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Anymage
2021-08-05, 03:44 PM
One subtopic that always seems to come up in the "are orcs intrinsically evil?" metatopic that keeps coming up is the question of just what an always evil society might look like and how it might function without large amounts of authorial handwaving. Assuming at least the roughest similarities to humans (need food and shelter, reliant on equipment, spend a decent chunk of their early life as helpless infants who must be taken care of, etc.), what allows these societies to exist as societies without of collapsing under their own weight or becoming so troublesome that their neighbors band together to wipe out the threat for good?

I can see the LE equivalent of ant colonies, where the individuals suborn themselves into the colony and the whole colony will fight expansionistic wars to eradicate competitors and gather slaves. Outside of that, I'm wondering how other people see groups of always evil creatures being able to pull this off.

Tanarii
2021-08-05, 04:05 PM
As far as I'm concerned, there are years of D&D, warhammer, palladium, and other companies with published products containing examples.

Most recently from WotC are Volos and Mordenkainens.

Some are more or less dysfunctional instead of functional, of course.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-05, 04:11 PM
Define "always evil society". Alignment is supposed to be applied to persons. Hence, even always evil persons typically exist in a context where there are persons of other alignments. Often, the evil persons function by exploiting the non-evil.

EDIT:

For that matter, define "functional". How long does the society have to exist for it to count? What kind of circumstances do you want it to thrive in?

NorthernPhoenix
2021-08-05, 04:26 PM
The easy answer is that it is a society of people who are generally good to eachother (more often than not, at least), but are incredibly (and constantly, or "always") unjust and cruel towards one or more "out-groups". The semi-obscure, semi-memetic DnD 3e god "Zarus" from Races of Destiny is an example of this. His society is described as essentially "Lawful Good" (without any twist or catch) for humans, but "lawful super-evil" for non-humans.

hamishspence
2021-08-05, 04:35 PM
In D&D, these societies often skew more to the "Always bad to each other, but worse to outsiders" end.

Vashar (BoVD) spring to mind as one that doesn't have a god constantly working behind the scenes to keep the society from collapsing - because the Vashar hate all gods, and their long-term goal is deicide.


It's this hatred that binds the society together - they still prey on one another - but it's very rare for them to kill one another. Possibly it's instilled in them as they grow up, that every slain Vashar is a setback to the Deicide Plan.

And the main reason other societies don't wipe them out - isolation - the Vashar live on a high plateau, a long way from other civilisations.

Mastikator
2021-08-05, 06:11 PM
Who's to say evil orc societies don't collapse under the weight of their own short sighted evil activities? Human societies do that too, they "simply" reform into a new evil society. How does a functional always evil society look like? Look out for human societies that practice slavery and genocide, some collapse quickly, some remain stable for hundreds of years.

Kvess
2021-08-05, 07:00 PM
Dictatorship. A tyrant has installed themselves as the absolute ruler of their domain. They keep the populace controlled with propaganda, domestic surveillance, and hated scapegoats (let’s say elves). Everyone in the domain hates elves, an accusation of harbouring elves or having elvish blood can get you removed from society, and infractions are reported by friends and neighbours of the accused. There is nothing the populace won’t do for their state.

Theocracy. This society is ordered so that various houses compete for the approval of a cruel god. Your future depends on your ability to gain approval and prestige — often in the form of rituals and sacrifices which require raids on other civilizations. In exchange, the populace is rewarded with great boons. The land is fertile, the people are strong, and the priests have terrible power.

Capitalist dystopia. A handful of people live in extreme wealth and everyone else in this society is ravenously hungry, literally and metaphorically, and out for themselves. If given the opportunity the populace would sell their relatives to make rent. Nobody owns anything. Houses are rented. Furniture is rented. There are fees to enter all buildings and gathering places. There are fees to walk on privately owned walkways. Workers have no rights, work extremely long hours, and need to take on debts to survive. People are miserable but there’s full employment and the GDP is great!

Sparky McDibben
2021-08-05, 07:07 PM
These are some pretty lengthy posts, but this essay could serve as a start:

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/

Note that I'm leaving historical validity aside; whether or not the author is correct, this view is still useful in worldbuilding an evil society.

Mechalich
2021-08-05, 07:45 PM
I'm assuming the OP's question is regarding a society in which all of the members - or at least some colossally overwhelming percentage like 95% - have evil alignments. That's different from most examples in human history of 'evil' societies. In those cases while majority of the elite might ping as evil, the majority of the population would still be neutral or even good, just powerless, and if widespread evil views were held they were of the sort that most of the population were almost never in a position to act upon - such as hating an outgroup that was found entirely beyond the borders.

As such, the question is how a society would work in which everyone always took the most selfish choice possible - to secure for themselves (or a very small in-group like their family), every possible advantage while caring nothing for the suffering of other groups. The question is considered, classically, in the philosophy of Legalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy)) which holds that humans (or at least humans in a position of authority) are inherently evil or at least extremely selfish. The general solution provided by legalism is that the central authority must be more powerful than all other authorities - ideally more powerful than all other authorities combined - and institutional power needs to be elevated above personal power, authority, and connections. Harsh punishments are used to keep people in line and institutional rivalries promoted so that different factions within the bureaucracy constantly inform on each other to the central authority, forcing compliance for fear of getting caught. This system also seeks to break apart traditional bonds - such as those of family or settlement - and elevation of loyalty to the state itself above all.

Now, as to whether or not this works, well, the historical record is mixed (forum rules prohibit discussion of details). However, it does present certain options for a fantasy scenario, and also certain limitations. In particular, in a fantasy scenario personal power extends greatly beyond the limitations present in the real world. While the precise amount varies depending from one universe to the next, the ability of a character to become effectively a living god allows for levels of tyrannical control and maintenance of centralized authority that are simply not possible in the real world. An god-emperor who is immortal, un-killable, and has mystical abilities to conduct surveillance, travel at high speeds, and other capabilities may be capable of ruling through fear over a society of psychopaths simply due to these advantages. On the other hand, a society full of beings who all have mystical powers at varying levels with the highest among them only marginally superior to the next is likely to be utterly impossible to govern and probably instantly fragments into civil war the moment someone senses an opening.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-05, 08:03 PM
One subtopic that always seems to come up in the "are orcs intrinsically evil?" It's a game. What happens to orcs when they are evil is that the forces serving Stormwind Keep invade them and either defeat them, or don't. (Warcraft I and II reference)
"It comes up" due to a lot of overthinking; and to a certain extent, the incoherence of lore across multiple editions and settings.
And because the old threads are closed when someone performs thread necromancy. :smallcool:

Trask
2021-08-05, 08:20 PM
I think there are two main flavors. In the first one, "Evil" is relative to who you are. Orcs might have a unified and well functioning society among each other but treat any non-orcs with appalling brutality. This is most human societies before the modern era.

Then theres dysfunctional evil or fairytale evil, a society of rude, cruel, and maybe even utterly cynical or nihilistic thugs who like to cause pain for its own sake. This is how monsters often function in fairytales or myths.

I think sometimes people forget that the origin of many of these monsters is mythological and not produced with a sharp anthropological lens. Orcs, goblins, kobolds, even elves and dwarves, they dont really work if youre treating them like a real world culture or race, because theyre fantasy monsters. They serve a purpose in myths and in the game to be explicitly other to humans.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-05, 08:28 PM
Another confounding factor is that "Evil" is not a point somewhere out at the extremes. You can be marginally evil. Or extremely evil. A society of unrepentant puppy-kickers (who kick any puppy they see, but don't really do much to other people) is evil, but it's likely to be quite functional other than being horrific to puppies. A society of Always Evil mortal humanoids may just be nasty and unpleasant, rather than purely diabolical evil. So they're not doing the most selfish thing, merely defaulting to selfish behavior and willingly sacrificing others' desires to gain that.

It's a mistake to confuse intensity of evil with uniformity of evil. In any real society, there's likely to be a range. But if the bulk of that range is inside the "evil bin", it's evil.

Mechalich
2021-08-05, 09:15 PM
Another confounding factor is that "Evil" is not a point somewhere out at the extremes. You can be marginally evil. Or extremely evil. A society of unrepentant puppy-kickers (who kick any puppy they see, but don't really do much to other people) is evil, but it's likely to be quite functional other than being horrific to puppies. A society of Always Evil mortal humanoids may just be nasty and unpleasant, rather than purely diabolical evil. So they're not doing the most selfish thing, merely defaulting to selfish behavior and willingly sacrificing others' desires to gain that.

It also depends on how you define 'evil.' In D&D alignment 'defaulting to selfish behavior and willingly sacrificing others' is neutral behavior, even though it would be evil in many other fictional moral systems. A black/white moral system allows for weakly evil in a way a black/gray/white moral system does not.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-05, 09:32 PM
It also depends on how you define 'evil.' In D&D alignment 'defaulting to selfish behavior and willingly sacrificing others' is neutral behavior, even though it would be evil in many other fictional moral systems. A black/white moral system allows for weakly evil in a way a black/gray/white moral system does not.

I'd say that that's a fair description of the neutral edge of



Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order. Devils, blue dragons, and hobgoblins are lawful evil.

Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms. Many drow, some cloud giants, and goblins are neutral evil.

Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. Demons, red dragons, and orcs are chaotic evil.


It's a fair bit away from



Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Many monks and some wizards are lawful neutral.

Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don’t take sides, doing what seems best at the time. Lizardfolk, most druids, and many humans are neutral.

Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else. Many barbarians and rogues, and some bards, are chaotic neutral.


It's the "willing to sacrifice others for selfish reasons" part. Sure, neutral people can be selfish. But generally they're not so willing to hurt (or allow others to get hurt) along the way. They won't go out of their way to prevent it, at least if that means harm to themselves, but if given the choice, would prefer no one gets hurt.

Evil people, on the other hand, see others' lives as having fundamentally lesser value compared to their own. That, in my reading, is the key distinguishing factor. Good people are willing to sacrifice their own comfort and wellbeing for others, evil people are willing to sacrifice others' comfort and wellbeing for their own, and neutral people are generally pulled by other factors and don't really consider that one as much (ie self vs other is just meh, whatever works).

