreligious, wandering paladins might serve that role - seeking out as yet undetected evil, and either diplomancing it or forcing it to a place where, again, you can Sanctify the Wicked. Pretty much what paladins are usually for, only they're more proactive than reactive now. Also nonlethal.

This way the vast majority of evil is detected and turned to good at a young age. Kids get sick, and clerics get remove disease. People get hurt, and cure spells are cheap. Add a little dose of detect evil to all of these free goodies, and you get a relatively noninvasive evil-detection network. And then the paladins come along, address the town, concentrate a bit, and maybe avail himself of some random peoples' hospitality, detecting all the while.

GreatWyrmGold
2013-03-29, 09:44 PM
Should I find disturbing the ease with which I can draw parallels between this "Utopia" and Oceania?
Sure, there's differences, but still...

TuggyNE
2013-03-29, 09:51 PM
Note that, for the initial phase of detecting existing evil, you'll probably need to make use of combinations of true seeing, (greater) arcane sight, and (greater) dispel magic to be sure you're getting the tougher nuts. A few might get past even those, but only the really powerful full casters, or truly optimized semi-mundanes, are going to manage that, and those are way beyond your average level 10 peacekeeping squad (or whatever).


Should I find disturbing the ease with which I can draw parallels between this "Utopia" and Oceania?

Probably, but what else did you expect? :smalltongue:

The entire dystopia genre is basically "utopic ideals + Greek tragedy"; in other words, it's a great and noble attempt marred by an inherent fatal flaw that inevitably causes disaster and ruin.

GreatWyrmGold
2013-03-29, 09:54 PM
Probably, but what else did you expect? :smalltongue:

The entire dystopia genre is basically "utopic ideals + Greek tragedy"; in other words, it's a great and noble attempt marred by an inherent fatal flaw that inevitably causes disaster and ruin.

Yes, but I feel like I should need to try harder to interpret that...

Deffers
2013-03-29, 10:00 PM
That's why I'm kind of against even making demons and devils fight each other. I mean, even Sanctify the Wicked seems a bit much unless the evil people go off and do their own disrupt the status quo thing. Maybe put evil people under divination at a young age instead? Total monitoring is marginally better than Good-flavored-Mind-Rape.

I'm thinking that, like in Brave New World, there ought to be "opt-out" settlements where those who disagree with the ideas can just go and live life as they will. Since we're already converting the more ventral planes to our cause of changing all reality, we have a nice big chunk of the Prime to work with. I'm not surprised that people might choose the opt-out cities.

scurv
2013-03-29, 10:26 PM
Brave new world and 1984 already?

Deffers
2013-03-29, 10:43 PM
Hey, we're better than that! We're using systems of NESTED surveillance so only puppy-kickers don't get to have privacy when they pee. We're currently LESS invasive than an airport so we're still on the utopia side of things.

Y'hafta admit, when literally the universe will say "This dude's a jerk," probably there's something bad if you decide NOT to watch his ass.

scurv
2013-03-30, 12:00 AM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/DemolitionMan?from=Main.DemolitionMan

The downside of this concept is quite often people become what they intend to remove.
As much as it is out of vogue today, Pain is not a bad thing It helps us grow. But I think if one wished to make a perfect world. And it has been tried and failed in real world history on most continents. The people would need to become as whole desiring it.

So a short from the top of my head list in what foils said efforts
-People would need to learn to only take what they need, and what society can afford to give them
-People would need to mitigate their own malice like traits
-the world as a whole would need to attain a very high level of Self-actualization
-And people would need to learn to give, with out expectation of reward
-And people need to become non dogmatic in enforcing social codes

Deffers
2013-03-30, 12:10 AM
I know people need pain to grow. Hence the punitive reincarnation plot for the Outer Planes, dood.

...Hell, a paladin would probably think that a perfect world has trials that people could face and then overcome, that their hearts may grow strong and the community may learn to value each and every member and yadda yadda yadda when you believe in yourself, the whole world is rainbows, etc.

Maybe they could set up a council of druids to make people face random and unexplained natural disasters over time? Unlike in the real world, if people die in the disaster they just get shunted off to the Outer Planes, where thanks to wish abuse and things like that even an orphanage could swing for kids to commune with their parents. Suddenly, the worst part of death is mitigated substantially but not completely, and life isn't so hellish if you lose your parents.

...Hell, just that alone makes the whole thought experiment kinda worth it, doesn't it? Imagining a kid who's just lost his parents using an epic, cosmic force of divine magic to commune with his parents to make sure they're okay. That alone makes it... maybe not perfect, but hella nice.

scurv
2013-03-30, 12:13 AM
Setting up natural disasters sounds almost like an evil act. Imagine if some orphaned kid found out a decade later.

Deffers
2013-03-30, 12:18 AM
...It kind of does.

Hrm. I suppose someone using detect evil/good would have to experimentally determine whether or not the universe subscribes to a utilitarian metric or not. Damn it, that probably won't work.

