Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

[Satinavian]

Evil is a broad swath of philosophies. Not everyone is a philosopher; some good folks just do what seems right and kind. Some evil characters just don't care about hurting others. But there are a great many stories where evil beings preach about the reasons why evil is the best path for a "worthy" person.

There is plenty of philosophy in evil. I hesitate to give even abstract examples lest real world ideologies be read into them, however, and my post be interpreted as calling some real world ideology "evil" in a manner that might violate forum rules.

Yes, there are evil philosophies. But most evil people don't follow any of them. There will probably even be more evil people following good philosophies but actually lacking the discipline to properly do so.
And even the people who do follow evil philosophies are not excactly natural allies unless they follow the exactly same one.

And then there is the fact that pretty much every real world evil philosophy does not represent itself as evil and most of them have adherents that are not actually evil, just deluded and not particularly smart.

In addition every instance of people preaching why EVIL is the right course for the worthy could well subsumed under "cartoonish nonsense". I don't want anything of that in any of my games. There is no way to avoid ruining any villain and turning them into a carricature while holding such a speech.
You can however have great villains explaining how their evil philosophy is not actually evil in their opinion. But for that cosmic absolute alignments make stuff harder, not easier as you want to your villian be both smart and mistaken here.



I stand by my observation that pretty much every evil person would prefer good allies over evil allies. Which is why the fight good vs evil is stupid.

If you really want to include a faction in the game which actually follows an evil philosophy, use faction rules instead. Those work far better and can even properly adress having competing evil philosophies.