And (in 5e at least), alignment is primarily just a default set of behaviors, followed when no other facet of the personality is controlling. It's the knee-jerk reactions. You can be evil and do good. You can be good and do evil (but you'll generally feel bad about it later, and you won't do it instinctively). It's not a balance-sheet version of alignment, where alignment is the sum total of actions taken (judged as good or bad), it's a baseline personality trait version of alignment.

Kvess
2021-08-05, 09:43 PM
I'm assuming the OP's question is regarding a society in which all of the members - or at least some colossally overwhelming percentage like 95% - have evil alignments. That's different from most examples in human history of 'evil' societies. In those cases while majority of the elite might ping as evil, the majority of the population would still be neutral or even good, just powerless, and if widespread evil views were held they were of the sort that most of the population were almost never in a position to act upon - such as hating an outgroup that was found entirely beyond the borders.

Framing things in Dungeons & Dragons terms is overly simplistic, and people contain multitudes, yada yada yada… but the majority of a population is definitely capable of inflicting evil. As someone whose great-great grandparents fled pogroms, I sometimes wonder what it would be like if my neighbours, coworkers and friends all turned on me. I sometimes worry about what it would take — or who would watch me get taken away and say nothing.

Lynchings, pogroms and apartheid weren’t only acted out by members of nobility, and the targets of their hate weren’t always beyond their borders.

Jophiel
2021-08-05, 10:01 PM
Agreed with the talk about orcs but, on another end of the spectrum, I assume a race like the Drow can afford to be evil because of the time frames involved. There's no need to seek immediate revenge on an enemy when you live for centuries or longer so there's no need for constant blood in the streets. In fact, Drow seem to enjoy being able to say "Remember 700 years ago when you wore the same dress as me to Homecoming? Right now my priestesses are sacrificing your grandchildren to Lloth! Who wore it best now, Carol?"

Further down the chain, lower class Drow might want to take action but are constrained by the upper classes of power who aren't going to let the rabble grind society to a halt. So your evil deeds and revenge and plotting needs to be kept within certain guardrails if you don't want your entire family house turned into driders.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 12:59 AM
A realistic medieval or earlier society. The kind with the misogyny and the slavery and the xenophobia and the bear baiting and the public executions for trivial offenses that everyone turned out and cheered for.


It's a game. What happens to orcs when they are evil is that the forces serving Stormwind Keep invade them and either defeat them, or don't. (Warcraft I and II reference)
"It comes up" due to a lot of overthinking; and to a certain extent, the incoherence of lore across multiple editions and settings.
And because the old threads are closed when someone performs thread necromancy. :smallcool:

Agreed on all counts

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 03:05 AM
A realistic medieval or earlier society. The kind with the misogyny and the slavery and the xenophobia and the bear baiting and the public executions for trivial offenses that everyone turned out and cheered for.


As mentioned, it's "society of always evil creatures":



I can see the LE equivalent of ant colonies, where the individuals suborn themselves into the colony and the whole colony will fight expansionistic wars to eradicate competitors and gather slaves. Outside of that, I'm wondering how other people see groups of always evil creatures being able to pull this off.

which is a bit different from medieval. Humans aren't an "always evil" creature in a D&D context, even when they might be living in an extremely evil fashion.


I'm assuming the OP's question is regarding a society in which all of the members - or at least some colossally overwhelming percentage like 95% - have evil alignments. That's different from most examples in human history of 'evil' societies.

Yup. Fiendish Codex 2 describes LE, "devil-influenced" human societies where 90% of the population go to the 9 hells after death, and it's very medieval-flavoured, but 90% at death, is a bit different from 99+ % at birth.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 03:41 AM
Yup. Fiendish Codex 2 describes LE, "devil-influenced" human societies where 90% of the population go to the 9 hells after death, and it's very medieval-flavoured, but 90% at death, is a bit different from 99+ % at birth.

That's a strawman, or at the very least moving the goalposts. You've cited the first statistic, but where are you getting that last statistic from; it's not in any book I've read.


Lynchings, pogroms and apartheid weren’t only acted out by members of nobility, and the targets of their hate weren’t always beyond their borders.

Yes! Exactly! The common people were evil as well! Evil has never been the exclusive purview of the rich or the powerful, it's just more visible when they do it because they can afford to do it big.

Glorthindel
2021-08-06, 03:45 AM
Further down the chain, lower class Drow might want to take action but are constrained by the upper classes of power who aren't going to let the rabble grind society to a halt. So your evil deeds and revenge and plotting needs to be kept within certain guardrails if you don't want your entire family house turned into driders.

I feel a lot of people forget that Evil creatures can be cowardly - when you are way down the pecking order, self-preservation is going to trump all in evil creatures, especially when you know that everyone above you is also evil, so the penalties for stepping out of line are going to be a bit more than a slap on the wrist and a disappointed look. Sure, you may hate your neighbour and fantasise about bad things happening to him, but when his cousin is commander of the local garrison, you're going to keep a tight reign on your petty impulses as letting the guy get away with bringing his dog around to crap on your lawn is infinitely preferable than being dangled from the battlements by your entrails.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-06, 03:55 AM
A "society of always evil creatures" is a poor definition of "always evil society". The reason being that societies of always evil creatures do not typically exist in a vacuum and they do not consist solely of always evil creatures. Orc society, for example, is described as functioning by raiding human settlements. When there's no strong central power to unite orcs, orcs quickly descend into tribal warfare and get pushed to fringes of habitable terrain. Hence, functional orc societies are small xenophobic tribes with predator-prey-relationship to animals and non-orc societies. If there were no non-orcs, no vulnerable non-orc settlements to raid and no great Other for orcs to unite against, they would likely remain as spread-out small tribes.

Illithid society is described as functioning through mass scale enslavement of non-illithids. Essentially the illithids form a parasitic upper class of intellectuals who thrive on the work of lower classes. Without non-illithids, this societal structure isn't possible, indeed the standard illithid lifecycle isn't possible.

Vampires, another example of parasitic evil creatures, typically form sub-cultures within larger cultures, similar to criminal gangs. They exist hidden within a larger society and exploit the inability of a large society to keep tabs on all of its members. Without a larger society to hide in, there's no grounds for vampire society. Without non-vampires, there isn't even possibility of vampires.

So on and so forth. Alignment is meant to be applied to persons. Applying it to societies is dubious.

VonKaiserstein
2021-08-06, 04:36 AM
In a word- pirates. Particularly during the Golden Age of piracy, each ship was a democracy of murderous thieves. They had rules governing when they could fight each other, elected battle leaders (captains), and a functional internal society. Externally, there again was a lot of custom towards taking a ship. If you gave up without a fight, they would take portable valuable cargo, gold and jewels, but then let your ship and crew go- because it saved pirate lives, and the stories would spread, leading to more easy loot. Conversely, if you fought back, they'd kill anyone they viewed as resisting, sometimes horribly, and likely take anyone valuable for ransom.

Over time, the pirates come to need a market, and you get a town that the pirates won't attack or loot, for fear of other pirates destroying them. This town buys stolen goods, and has legitimate merchants that fence the stolen items to existing legal markets. These legal market towns do not attempt to destroy the pirate town because cheap goods are cheap goods, and it's probably not worth the trouble of having the pirates target your shipping exclusively.

You could expand the concept to a small outbranch of the underdark, and more tribute seeking than kidnap and murder seeking Drow, coexisting with a human society above- likely one that has legal slavery, so the Drow can buy their sacrifices instead of kidnapping. The Drow reduce human bandits, and extort tolls from travelers on roads they control- but these roads are more or less random. There's an accepted fee per person, so everyone in the kingdom carries a drowprice on them just in case. It's annoying, but bandits just aren't a problem anymore. On the other hand, the Drow outpost is in the Underdark- far too dangerous for the humans to attempt to flush out. The kingdom will occasionally kill warbands, and the warbands will occasionally kill kingdom patrols, but it's all low scale, designated combatants kind of warfare. In times of war, large sums have even been used to convince the drow to turn upon an enemy of the kingdom, functioning as an additional army- with none of their customary restraint.

Undeniably evil, but quite functional.

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 05:24 AM
That's a strawman, or at the very least moving the goalposts. You've cited the first statistic, but where are you getting that last statistic from; it's not in any book I've read.



MM: Alignment:

Always: The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions.

Savage Species:

When a kind of creature always has a particular alignment, individuals who differ are either unique or one in a million.

When a creature usually has a particular alignment, individuals who differ are in the minority (considerably less than 50% of the population).

When a creature often has a particular alignment, exceptions are common.


So it goes beyond 99+ % to "one in a million" are exceptions: 99.9999 % are not exceptions.


A "society of always evil creatures" is a poor definition of "always evil society". The reason being that societies of always evil creatures do not typically exist in a vacuum and they do not consist solely of always evil creatures.

True, but the OP specifically referred to Always Evil creatures.

A society of fiends, a society of chromatic dragons, etc. Only, like humans, helpless as infants.


Orc society, for example, is described as functioning by raiding human settlements. When there's no strong central power to unite orcs, orcs quickly descend into tribal warfare and get pushed to fringes of habitable terrain. Hence, functional orc societies are small xenophobic tribes with predator-prey-relationship to animals and non-orc societies. If there were no non-orcs, no vulnerable non-orc settlements to raid and no great Other for orcs to unite against, they would likely remain as spread-out small tribes.

Orcs, strictly speaking, aren't "a society of always evil creatures" - not even all-orc tribes.



Alignment is meant to be applied to persons. Applying it to societies is dubious.

Not really. The D&D splatbook Cityscape does have "community alignments" and not just "power center alignments" - making it clear it its description that a community taken as a whole, can have an overall outlook that can be summarised as being a particular alignment.

It even has demographics, for communities above "small town" in size.