...Maybe instead, just leave entire swaths of land to be breeding grounds for monsters and stuff (of the unintelligent kind) and make adventuring into a sort of organized sport? With ClericNet and fast access to divine healing (along with a now-repurposed Outer Planes system meant for betterment of souls passing through it in the worst-case scenario) people could get their character-building from mass adventuring?

It really does sound like you're gonna need a whole bunch of Tier One mages in a Tippyverse anyway, and they're gonna need to get the XP from SOMEWHERE...

TuggyNE
2013-03-30, 12:56 AM
...Hell, a paladin would probably think that a perfect world has trials that people could face and then overcome, that their hearts may grow strong and the community may learn to value each and every member and yadda yadda yadda when you believe in yourself, the whole world is rainbows, etc.

I dunno about paladins, but that's basically Kord's main schtick; he has (most? all?) of a plane set up for endless battles in which any casualties get back up 24h later, no harm done, no levels lost. The idea being that struggle makes you stronger.


...Maybe instead, just leave entire swaths of land to be breeding grounds for monsters and stuff (of the unintelligent kind) and make adventuring into a sort of organized sport? With ClericNet and fast access to divine healing (along with a now-repurposed Outer Planes system meant for betterment of souls passing through it in the worst-case scenario) people could get their character-building from mass adventuring?

As long as it's primarily voluntary (i.e., "yay, I'm finally old enough to go through the First Rite of Suffering and Maturity!"), it'd probably be cool.


It really does sound like you're gonna need a whole bunch of Tier One mages in a Tippyverse anyway, and they're gonna need to get the XP from SOMEWHERE...

Strictly speaking, you can do this in an even more constrained way, using e.g. tons and tons of traps in an obstacle course for all kinds of things to ensure maximum XP gain.

GreatWyrmGold
2013-03-30, 06:41 AM
I dunno about paladins, but that's basically Kord's main schtick; he has (most? all?) of a plane set up for endless battles in which any casualties get back up 24h later, no harm done, no levels lost. The idea being that struggle makes you stronger.

While this is entirely true, the fact that Kord is CG while paladins are LG indicates that the latter would quite possibly not be on board with that plan.
Not that this is said bad thing.

mjlush
2013-03-31, 04:33 AM
Alright. First we need to kill off all the evil gods. Just, all of them.

I don't think you need to kill the evil gods, demons devils etc just block them out with something like an Epic Epic Protection from Evil spell. The plane will become less and less attractive to them as evil is conditioned out of the population.

I'd be more worried about the long term psychological issues removing evil thoughts I'd predict that it would lead to a world wide stagnation or even regression in world wide technology, magic and society

TuggyNE
2013-03-31, 05:04 AM
I'd be more worried about the long term psychological issues removing evil thoughts I'd predict that it would lead to a world wide stagnation or even regression in world wide technology, magic and society

Please report to the Reconditioning Center for thought correction, citizen.


More seriously, the idea that a lack of evil would cause failure of growth is likely to be extremely controversial (to say the least); suffice it to say that it's something the setting would need to work out.

GreatWyrmGold
2013-03-31, 05:56 PM
Well, it depends on what drives innovation and change. Is it strife or just genius?

Water_Bear
2013-03-31, 06:20 PM
Well, struggle isn't necessarily Evil either; Chaos can do the same thing through market forces that Evil does through selective pressure. Of course, a true utopia is unlikely to advance much because it is by definition the pinnacle of civilization; it can only degrade.

One thing I'm wondering though is the idea of a Perfect World. Who is it perfect for? Evil is, cosmically speaking, just as much a part of the foundation of reality as Good is, so why are Evil people being "corrected" to a Good mindset? Wouldn't a "Perfect World" put everyone in a position where they could do what they wanted?

Put Evil people into their own zones; CE gets a big infinitely-layered arena to find out who's the real top dog, LE gets a nice orderly fascist war machine, NE gets a big open playground to make their own kingdoms in. Do the same for Good people; CG gets nice enchanted woods to explore, LG gets a big boring mountain, NG gets stuck where no-one has to deal with them. LN people get a robot nirvana, CNs get to chill with frogs. Dump the TNs in a big empty wasteland because they're boring. Somehow this all sounds vaguely familiar...

BTW, this really needs to be moved to the 3.5 board.

mjlush
2013-04-01, 04:24 AM
Well, it depends on what drives innovation and change. Is it strife or just genius?

It don't think it has to be either, I'd argue that the Industrial Revolution was evil with a small e. The overwhelming ambition of a few men to make money for themselves lead to the destruction of community's, whole ways of life, vast pollution and the exploitation of people for hundreds of years.

I'm not saying Good did not come out of it, but I rather think that unless the 'Good Police' are very far sighted they would nip it in the bud.

If the Good Police act against evil traits like overwhelming ambition, massive self interest I'd suggest that the would also damp down reasonable ambition and enlightened self interest producing a more passive less motivated population.

I'm now going to stray onto dangerous ground... Capitalism could be regarded as evil (small e again) the whole thing is based on playing the worker less than the actual value of their work, which is exploitation, which is evil.

