Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

[OldTrees1]

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.

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 believe Segev's use of the phrase "evil philosophies" contains examples you are excluding but otherwise found reasonable. I think the following list is relatively safe but I do have to lead with the complicated amoral one.

1) Moral Error Theory is a philosophy that morality is an erroneous question. People that believe that philosophy, even if they don't know about it, will be driven by personal philosophies that are framed using amoral terms (ex Survival of the Fittest). If they are wrong and morality is not an erroneous question, then those personal philosophies using amoral motivations might be causing moral, amoral, or immoral behavior. This includes both the villain that says good and evil don't exist and the moral exemplar that does not believe in good or evil.

2) Mistaken Moral Theory: Ever see an evil character think their actions are the right thing to do in the circumstances? This includes the self righteous villain following the greater good.

3) Everyone draws the line right below what they do: In a moral grey area, people will rationalize excuses for whatever outcome they choose. If they are consistent about those rationalizations it will turn into a philosophic belief about why ____ is not immoral because XYZ.

4) I am special: Normally ____ is immoral, but because I am XYZ it is okay for me to do it.

5) Everyone is doing it:

6) We need to do _______ to survive:

7) What do you mean? No, _____ is not immoral:

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 address having competing evil philosophies.

Why use faction rules when you have factions in the game? I never understood the point of faction/allegiance rules.

I would amend your observation to pretty much every evil person would prefer allies they see as good (which might be more evil people) over people they see as evil (which might be good people) provided those allies don't get in the way of the evil person doing what they mistakenly think is right.