LG: 20%
NG: 8%
CG: 8%
LN: 25%
N: 6%
CN: 2%
LE: 20%
NE: 6%
CE: 5%

NichG
2021-08-06, 07:30 AM
Shadowrun-esque megacorp dystopia. Everyone is a competitor, and there are lots of socially acceptable ways for people to be aggressive to each other, from racing up the ladder, getting someone fired, giving people below you painfully bureaucratic working conditions, influencing company decisions to build noisy infrastructure next to the house of that guy you hate, trapping people in Kafkaesque limbos of process, or just plain generating a bunch of externalities that are other people's problems. But society persists because ultimately the goal of everyone isn't to burn everything down but rather for everyone and everything else to be below them, and function and productivity are instrumental sub-goals along the path to enabling ridiculous status symbols and demonstrations of excess.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-06, 07:56 AM
Shadowrun-esque megacorp dystopia. Everyone is a competitor, and there are lots of socially acceptable ways for people to be aggressive to each other, from racing up the ladder, getting someone fired, giving people below you painfully bureaucratic working conditions, influencing company decisions to build noisy infrastructure next to the house of that guy you hate, trapping people in Kafkaesque limbos of process, or just plain generating a bunch of externalities that are other people's problems. But society persists because ultimately the goal of everyone isn't to burn everything down but rather for everyone and everything else to be below them, and function and productivity are instrumental sub-goals along the path to enabling ridiculous status symbols and demonstrations of excess.
I like that illustration and example. +1 :smallsmile:

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-06, 08:10 AM
i always figured that not all evil is "I'mma take over the world and destroy everything!!" Evil. a lot of a times it could just be "I don't agree with most good-aligned societies and see nothing wrong with eating humanoids and sacrificing the odd baby to my god" evil.

And this could easily extend to individuals in any given society. So for our hypothetical Orc society, the top brass could be captial-E Evil, Demanding sacrifices, planning raiding parties, praising the dark gods, enslaving people and laughing about it, etc etc etc. But for the common folk below, the white-collar workers who are otherwise describes as civilians, they could easily be lower-e evil. Sure they use maiden's blood when crafting weapons, and they might have a slave or two doing their chores, and if a human being is put on the table, well food is food, may as well eat. But they're not actively out to get you, they're not all intent on backstabbing the guy above them to take his throne, and even if they are, it doesn't happen often enough to cause a societal collapse.

Honestly i still say that if the society is large enough, Neutral or even Good civilians could still live full and happy lives there without issue. There might be some prosecution, acts of charity might be frowned upon in the same way acts of theft are in good societies, but if you keep your head low and don't cause a fuss, you should be okay.

the main problem as i see it isn't that a society of evil people can't be sustained, it's that everyone always looks at Sauron or Voldemort and thinks "An entire society consisting of that guy."

Metastachydium
2021-08-06, 09:00 AM
This is most human societies before the modern era.



A realistic medieval or earlier society. The kind with the misogyny and the slavery and the xenophobia and the bear baiting and the public executions for trivial offenses that everyone turned out and cheered for.

(You folks are massively romanticizing the Modern era, while essentially demonizing everything that came before. The thing is, the Early Modern period had virtually all the problems the Middle Ages did, but in a number of respects it was way uglier. And let's not even get started on 18th/19th century with the French Wars and the fallout of the Industrial Revolution and the golden age of colonialism, not to mention, well, pretty much the entire 20th century. How idyllic the 200(/1)0s really seem is also mostly just a matter of perspective.)

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-06, 09:15 AM
keep the politics fictional guys, you know the rules. we're not here for a European history lesson.

Kvess
2021-08-06, 09:20 AM
Without getting into specifics, one could easily frame any modern human society as Evil. I’d argue that doing so is the point of any good dystopia, because they are only frightening if they are recognizable. Megacorps and Big Brother weren’t pulled out of thin air, after all.

The thing that readers often get wrong about fictional dystopias is it’s not the rulers who are scary; it’s the fact that the populace cooperates with them. It was people all along!

Glorthindel
2021-08-06, 09:37 AM
(You folks are massively romanticizing the Modern era, while essentially demonizing everything that came before. The thing is, the Early Modern period had virtually all the problems the Middle Ages did, but in a number of respects it was way uglier. And let's not even get started on 18th/19th century with the French Wars and the fallout of the Industrial Revolution and the golden age of colonialism, not to mention, well, pretty much the entire 20th century. How idyllic the 200(/1)0s really seem is also mostly just a matter of perspective.)

I think that part of the problem; a lot of people who can't see how evil communities can exist are under the impression them and their society are good :smallbiggrin:

NorthernPhoenix
2021-08-06, 09:41 AM
What if there is no such thing as "good"? What if every society that has been and will be is ultimately "evil".

Certainly makes answering the thread easy, if nothing else :tongue:

Kvess
2021-08-06, 09:53 AM
One problem with portraying Always Evil societies is we don’t have Always Evil people. We can only observe human behaviour and human societies, and maybe portray our worst impulses, because the alternatives don’t exist.

To me it’s a little too convenient when any mortal antagonists are Always Evil, and I think it’s something that Dungeons & Dragons struggles with whenever it takes the residents of any Always Evil society somewhat seriously. RA Salvatore’s Drizzt books (which I am currently reading through) constantly grapple with whether evil is innate or learned.

Mastikator
2021-08-06, 10:11 AM
One problem with portraying Always Evil societies is we don’t have Always Evil people. We can only observe human behaviour and human societies, and maybe portray our worst impulses, because the alternatives don’t exist.

To me it’s a little too convenient when any mortal antagonists are Always Evil, and I think it’s something that Dungeons & Dragons struggles with whenever it takes the residents of any Always Evil society somewhat seriously. RA Salvatore’s Drizzt books (which I am currently reading through) constantly grapple with whether evil is innate or learned.

I think there's a double standard here. When orcs are "usually evil" it's because they are culturally predisposed to evil actions and behaviors and beliefs, so we accept that orcs are generally evil. However when real (historical and contemporary) humans live in actual evil societies that conduct wide scale slavery, genocide, xenophobia and classism (and other Evil™ things) we somehow change our standard; the individuals aren't necessarily evil just because they happen to live in a predominantly very evil society. Yet the orcs are.
Only one of two can be true

Orc societies may be evil but most orcs should still be neutral
Humans in evil societies are generally evil, individuals are NOT spared judgement



The orcs aren't actually evil, it's just that humans are so xenophobic that we declare them to be. And humans are good even though humans do all the evil things that orcs do.

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-06, 11:55 AM
Orc societies may be evil but most orcs should still be neutral
Humans in evil societies are generally evil, individuals are NOT spared judgement



i generally lean towards the former myself. i do think the orcs WITHIN the society would still be more evil then neutral since they were raised in an evil society. but if you took any orc baby and raised it in a good-aligned society, you'd most likely get a good-aligned orc. There might be a slight lean towards evil making them neutral (assuming things like anger management problems, tendency to solve problems with violence, high hormone levels promoting need for a lot of physical activity, general inability to sit still, general affinity for competition, and possibly getting a thrill from a kill are all things that can easily manifest in Orcs simply due to genetic makeup) , but if all their needs are met, they're taught to control or channel any Orcish instincts into non-violent (or at least more acceptable) mediums, and they're taught about morals and the difference between right and wrong, then they should be perfectly capable of living good or neutral-aligned lives in a good-aligned society.


Again though, it's entirely possible neutral or even good-aligned orcs could exist within an evil-aligned orcish society. they might just be much more rare.

NorthernPhoenix
2021-08-06, 12:04 PM
i generally lean towards the former myself. i do think the orcs WITHIN the society would still be more evil then neutral since they were raised in an evil society. but if you took any orc baby and raised it in a good-aligned society, you'd most likely get a good-aligned orc. There might be a slight lean towards evil making them neutral (assuming things like anger management problems, tendency to solve problems with violence, high hormone levels promoting need for a lot of physical activity, general inability to sit still, general affinity for competition, and possibly getting a thrill from a kill are all things that can easily manifest in Orcs simply due to genetic makeup) , but if all their needs are met, they're taught to control or channel any Orcish instincts into non-violent (or at least more acceptable) mediums, and they're taught about morals and the difference between right and wrong, then they should be perfectly capable of living good or neutral-aligned lives in a good-aligned society.


Again though, it's entirely possible neutral or even good-aligned orcs could exist within an evil-aligned orcish society. they might just be much more rare.

This is sort of where i lean too, except i lean much harder into the evil-by-nurture angle. By this i mean, all humanoids are neutral at birth, but some kinds of them are raised by societies where the mortal power-structure, spirits, and gods all "nurture" a fundamentally "evil" attitude, mostly towards everyone outside the tribe/society. So while i'm perfectly fine with the raised-by-good scenario, the chances of this realistically happening without that external influence in a controlling, closed information society where you cannot just easily look up alternative view-points would be pretty slim. An orc raised by orcs will probably only know loot-and-pillage-the-lesser-races, simply because that is what his parents, leaders, priests, ancestor spirits and god have told him.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 12:14 PM
[I]MM: Alignment:

Always: The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions.


Fair enough.
Looking at the creatures that actually have "Always Evil" in their entry, it seems that many of them are outsiders of various sorts, which would allow their societies to be greatly simplified. Many of the remainder are solitary creatures like the red dragon. And the ones remaining after that are generally weird magical creatures that differ wildly from each other (None of the standard evil races are listed as always evil), and whose societies would likely be shaped by those differences.

The simplest one would probably be the mind flayers. They farm intelligent beings for food; They get all sickly if they don't eat intelligent creatures, they won't die from it though. Now as long as you keep those three details you can plug in whatever functional society you want to around it. Their default one involves living in caves in the underdark and psionic government propaganda broadcasts. I don;t know how realistically functional that is but the problem with its functionality isn't that they're eating people

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 12:27 PM
Mind Flayers are "Usually LE", but aren't specifically "Always Evil, Usually Lawful".

Natural Lycanthropes are normally Always (x) (though (x) comes in many varieties). Some are solitary, some are not.

Wererats, in particular, are very gregarious. A village consisting entirely of wererats would not be entirely implausible.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-06, 12:31 PM
Not really. The D&D splatbook Cityscape does have "community alignments" and not just "power center alignments" - making it clear it its description that a community taken as a whole, can have an overall outlook that can be summarised as being a particular alignment.