If the workers were paid the actual value of their work there would be no profit, which sounds like Communism, which it is... The sad thing is that the Communist Ideal represents a vision of a really Good society everyone gets what they need and are not exploited. The really sad thing is that we know it does not work (even putting aside the excesses of the Communist Leadership,` which is an oxymoron in its own right)

I'd argue to have a well functioning economy, you need a bit of evil to oil the wheels, but the Good Police would be slowly choking off the supply

Jacob.Tyr
2013-04-01, 02:38 PM
I would argue that evil isn't necessary for innovation or progress, although greed /pride/lust/envy are pretty great motivators for it. A lot of innovation is done by people who are brilliant and weird, who really enjoy figuring things out. A lot of work is done by people who aren't thinking for profit, but for how they can benefit others.

Think of doctors. Lots of people go into medicine because it's well paying. A lot of people go into it because they want to do good, and volunteer all over the world to help save lives. And we got penicillin because some weird guy liked to paint with bacteria.

I think it's entirely possible to create a society that lacks the former group.

Basically this "Utopia" will come about from a post-scarcity tippyverse event, and a post-threat adventurer surge, if you will. I'm betting a lot of Evil will happen to get things to this point, removing entire populations and races that are resistant to the change. The people responsible for this will most likely have to be purged themselves, in the end, for what they've seen and done.

Then you basically have to rewrite society. It's not hard to envision communist societies, especially post-scarcity. We're all very western-centric, and as such we have ideas of wealth, possession, power. Those ideas, and us, will have to be purged as well. Remove even the notion of ownership, the idea of conflict, and the possibility of evil.

Basically everyone is provided for, and encouraged to play around with whatever interests them for the entirety of their lives. We have an immense infrastructure setup by those who came before that enables these "Utopians" to live without ever wanting or needing anything, and we let them play. We'll have our hippies, high in the woods having sex. We'll have bards, writing stories and songs because they love to do it. We'll have people who wrestle, because it's fun; people who play chess for the same reason. Very few scientists become so out of greed, so we'll have plenty of them. Engineers, doctors, those will all exist still. ****ty jobs will be taken care of, everyone will just get to do what they love, much of which will still be capable of improving quality of life and advancing society.

Water_Bear
2013-04-01, 08:14 PM
But unless the brainwashing Sanctify the Wicked-ing infrastructure stays intact, people will start moving back towards equilibrium in a few generations.

People might sometimes do "Evil" things out of desperation, but a lot of it is about power for it's own sake. The drive to dominate others and create social hierarchies is seen across all human societies, the great apes (yes, even Bonobos) and even many monkey species. Even though D&D doesn't work according to evolutionary biology, the designers did at least make it clear that humans tend towards Evil just as much as Good. That's not something likely to go away without massive changes to the essence of the species, and even "Always Good" races will produce exceptional Evil individuals.

(I'm also curious; is anyone else super creeped out by the idea of what a utopia consists of here? All desire must meet with ideological approval, rewards are completely divorced from achievement, social status is completely divorced from merit, everyone who doesn't fall in line is killed or brainwashed Sanctified. And with an Epic God-Wizard ruling it, escape and rebellion are futile. :smalleek:)

Deffers
2013-04-01, 08:30 PM
See, this is why I prefer my planar conspiracy way to affect change. The Outer Planes are shaped by belief. So if it becomes a widely held belief that all creatures can be good deep down, and if people can begin to believe in a system of punitive reincarnation we might see change that doesn't have to be forced on people by a 1984-esque eternal overwatch.

Just a massive, multiplanar conspiracy to change the minds and souls and geography of the planes themselves in order to change the world for the better.

TuggyNE
2013-04-01, 09:06 PM
(I'm also curious; is anyone else super creeped out by the idea of what a utopia consists of here? All desire must meet with ideological approval, rewards are completely divorced from achievement, social status is completely divorced from merit, everyone who doesn't fall in line is killed or brainwashed Sanctified. And with an Epic God-Wizard ruling it, escape and rebellion are futile. :smalleek:)

Yes, the OP noticed this already. See a few posts down from the top.

GreatWyrmGold
2013-04-01, 10:01 PM
BTW, this really needs to be moved to the 3.5 board.

The numbers are only there because I expected people to care more about what's possible than what's ideal.


See, this is why I prefer my planar conspiracy way to affect change. The Outer Planes are shaped by belief. So if it becomes a widely held belief that all creatures can be good deep down, and if people can begin to believe in a system of punitive reincarnation we might see change that doesn't have to be forced on people by a 1984-esque eternal overwatch.

Just a massive, multiplanar conspiracy to change the minds and souls and geography of the planes themselves in order to change the world for the better.
Yes, because that's much less invasive and totalitarian than the other ideas bouncing about...

Deffers
2013-04-01, 10:05 PM
It's not really invasive so much as a decades, if not centuries-long campaign to change philosophy and ideology of the masses through a large coordinated effort, and allowing fiends to live instead of trying to exterminate them all or damn them to an eternity of complete isolation from anything that's not their sucky home planes.