It even has demographics, for communities above "small town" in size.

LG: 20%
NG: 8%
CG: 8%
LN: 25%
N: 6%
CN: 2%
LE: 20%
NE: 6%
CE: 5%

Demographics of personal alignment is a poor definition of community alignment and trying to get aggregate alignment out of demographics of personal alignment runs into the "average family has 2.5 kids" problem. Just like 2.5 is not an actual physically viable number of kids and thus no real family has that number of kids, it's dubious if behaviour of persons following mutually conflicting ethics can be aggregated into a viable moral descriptor. A community alignment that no existing person in that community actually follows is of limited use.

This, by the way, is why I don't give much weight to statements like "societies in past condoned slavery, therefore everyone in the past was evil!". You can take the explicit conduct of a society, such as written law or a religion, compare it to descriptions of personal alignment and then give that conduct an alignment as if belonged to a person. But it only has impact on personal alignment of actual persons in that community insofar as they act according to it. Since humans aren't rule automatons who unfailingly heed explicit conducts, it becomes apparent the whole method is backwards for topics such as this.

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 12:36 PM
trying to get aggregate alignment out of demographics of personal alignment runs into the "average family has 2.5 kids" problem. Just like 2.5 is not an actual physically viable number of kids and thus no real family has that number of kids, it's dubious if behaviour of persons following mutually conflicting ethics can be aggregated into a viable moral descriptor. A community alignment that no existing person in that community actually follows is of limited use.The point is that, according to Cityscape, 20% of urban communities are LG - meaning that this is the alignment of the community as a whole.

Not everyone in the LG community is LG, but enough are that the community as a whole tends to behave in a LG fashion.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 12:43 PM
Mind Flayers are "Usually LE", but aren't specifically "Always Evil, Usually Lawful".

Crap, you're right. I didn't initially look them up because I was looking through the online SRD (which doesn't have them). I just kind of assumed.

What is it with D&D and eating people? Because I also recall the lizardfolk being usually neutral despite being consistently described as eating people by preference

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-06, 12:44 PM
Wererats, in particular, are very gregarious. A village consisting entirely of wererats would not be entirely implausible. That brings to mind nvm, mod wants us to back off

Peelee
2021-08-06, 12:46 PM
The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Let's avoid jokes about real-world evil societies, since that could overlap into inappropriate topics.

Jokes about real-world wererats are probably fine though.

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 12:50 PM
What is it with D&D and eating people? Because I also recall the lizardfolk being usually neutral despite being consistently described as eating people by preference


Motives and context probably make a difference. That, or mind flayers are evil for unrelated reasons - they're evil beings that happen to eat people, rather than evil because they eat people.


A neutral lizardfolk that still eats people, might be the kind that only eats foes "slain justly" - aggressors, villains, etc.


In 4e D&D, for example, even some good-aligned dragons sometimes eat slain enemies.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-06, 12:51 PM
The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Let's avoid jokes about real-world evil societies, since that could overlap into inappropriate topics.

Jokes about real-world wererats are probably fine though.
But then someone will want to know where I saw them, and we are right back to where we started. (post edited)

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-06, 01:04 PM
Motives and context probably make a difference. That, or mind flayers are evil for unrelated reasons - they're evil beings that happen to eat people, rather than evil because they eat people.


A neutral lizardfolk that still eats people, might be the kind that only eats foes "slain justly" - aggressors, villains, etc.


In 4e D&D, for example, even some good-aligned dragons sometimes eat slain enemies.

Yeah. By default, the lizardfolk kill intruders. This isn't (by definition) evil (although it's not incredibly good). They don't go out of their territory to hunt people, they don't torture them, and if no one comes in, no one gets hurt.

They also eat the meat of things they kill, whether those are sophonts or animals. This, by itself, is neutral. In their minds, why waste meat, especially since the owner is past caring?

------

Mind flayers, on the other hand, farm intelligent beings and keep them in slavery so that they can be more easily eaten. They derive pleasure from eating people, in some accounts finding fear and pain to be a pleasant spice. They seek out people to enslave and kill and eat; there's no live and let live. There are only slaves and people they haven't enslaved yet. This, by any sane measure, is evil behavior.

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 01:05 PM
Again though, it's entirely possible neutral or even good-aligned orcs could exist within an evil-aligned orcish society. they might just be much more rare.

Orcs are one of the D&D humanoid races with moderately high variation - being Often CE (so, between 40% and 50% are CE, according to the MM). And according to MM IV, the most common alignment after CE is CN rather than NE.


It's quite plausible that most of the CN ones remain within the community rather than being forced to flee.


Though an alternative interpretation could be that, instead, they tend to group together into separate communities - some communities consisting mostly of CE orcs, some of mostly CN orcs.

Quizatzhaderac
2021-08-06, 01:31 PM
Probably the most human and "civilized" looking society would be one where the strong have lots of power over the weak. Such a society would have multiple narrow gradations of power. A depends on help from B to control C, A and B need C to control D, et cetra. If D acts up, people in E can be promoted to replace them. If there's a "popular" revolt, it's C & D teaming up and results in things getting worse for E, while the leaders replace A & B.

Individuals can be good, but that means having a problem with your society. Neutral individuals don't actively participate, but they often passively benefit (especially if they're in A,B, or C). People in E can be good, neutral, or evil, but the words "good" and "evil" are badly distorted because words are controlled by the upper classes and don't take into account the lifeboat ethics needed to live as a E.

These classes aren't orders of magnitude different in size efficient command structure (1 captain, 4 lieutenants, 16 sergeants, 32 corporals, 96 privates) as no lower group can be clearly stronger than the upper group. Lower groups also tend to be split sideways (country folk vs city folk, different ethnicities, or people geographically distant). The more systems of division the better as it lets the rules draw lines in any situation to put most of the power on their side.

For example in Rome (as I understand it) had the systems
Regular military > auxiliaries > everyone else
Patricians > Citizens > free residents > slaves
Big farm owners > small farm owners > tenants >serfs >laborers > slaves
Capital > colony cities > local towns > villages > migrants

Quertus
2021-08-06, 02:02 PM
I strongly agree with those who say that an evil society would *look* good / act good towards its "in group".

However, when everyone's evil, and they know it? You're gonna see one or both of two behaviors: they're gonna *manufacture* an out group, and/or they'll be brutal among themselves.

Manufacturing an out group could be simple raiding, sure, but if they're the primary power, it'll look more like a war of conquest

At the local scale, you're looking at competition - whether that's sports teams pitting different regions against reach other, or just different fan bases against one another, or caused by being actively sorted into different groups competing for "house points" against one another.

Brutality could take the form of public executions, sure, but I feel you get more mileage out of slow deaths, like crucifixions, than the headman's axe. Similarly, I much prefer the idea of things like stockades for traffic violations, or other public humiliation as a way to increase the suffering without losing your power base to executions. Heck, simply choosing particularly bloody or brutal sports could fill everyone's deep desire to see some punishment, give your populous the joy of watching people suffer.

On the flip side, laws might be very lax about just how much you could make others suffer - things like poisoning pets, nonlethal poisons, curses, and love potions might not raise any eyebrows.

Hospitalization might be common, possibly even with plenty of victim blaming. And bullying would be the norm. Or they might be better than that to their larger community. Shrug.

Slaves (or some other "lowest of the low", "not really people" cast, like "pledges" or "freshmen") would be a great way to create such a division, and to allow citizens to work off their frustrations safely.

Education would be competitive, and highly stressful. Work would be competitive, and highly stressful. Suicide rates would be high - definitely one of the top ten causes of death.

Or not. None of these are *required* of any particular "always evil" society.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-06, 02:46 PM
Just to give some contrast, lets go Chaotic Evil for a while:

Everyone hates everyone else.

Everyone sticks to their own territory most of time, meeting only to reproduce or to fight over resources.

Children are seen as extensions of their parents and brutally used used as instruments to do their parent's bidding. It is not uncommon for parents to kill their children or vice versa. Indeed, outcompeting and killing one's aging parent is often only way to achieve true independence.

There are no governing bodies, no written laws, only rule of the strong over the weak and silent agreements motivated by selfish desire to survive.

Left on their own, the technology of these people is next to non-existent, and their numbers small. They depend on natural surplus of resources in their main living area. They do not produce much in terms of art or science, but every member is willing to opportunistically use any art or technology produced by other peoples. They may allow settlements of other peoples on their territory so they can prey upon those others, but will act to pre-empt those others from becoming a threat to them. They will engage in asymmetric warfare against more organized societies and their primary defense is retreating to marginal territory where large groups face logistical difficulties.

This is roughly similar to how solitary predators and lone-wolf guerilla warriors operate. Note that in addition to the obvious biological meaning, "reproduction" may also mean kidnapping and converting members of other peoples (violent indoctrination of captured kids, infecting someone with vampirism, using a captive as a larval host etc.). A version of nest parasitism is also possible, a la changeling stories or cuckoos: the Chaotic Evil parents offload parenting to another people or species by swapping their kid for one of the other people's.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 04:17 PM
Yeah. By default, the lizardfolk kill intruders. This isn't (by definition) evil (although it's not incredibly good). They don't go out of their territory to hunt people,

The ones in Book of Lairs do, and they're still listed as neutral

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 04:26 PM
The ones in Book of Lairs do, and they're still listed as neutral
I only recall one lizardfolk in the 2e Book of Lairs splatbook - and he'd left his tribe in the hope of joining human society.


He's encountered in the Bichirs adventure (Bichirs are giant killer lungfish) - having seen a child fall into a river and the bichirs closing in, he's jumped in to rescue the child, and is trying to do so, not very successfully, when the party arrive (the bichirs have almost gotten them and he's yelling "Save ussss!")


I don't think the book has an actual lizardfolk tribe in it.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-06, 04:34 PM
The ones in Book of Lairs do, and they're still listed as neutral

I'm only familiar with the 4e+ renditions, where the presentation is much more...sane. As in not internally contradictory.

But yes, if a particular group were to go hunting for people to kill and eat, regardless of those people's status as trespassers or not, I'd feel comfortable tagging that group as being evil. At least if they were above the beast level and had conscious control of their actions/moral agency.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 04:39 PM
I only recall one lizardfolk in the 2e Book of Lairs splatbook - and he'd left his tribe in the hope of joining human society.


He's encountered in the Bichirs adventure (Bichirs are giant killer lungfish) - having seen a child fall into a river and the bichirs closing in, he's jumped in to rescue the child, and is trying to do so, not very successfully, when the party arrive (the bichirs have almost gotten them and he's yelling "Save ussss!")


I don't think the book has an actual lizardfolk tribe in it.

I think they're around page 64

hamishspence
2021-08-06, 05:11 PM
Mine's the Forgotten Realms one:

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Book_of_Lairs

Man_Over_Game
2021-08-06, 05:19 PM
In a word- pirates. Particularly during the Golden Age of piracy, each ship was a democracy of murderous thieves. They had rules governing when they could fight each other, elected battle leaders (captains), and a functional internal society. Externally, there again was a lot of custom towards taking a ship. If you gave up without a fight, they would take portable valuable cargo, gold and jewels, but then let your ship and crew go- because it saved pirate lives, and the stories would spread, leading to more easy loot. Conversely, if you fought back, they'd kill anyone they viewed as resisting, sometimes horribly, and likely take anyone valuable for ransom.

Over time, the pirates come to need a market, and you get a town that the pirates won't attack or loot, for fear of other pirates destroying them. This town buys stolen goods, and has legitimate merchants that fence the stolen items to existing legal markets. These legal market towns do not attempt to destroy the pirate town because cheap goods are cheap goods, and it's probably not worth the trouble of having the pirates target your shipping exclusively.

You could expand the concept to a small outbranch of the underdark, and more tribute seeking than kidnap and murder seeking Drow, coexisting with a human society above- likely one that has legal slavery, so the Drow can buy their sacrifices instead of kidnapping. The Drow reduce human bandits, and extort tolls from travelers on roads they control- but these roads are more or less random. There's an accepted fee per person, so everyone in the kingdom carries a drowprice on them just in case. It's annoying, but bandits just aren't a problem anymore. On the other hand, the Drow outpost is in the Underdark- far too dangerous for the humans to attempt to flush out. The kingdom will occasionally kill warbands, and the warbands will occasionally kill kingdom patrols, but it's all low scale, designated combatants kind of warfare. In times of war, large sums have even been used to convince the drow to turn upon an enemy of the kingdom, functioning as an additional army- with none of their customary restraint.

Undeniably evil, but quite functional.

I think this brings up an excellent point: Rules.

Rules are how badguys survive with other badguys. Because without those rules in place, someone will definitely kill you. It's not honor when your life depends on it. Thieves are the last people you want to steal from.

Bohandas
2021-08-06, 08:04 PM
Mine's the Forgotten Realms one:

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Book_of_Lairs

I think the one I'm getting this from might be from the first edition.

Mastikator
2021-08-07, 10:13 AM
i generally lean towards the former myself. i do think the orcs WITHIN the society would still be more evil then neutral since they were raised in an evil society. but if you took any orc baby and raised it in a good-aligned society, you'd most likely get a good-aligned orc. There might be a slight lean towards evil making them neutral (assuming things like anger management problems, tendency to solve problems with violence, high hormone levels promoting need for a lot of physical activity, general inability to sit still, general affinity for competition, and possibly getting a thrill from a kill are all things that can easily manifest in Orcs simply due to genetic makeup) , but if all their needs are met, they're taught to control or channel any Orcish instincts into non-violent (or at least more acceptable) mediums, and they're taught about morals and the difference between right and wrong, then they should be perfectly capable of living good or neutral-aligned lives in a good-aligned society.


Again though, it's entirely possible neutral or even good-aligned orcs could exist within an evil-aligned orcish society. they might just be much more rare.

But you'll generally not find an orc that has been raised in a good aligned society. Most orcs you encounter will come from evil societies and therefore be evil. An orc that was raised by good jolly halflings turning out also good is an outliner, not a rule. Likewise a human from a generally evil society will likely be evil by default and only a minority of humans in an evil human society will be non-evil (they will also most likely be rebels/opposed to their own society).
The concept of good orcs rebelling against the greater evil orc society is a cool idea that should be explored more IMO.

Unless you play in Eberron where orcs aren't generally evil, just generally chaotic. Just another reason why Eberron is better than other settings. :smallcool:

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-07, 10:54 AM
But you'll generally not find an orc that has been raised in a good aligned society. Most orcs you encounter will come from evil societies and therefore be evil. An orc that was raised by good jolly halflings turning out also good is an outliner, not a rule. Likewise a human from a generally evil society will likely be evil by default and only a minority of humans in an evil human society will be non-evil (they will also most likely be rebels/opposed to their own society).
The concept of good orcs rebelling against the greater evil orc society is a cool idea that should be explored more IMO.

Well yeah of course, but it can always be used to explain say, a PC playing a good-aligned Orc. I've got a good-aligned Drow PC with essentially the same story, she was taken from the underdark as an infant and raised in a largely human settlement. As a result, she's never met another Drow because there simply aren't other Drow anywhere near that human settlement.

the main point i was trying to make is that races like Orcs and Drow are most likely only Evil because their society is evil. and if you were to take any member of them out of that society and raise them in a different one, you'd probably get a good or neutral member of that race. Same as if you were to try and raise a human or an elf in an orc or drow society.

NorthernPhoenix
2021-08-07, 11:05 AM
Well yeah of course, but it can always be used to explain say, a PC playing a good-aligned Orc. I've got a good-aligned Drow PC with essentially the same story, she was taken from the underdark as an infant and raised in a largely human settlement. As a result, she's never met another Drow because there simply aren't other Drow anywhere near that human settlement.

the main point i was trying to make is that races like Orcs and Drow are most likely only Evil because their society is evil. and if you were to take any member of them out of that society and raise them in a different one, you'd probably get a good or neutral member of that race. Same as if you were to try and raise a human or an elf in an orc or drow society.

I certainly agree with this, however, i think the flip side of this is that there is nothing unreasonable about these societies being "evil" (especially to modern eyes), and therefor producing mostly evil people.

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-07, 11:14 AM
I certainly agree with this, however, i think the flip side of this is that there is nothing unreasonable about these societies being "evil" (especially to modern eyes), and therefor producing mostly evil people.

i think we're just agreeing with eachother here, i was saying the same thing. an evil society of orcs would produce mostly evil orcs because they were raised in the evil society.

still think it's possible for neutral or good orcs to appear while being raised within the evil society, but those would be either much more rare, or almost never in positions of power. more shopkeepers, janitors, or farmers most likely.

Tanarii
2021-08-07, 03:27 PM
Well yeah of course, but it can always be used to explain say, a PC playing a good-aligned Orc. I've got a good-aligned Drow PC with essentially the same story, she was taken from the underdark as an infant and raised in a largely human settlement. As a result, she's never met another Drow because there simply aren't other Drow anywhere near that human settlement.
I've noticed that players mostly seem to care about "always evil" only when it comes to wanting PCs of that race, or not having to worry about what to do with whelps when invading their homes and slaughtering the parents. GMs who are big into world building are another minority who care.

And then there is the internet, where anything can become a furor, like it did this last April 2020. :smallamused:

Beleriphon
2021-08-07, 03:41 PM
Basically any semi-feudal society where the people at the bottom have basically no rights can be functional and the population be majority evil. Easiest way to extrapolate is look at something like The Godfather movies and apply to a larger level. Pretty much the way it works by wanting to get a big enough stick to fight your way to the next level, and fight off those below you. The stick can be literal at the lowers echelons and metaphorical at the high echelons.

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-07, 03:57 PM
i could easily see a Neutral or Lawful Evil society being less a "Muahaha i want to take over / destroy the world" society and more of a "I just don't agree with your code of ethics" society.


Lets say we have a Goblin settlement. These Goblins:

- See nothing wrong with Cannibalism. Food is food.
- Have no sense of personal possessions, or at least if you don't currently have it, it's fair game. so they go about stealing whatever they need that's unguarded.
- Don't have any kind of justice system for murder. If Bob killed Frank, it's Frank's friends and family's responsibility to kill Bob, if they want too at all. No one else will bother.
- Have dozens are babies a season, and can't feasibly feed them all. To weed out the week, they put all the toddlers into a pen with a wolf. If they kill the wolf, all the survivors are welcomed into the tribe. If the wolf lives, any Goblin who escapes gets welcomed into the tribe. Whoever doesn't survive is buried and / or eaten and / or fed to the wolf.
- Have designated roles for individuals based on birth. Crafters craft, fighters fight, hunters hunt.
- Perform Goblin sacrifices to their gods every year, It's treated as an honor, and it's not like they're short on numbers.
- Murder whoever is in charge and take charge themselves if they don't think the previous leader was doing a good enough job.
- and maybe some other things, my point is made.

By all definition, you would probably call this society "Evil". But they're not destructive, they're not antagonistic, they're just not Good. A society like this could totally hold itself up under it's own weight, just because the OPTION to murder and become your boss is there, doesn't mean it'll happen every day. just because you DO eat your own kind, doesn't mean you eat it for every meal, or eat those who are still alive. Just because you DO let a wolf play fetch with your toddlers, it doesn't mean you're going to loose all your kids.

this specific society could even be pretty reasonable to talk and trade with, even without changing anything about themselves. Who knows, maybe they'll respect your ways if you respect theirs.

Mechalich
2021-08-07, 05:50 PM
By all definition, you would probably call this society "Evil". But they're not destructive, they're not antagonistic, they're just not Good. A society like this could totally hold itself up under it's own weight, just because the OPTION to murder and become your boss is there, doesn't mean it'll happen every day. just because you DO eat your own kind, doesn't mean you eat it for every meal, or eat those who are still alive. Just because you DO let a wolf play fetch with your toddlers, it doesn't mean you're going to loose all your kids.


A society of this nature would be extremely vulnerable to collapse due to vengeance cycles and equally vulnerable to fragmentation when different factions sorted out according to vengeance imperatives. It would also, even in the best of circumstances, be limited to the Band level, since it would be far too unstable to develop any further.


this specific society could even be pretty reasonable to talk and trade with, even without changing anything about themselves. Who knows, maybe they'll respect your ways if you respect theirs.

One of the things about universal objective morality systems is that 'respecting the ways of others' is actually something you should not do, if those ways are evil. Essentially, if a fantasy universe has universal morality some cultures are right and some cultures are wrong. The good action is therefore to convert the wrong cultures into right cultures, by force if necessary. A simply case is something like demon-worship - that's the kind of thing that right and just individuals need to stop, and if violent crusades are required, so be it, it's still the good action over the long term.

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-07, 06:27 PM
A society of this nature would be extremely vulnerable to collapse due to vengeance cycles and equally vulnerable to fragmentation when different factions sorted out according to vengeance imperatives. It would also, even in the best of circumstances, be limited to the Band level, since it would be far too unstable to develop any further.

that largely depends on how common vengeance is or how far it goes. it first requires individuals to care about taking vengeance at all. If that doesn't happen, or someone in the chain chickens out because someone else surrounded themselves in guards, then it's a non-issue.




One of the things about universal objective morality systems is that 'respecting the ways of others' is actually something you should not do, if those ways are evil. Essentially, if a fantasy universe has universal morality some cultures are right and some cultures are wrong. The good action is therefore to convert the wrong cultures into right cultures, by force if necessary. A simply case is something like demon-worship - that's the kind of thing that right and just individuals need to stop, and if violent crusades are required, so be it, it's still the good action over the long term.

Hey man, if Goblins are eating other Goblins, that's not my problem. It's only when they start eating my people or other non-goblins who don't want to be eaten that it becomes a problem.

awa
2021-08-07, 10:43 PM
Hey man, if Goblins are eating other Goblins, that's not my problem. It's only when they start eating my people or other non-goblins who don't want to be eaten that it becomes a problem.

I very much agree with this. You often get this weird view amongst some of the always evil monsters is bad crowd that anything that pings evil must be immediately exterminated without mercy.
That kind of thing only makes sense if their is a binary good evil conflict dominating the setting. D&d 9+ sides makes that at the bare minimum far more complicated.

Bohandas
2021-08-08, 01:54 AM
A society of this nature would be extremely vulnerable to collapse due to vengeance cycles and equally vulnerable to fragmentation when different factions sorted out according to vengeance imperatives. It would also, even in the best of circumstances, be limited to the Band level, since it would be far too unstable to develop any further.

The flaw with the argument was with using goblins. Goblins aren't listed as "Always evil". Most of the creatures that are Always Evil have magical abilities and/or don't eat. These factors reduce the amount of infrastructure a society requires.

EDIT: Also, you have to take into account that those sacrifices probably have efficacious results in this context. They're not just a superstition


One of the things about universal objective morality systems is that 'respecting the ways of others' is actually something you should not do, if those ways are evil. Essentially, if a fantasy universe has universal morality some cultures are right and some cultures are wrong. The good action is therefore to convert the wrong cultures into right cultures, by force if necessary. A simply case is something like demon-worship - that's the kind of thing that right and just individuals need to stop, and if violent crusades are required, so be it, it's still the good action over the long term.

As long as the evil is self contained it's really not an issue unless places are starting to become haunted or if you're concerned with manipulating the finer intracacies of the Blood War

hamishspence
2021-08-08, 02:08 AM
As long as the evil is self contained it's really not an issue unless places are starting to become haunted or if you're concerned with manipulating the finer intracacies of the Blood War

That kind of "self-contained evil" is probably what's in play in the BoED phrase:

"The mere existence of evil orcs is not just cause for war against them, if the orcs have been causing no harm."

going so far as to say that launching a war against such orcs without provocation, is evil.


I very much agree with this. You often get this weird view amongst some of the always evil monsters is bad crowd that anything that pings evil must be immediately exterminated without mercy.
That kind of thing only makes sense if their is a binary good evil conflict dominating the setting. D&d 9+ sides makes that at the bare minimum far more complicated.

Eberron material in particular tends to make it clear that this isn't an option.

Silver Flame article - part 2

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041122a

"In a crowd of ten commoners, odds are good that three will be evil. But that doesn't mean they are monsters or even killers -- each is just a greedy, selfish person who willingly watches others suffer. The sword is no answer here; the paladin is charged to protect these people. Oratory, virtue, and inspiration are the weapons of the paladin -- though intimidation may have its place."


Eberron Campaign Setting book:

"In a world where characters have access to magic such as detect evil, it's important to keep in mind that evil people are not always killers, criminals, or demon worshippers. They might be selfish and cruel, always putting their interests above those of others, but they don't necessarily deserve to be attacked by adventurers. The self-centered advocate is lawful evil, for example, and the cruel innkeeper is neutral evil."

Roger_Druid
2021-08-08, 02:50 AM
Hi all!

I was wondering should you ever happened on "2607 / Planes of Law" boxed set. Mechanus is a place of Lawful Neutrality; however, during day is ruled by LG and at night by LE, all perfectly matched and synchronized (as it was meant to be). Maybe toy could have a look?

Roger Druid

Bohandas
2021-08-08, 04:17 AM
Not sure if that's a good bot or a bad machine translation combined with a wrong thread. "My hovercraft is full of eels."

Bonzai
2021-08-10, 09:36 PM
An example that I created in my homebrew campaign setting:

There is a continent dominated by a dense jungle known as "The Deep". Picture the Amazon, but on crack. There are areas where the canopy is so thick that daylight never shines through. It is filled with deadly flora and fauna. Along the coast, a man discovered the art of Necromancy, and soon his tribe prospered and thrived well beyond any others in the area. The undead can work in the sweltering heat without tiring. The various stinging and poisonous creatures and plants have no impact on them. With their undead minions, they were able to push back the jungle, and create a massive and thriving civilization (think Mayans but with Necromancy).

Necromancy became revered, respected, and the corner stone of their society. Laws were strictly enforced, with any serious infraction leading to a death sentence, and being raised as an undead to serve the public welfare. This society was essentially LE. The citizens were extremely lawful and do everything they can to stay out of trouble. They embrace evil acts out of pragmatism and necessity. Yes, it is unnerving and horrifying to see your recently deceased grandmother shuffling down the street as a zombie, but they take comfort in that it is in the service of their people.

Main thing is evil does not have to equate to stupid. They can work together, follow the rules, and not be actively trying to screw each other. Evil can come from beliefs and things that the society chooses to embrace.

Mastikator
2021-08-11, 12:18 AM
An example that I created in my homebrew campaign setting:

There is a continent dominated by a dense jungle known as "The Deep". Picture the Amazon, but on crack. There are areas where the canopy is so thick that daylight never shines through. It is filled with deadly flora and fauna. Along the coast, a man discovered the art of Necromancy, and soon his tribe prospered and thrived well beyond any others in the area. The undead can work in the sweltering heat without tiring. The various stinging and poisonous creatures and plants have no impact on them. With their undead minions, they were able to push back the jungle, and create a massive and thriving civilization (think Mayans but with Necromancy).

Necromancy became revered, respected, and the corner stone of their society. Laws were strictly enforced, with any serious infraction leading to a death sentence, and being raised as an undead to serve the public welfare. This society was essentially LE. The citizens were extremely lawful and do everything they can to stay out of trouble. They embrace evil acts out of pragmatism and necessity. Yes, it is unnerving and horrifying to see your recently deceased grandmother shuffling down the street as a zombie, but they take comfort in that it is in the service of their people.

Main thing is evil does not have to equate to stupid. They can work together, follow the rules, and not be actively trying to screw each other. Evil can come from beliefs and things that the society chooses to embrace.

What were they doing that was evil? I think you need to clarify the part where they sentenced a lot of innocent people for made up crimes to fuel their undead workforce (it's what would happen IRL and explains why they're evil at all). Bonus points if they really like to sentence undesirables and decide that there are right kind of people and wrong kind of people. Extra bonus points if the whole family goes.

Bonzai
2021-08-11, 12:03 PM
What were they doing that was evil? I think you need to clarify the part where they sentenced a lot of innocent people for made up crimes to fuel their undead workforce (it's what would happen IRL and explains why they're evil at all). Bonus points if they really like to sentence undesirables and decide that there are right kind of people and wrong kind of people. Extra bonus points if the whole family goes.

Prisoners from other tribes were routinely executed and raised. And yes, sometimes innocent lives would be lost. It is not like there was an extensive investigation or appeals process.

However in D&D terms it doesn't matter. Necromancer and raising the dead (at least intelligent undead), is an evil act. A society that imbraces that act would be considered inherently evil in game terms.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-11, 12:16 PM
The actual point of clarification would be, "why is necromancy evil?". D&D rules imply a lot of answers, but leave the exact specifics up to a dungeon master.

Tvtyrant
2021-08-11, 12:27 PM
The Neogi seem like a great example. They are a slave based society where each individual suffers from solipsism, and treat both their youth and elderly as expendable.

"They said they were doing it for their grandparents and their grandchildren, but they were really doing it for their grandparents' grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandparents." Douglas Adams

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-11, 01:08 PM
i feel like one possible example of an evil society could be the Tal'darim from Starcraft. Every member of the civilization has a place in a greater caste system which includes a role they must play. But they can ascend the caste by challenging the one directly above them in to-the-death combat. Not everyone is going to want to ascend beyond a certain point though, sometimes what you have is good enough.

not sure if it'd be chaotic evil or lawful evil, and to be fair, the game doesn't really go into things like economy and logistics for the faction, but it's still neat to think about.

Witty Username
2021-08-11, 10:11 PM
So are we talking a society composed entirely of evil beings, or are we talking about a society with traits that are fundamentally evil?
In short is the Society always evil or are the Inhabitants always evil?

A Society that is always evil, that would depend on the traits but would probably be a society that has systemic moral failure while remaining structurally sound. This will quickly tread into what is good and what is evil so this path should be tread with caution.

A Society that is composed of beings that are always evil, then it is a matter on how and why the beings choose to work together. Devil society is formed out of a desire to destroy the abyss and create avenues they can use for personal power. Demon society is created to allow weaker demons to cultivate safety and stronger demons to cultivate influence. Hierarchy is going to be a significant factor in both of these, as is power. Devil society will probably be more stable as the rules they create are intended to control lesser devils and will likely benefit them by giving them routes to cultivate power for them selves and their masters. Demon society will likely involve deception, intrigue and opportunistic changes in allegiance,

GeoffWatson
2021-08-12, 01:41 AM
Silver Flame article - part 2

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041122a

"In a crowd of ten commoners, odds are good that three will be evil. But that doesn't mean they are monsters or even killers -- each is just a greedy, selfish person who willingly watches others suffer. The sword is no answer here; the paladin is charged to protect these people. Oratory, virtue, and inspiration are the weapons of the paladin -- though intimidation may have its place."


Eberron Campaign Setting book:

"In a world where characters have access to magic such as detect evil, it's important to keep in mind that evil people are not always killers, criminals, or demon worshippers. They might be selfish and cruel, always putting their interests above those of others, but they don't necessarily deserve to be attacked by adventurers. The self-centered advocate is lawful evil, for example, and the cruel innkeeper is neutral evil."

I'm not a fan of this version of evil.

Baker used it specifically to mess with Paladins, as they were finding his disguised Rakshasa/etc too easily.
He should have changed the rules for Detect Evil, such as replacing it with another ability, rather than messing with Paladins by adding lots of evil "innocent bystanders".

Mastikator
2021-08-12, 02:11 AM
I'm not a fan of this version of evil.

Baker used it specifically to mess with Paladins, as they were finding his disguised Rakshasa/etc too easily.
He should have changed the rules for Detect Evil, such as replacing it with another ability, rather than messing with Paladins by adding lots of evil "innocent bystanders".

He could just make them easily be protected with Nystul's Magic Aura, then the Rakshasa don't even register as evil fiends but as neutral (or good) mortals. But I do like the idea that there are non-criminal evil mortals who the paladin has no legal recourse to just slay. Otherwise it just turns into a license to murder. The game shouldn't encourage murder-hoboing.

hamishspence
2021-08-12, 03:37 AM
Baker used it specifically to mess with Paladins, as they were finding his disguised Rakshasa/etc too easily.
He should have changed the rules for Detect Evil, such as replacing it with another ability, rather than messing with Paladins by adding lots of evil "innocent bystanders".

Quintesenntial Paladin II (a 3.5E third party book) was saying the exact same thing months before the Eberron Campaign Setting book came out. Neither of the two models for "non-supernatural evil still is detectable" fits with "smite on sight".


Low Grade Evil Everywhere
In some campaigns, the common population is split roughly evenly among the various alignments - the kindly old grandmother who gives boiled sweets to children is Neutral Good and that charming rake down the pub is Chaotic Neutral. Similarly the thug lurking in the alleyway is Chaotic Evil, while the grasping landlord who throws granny out on the street because she's a copper behind on the rent is Lawful Evil.

In such a campaign up to a third of the population will detect as Evil to the paladin. This low grade Evil is a fact of life, and is not something the paladin can defeat. Certainly he should not draw his greatsword and chop the landlord in twain just because he has a mildly tainted aura. It might be appropriate for the paladin to use Diplomacy (or Intimidation) to steer the landlord toward the path of good but stronger action is not warranted.

In such a campaign detect evil cannot be used to infallibly detect villainy, as many people are a little bit evil. if he casts detect evil on a crowded street, about a third of the population will detect as faintly evil.

Evil As A Choice
A similar campaign set-up posits that most people are some variety of Neutral. The old granny might do good by being kind to people, but this is a far cry from capital-G Good, which implies a level of dedication, fervour and sacrifice which she does not possess. If on the other hand our granny brewed alchemical healing potions into those boiled sweets or took in and sheltered orphans and strays off the street, then she might qualify as truly Good.

Similarly, minor acts of cruelty and malice are not truly Evil on the cosmic scale. Our greedy and grasping landlord might be nasty and mean, but sending the bailiffs round to throw granny out might not qualify as Evil (although if granny is being thrown out into a chill winter or torrential storm, then that is tantamount to murder and would be Evil). In such a campaign, only significant acts of good or evil can tip a character from Neutrality to being truly Good or Evil.

if a paladin in this campaign uses detect evil on a crowded street, he will usually detect nothing, as true evil is rare. Anyone who detects as Evil, even faintly Evil, is probably a criminal, a terrible and wilful sinner, or both. Still, the paladin is not obligated to take action - in this campaign, detecting that someone is Evil is a warning, not a call to arms. The paladin should probably investigate this person and see if they pose a danger to the common folk, but he cannot automatically assume that this particular Evil person deserves to be dealt with immediately.

Misereor
2021-08-12, 04:26 AM
What would a functional always evil society look like?

So what is the motivation for these people for being evil?


For survival?
Are they situated in an environment where the name of the game is survival at any cost?
Such a society would celebrate power, making people strive for it, which will be reflected in their cultural and religious beliefs. Evil acts done for power will be normalized in such a society (probably subject to certain culturally established rules). They will despise the weak and excuse immoral acts perpetrated against them. They may even expose their own infants, to make sure that resources are only spent on the strong. Then again, they may also despise cowards, backstabbers, and people who break their word.

For the gods?
Do people believe that only blood can make the grass grow? If so, you will eventually end up with a NE druidhood that performs Human sacrifice on a regular basis. Probably by random chance at first, but eventually a "victim" class will be established. It may be virgins, criminals, the disabled, people with warts who own black cats, etc. Pretty much anyone who diverges too far from the norm, and doesn't have too much in common with those who make the rules.

For greed?
Probably for survival at first. The earth mother screwed up the harvest for the fifth time in a row? Instead of starving quietly to death, why don't we worship the sky father instead, and go raid those pesky neighbours who still worship her. Eventually the harvest wouldn't need to fail for stuff to go down, because raiding was just so much easier and fun. Free food, money, and slaves, and religious carte blanche too? People would stand in line to sign up. Such a society would quickly turns both misogynistic (we hate the earth mother!) and violent (sky father destroys his enemies with lightning bolts, yay!). Some sort of tribute system would also be invented, for when fighting was too much trouble. Since horses were useful for raiding, they might be turned into a sacred animal of the sky god. Same goes for animals who perform raiding of their own (wolves, bears, leopards, etc.)

For a secret conspiracy?
Did someone by conscious design set out to control society? If so they would strive to establish rules and norms that would help them achieve their goals, while dismantling ones that were keeping them in check.



(Any similarity to real world societies past or present is purely coincidental. Don't taze me, bro...)

NorthernPhoenix
2021-08-12, 07:11 AM
I'm not a fan of this version of evil.

Baker used it specifically to mess with Paladins, as they were finding his disguised Rakshasa/etc too easily.
He should have changed the rules for Detect Evil, such as replacing it with another ability, rather than messing with Paladins by adding lots of evil "innocent bystanders".

I agree. It's a kind of "gatcha" DMing that i don't think is as clever as it thinks it is.

Anymage
2021-08-12, 11:54 AM
I'm not a fan of this version of evil.

Baker used it specifically to mess with Paladins, as they were finding his disguised Rakshasa/etc too easily.
He should have changed the rules for Detect Evil, such as replacing it with another ability, rather than messing with Paladins by adding lots of evil "innocent bystanders".

That's incidentally one of the reasons I really like 5e going hard into removing mechanical effects to alignment. We can have a side discussion about whether we prefer a wide neutral (where in order to have a letter besides N on your character sheet you need to go far out of your way) or a narrow neutral (where tendencies are enough to fall under the appropriate alignment and you can expect the population to be evenly distributed into all categories), but it's a lot less relevant when your susceptibility to a spell or ability to use a class feature is on the line.


So are we talking a society composed entirely of evil beings, or are we talking about a society with traits that are fundamentally evil?
In short is the Society always evil or are the Inhabitants always evil?

In 5e, there's a sidebar to the effect that while good gods gave their creations free will to choose whatever alignment they like, evil gods programmed their creations towards evil from birth and that only a strong and sustained effort of will can resist that. In other discussions about general bad guy races (usually orcs), there were people who said that they preferred races of morally acceptable targets so they didn't have to think too hard about defeating the bad guys.

My question was how, in a society where most if not all members were created with a biological drive towards evil, how did they manage without copious amounts of handwaving? Either in universe (drow society manages to avoid spontaneously combusting because Lolth is constantly being nosy) or just expecting that nobody thinks about it too deeply.


So what is the motivation for these people for being evil?

As mentioned above, divine decree.

The question isn't what might an evil society look like. The question is what would a society look like with few to no neutrals/goods to perform basic social functions (who might also provide moral dilemmas if you wound up razing the village down to the last orc), and where everybody has an evil outlook of looking out for number one.

Bohandas
2021-08-12, 12:17 PM
I'm not a fan of this version of evil.

Baker used it specifically to mess with Paladins, as they were finding his disguised Rakshasa/etc too easily.
He should have changed the rules for Detect Evil, such as replacing it with another ability, rather than messing with Paladins by adding lots of evil "innocent bystanders".


To be fair the first part about one in three is the natural consequence of "alignment: any"

hamishspence
2021-08-12, 12:20 PM
And of "Humans tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral".



90% or so of humanity being TN, as per some versions of "wide Neutral", would really strongly contradict this.

OldTrees1
2021-08-12, 01:00 PM
My question was how, in a society where most if not all members were created with a biological drive towards evil, how did they manage without copious amounts of handwaving? Either in universe (drow society manages to avoid spontaneously combusting because Lolth is constantly being nosy) or just expecting that nobody thinks about it too deeply.

The question isn't what might an evil society look like. The question is what would a society look like with few to no neutrals/goods to perform basic social functions (who might also provide moral dilemmas if you wound up razing the village down to the last orc), and where everybody has an evil outlook of looking out for number one.


It depends on the drive in question. However I will assume that the society will be capable of rational self interest (although that does not mean they are models of rational self interest).

Let me consider an Illithid society in the absence of an Elder Brain (because we don't need that complication):
You have a society that respects each other and pursues their interests. Some of them farm cattle. Others go hunt deer, being mindful to not overhunt the deer. When an invasive species of wild boar shows up, the hunters feel free to hunt them all.

Oh, those cattle(gnomes), deer(drow), and wild boars(dwarves)? They think they are people. Ha, but the Illithids know better. The Illithids know they are a superior life form and thus it is okay to consume these animals or feed them to their young.

Basically the Illithid biological drive to do specific evil is not interfering with how they treat their peers within their society. Their society functions because there is no reason/pressure for it to not function.


Some other vices (greed) do affect society but can be tempered to societies gain (enlightened self interest) rather than its downfall. However this risks some individuals being innocent.


Still other vices (I am strongly inclined to deceive) would be an active detriment. Such societies would be in an arms race between insight and deception. The society would probably rely on redundancy and paranoia. Such a society might even invent ways to compel themselves to resist. That really risks some individuals being innocent.

NichG
2021-08-12, 02:07 PM
Game theory and economic theory are in part about how to think about societies which are 100% composed of selfish actors, what goes wrong (e.g. mutually bad Nash equilibria), and how people can collectively behave in order to avoid those outcomes while still being selfish. Those strategies can span the gamut from utopian to dystopian.

An example of a dystopian solution to a sort of spatially local prisoner's dilemma world is to have a culture/genetic bias where you have lots of kids and the kids work out a pecking order in any totally arbitrary fashion you like, where the lower of two siblings in the pecking order who play each-other always cooperates, the higher always defects, and then the higher shares just enough resources so that the lower doesn't die. In that pattern, the person lower in the order would die if they defect, so there's no selfish rational action available to them other than to cooperate and help the higher farm points, or to kill their way up the hierarchy - but not so far up that they have to play with non-siblings, who won't recognize their rank and will just defect.

Incidentally, I saw this phase emerge spontaneously from a simulation I thought was going to figure out how to do stable cooperation. It turns out that this can actually be more optimal on average than stable CC (cooperate-cooperate), depending on the payout matrix, e.g. if 2*CC < CD+DC.

vasilidor
2021-08-12, 06:42 PM
I prefer to house rule that the only people who ping on the detect evil or are subject to smite evil are those who have actively done evil. That is Rape murder, arson, etc. but that is me. A society that practices slavery is, by default, an evil one in games I run. Lizard folk are not evil for cannibalism unless they actively hunt people to eat instead of eating those who attack them and theirs or died to some other thing, I.E. old age.
It is entirely possible for people who do evil to also do good things, Motivations can be complex and cognitive dissonance is a thing, and result in someone who pings on both detect good and detect evil. I.E. a slave owner who sees nothing wrong with slavery risking their life to save a stranger with no expectation of compensation.
But these are house rules I have to clarify in my session 0.

Witty Username
2021-08-12, 10:03 PM
There are a few ways to get evil selfish beings to work together:
1. Force. Loth and Drow society would be one example. The Spider Queen is powerful enough that drow that betray her, fail her, or otherwise do not perform their social role are punished.
2. Unity of purpose. A common goal can keep evil individuals working together in pursuit of it. Kobold society has several factors but their hatred of gnomes and desire to eradicate them would be an example of this.
3. Mutual advantage. Evil beings can work together, even benefit each other if they see benefits to themselves. Mind flayer society would be this, they work together because of the advantages of ensured brain supply, eventual immortality via the elder brain and collective action giving them access to resources they wouldn't have alone. Even mind flayer outcasts like Alhoons form groups based on these principles.

Btw: where is that sidebar about evil races? That in the dmg?

Anymage
2021-08-13, 12:13 AM
Btw: where is that sidebar about evil races? That in the dmg?

PHB, and reprinted in the basic rules. Chapter 4, Alignment in the Multiverse (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/personality-and-background#AlignmentintheMultiverse).


Incidentally, I saw this phase emerge spontaneously from a simulation I thought was going to figure out how to do stable cooperation. It turns out that this can actually be more optimal on average than stable CC (cooperate-cooperate), depending on the payout matrix, e.g. if 2*CC < CD+DC.

If the payoff is such that swapping between who cooperates and who defects is greater than a pure cooperative strategy, you create a meta where "cooperation" is defined through taking your turn fairly and "defection" is defined through skipping out when it should be your turn. It isn't hard to reframe the situation such that the optimal overall strategy is deemed cooperative.

That said, in an overall game theoretic situation, I do think that an evil character would behave differently from the hypothetical rational, self-interested actor presumed in game theory and economics. Intrinsically evil creatures might well be even less like the models than regular humans are. I could see a mind flayer being all about rational self interest, but drow or chromatic dragons don't seem like they'd cut it.

NichG
2021-08-13, 12:53 AM
If the payoff is such that swapping between who cooperates and who defects is greater than a pure cooperative strategy, you create a meta where "cooperation" is defined through taking your turn fairly and "defection" is defined through skipping out when it should be your turn. It isn't hard to reframe the situation such that the optimal overall strategy is deemed cooperative.


It was a little more complicated, because this was an evolutionary simulation and so you didn't even get the turn-taking. Basically, out of a given generation of siblings, one child got stuck with 'always cooperate with your siblings no matter what', which drove the scores of that child's kin way up above what could otherwise stably be achieved, but as a result that child would never manage to successfully reproduce. It's tempting to label that altruism, except that if you had a mutation and the sacrificial kid decided to defect all the time, they still wouldn't do enough to be able to reproduce successfully. In a different simulation, I had a colleague call this the 'messy room-mate phase', where basically you have two people who keep letting the house get messier and refusing to do the cleanup, as a bet that the other person will be more likely to reach a breaking point first and just clean the place. A society where nobody does anything for anyone else until it gets bad enough that someone breaks and does it for themselves, and then everyone else just takes the benefits without doing the work.


That said, in an overall game theoretic situation, I do think that an evil character would behave differently from the hypothetical rational, self-interested actor presumed in game theory and economics. Intrinsically evil creatures might well be even less like the models than regular humans are. I could see a mind flayer being all about rational self interest, but drow or chromatic dragons don't seem like they'd cut it.

The point was more that you don't necessarily need some portion of neutral or good people to be altruistic in order to get a society which doesn't collapse. There are ways to design webs of tangled interests such that someone helping themselves or even seeking the destruction of their hated enemies ends up having enough collective benefit that the whole thing could hang together. That could be someone using force to ensure compliance (changing the 'DC' payout to -infinity because someone found to have played DC is just executed), society-level shunning or punishment for internal defect actions, subsidies, or esoteric stuff like I saw in the simulation where the first person to lose becomes the designated loser and everyone else gets to exploit them until they die.

Draconi Redfir
2021-08-13, 11:08 AM
the Alternian Troll species of Homestuck acclaim could also be a good example of an evil society, Lawful, neutral, or chaotic I'm not sure, but most likely evil.

- Mass reproduction
- Mandatory reproduction
- Pitting newborn children through grueling trials to weed out the week
- Children who survive initial trials need to survive their equivalent of adolescence on a near-lawless planet covered in monsters, zombies, and other members of their species.
- An oppressive caste system where those higher on the caste can do what they like to those lower with no repercussions, including murder
- Regular cannibalism or other forms of recycling of those who failed their initial trials, using blood as paints and etc.
- Those who survive to adulthood are immediately drafted into the military to wage war or support the war for the rest of their days
- Lack of small-scale law force, if you want justice for something you need to do it yourself. the only official justice we've seen has been for large-scale piracy or treason that puts the entire empire at risk, not murder or theft of personal belongings.

A combination of an oppressive regime, long-lived rulers who may appear like gods to the lower-lifespawn castes, subjugation, and a long history of violence tends to keep the population in line. any who try and fight the system are swiftly and strongly made an example of, from public humiliation and execution, to spending an eternity as a living psionic generator on a space ship. Needing to survive on a lawless planet surrounded by others trying to survive helps make sure that only the strongest, smartest, and most cunning manage to make their way to adulthood. Any question of loyalty is grounds for culling, and any sign of weakness is also grounds for culling. If you see someone who can't survive on their own, it's all but your moral duty to execute them as soon as possible.

it's eugenics on a meta level, just spawn as many offspring as possible, and kill off any who don't make the cut while reinforcing those who do. Then make sure those who succeed pass on their own genes, and you've got a self-perpetuating cycle.

Granted a lot of this might mainly be stable because the three highest castes get special privileges above all others, the highest only ever having a handful of members (who may be exceptions to the rule? I always figured the 2nd highest caste which was more populous was "Supposed" to be the highest caste before the current empress showed up with an even higher caste.) who seem to have an absurdly long lifespan, spanning hundreds of thousands of years, if not more. The only saving grace for the children living on the homeworld is that their empress and most other adults spend all their time away from the planet, leaving the kids effectively on auto-pilot until they reach drafting age. And by the time they reach that age, they've either become exactly what the empire is looking for, or have been killed off in the process.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-13, 03:37 PM
Evil is a label most frequently applied to someone else. Assigning the label "evil" is mostly about scoring rhetorical points. (Or positioning in an argument, such as "if you do <this thing> you musts be evil" - which looks to me to be a form of well poisoning).

The concept of objective evil is, by itself, difficult to get agreement on. It seems to me to be built on the foundation of assumptions that are not necessarily shared (a great example a few posts up being lizardfolk eating slain enemies / trespassers).

Bottom line: you don't have to be evil to be my enemy, and I don't have to be evil to be your enemy.

Witty Username
2021-08-13, 07:59 PM
We are helped some by RPGs like D&D defining what qualifies as 'Evil' and use that as our metric. It has nothing to do with good and evil in a 'Real' sense. But we can't really talk about that anyway.

Hagashager
2021-08-17, 03:10 PM
In a gaming sense you can look at the Dunmer and Altmer societies in TES. Their respective societies are allegorical of the Antebellum South and Nazis respectively though.

Both have an ethno-supremacist narrative where you're supposed to be generous, kind and thoughtful to each other but non Dunmer/Altmer are fair game and can be used as slave labor if need be.