To denounce the evils of truth and love

[DaOldeWolf]

I have been DMing (my first time ever) for a campaign centered around the theme on how each axis from the alignments can bring disgrace and ruin to the world. I have been working the plot as the characters move along so I wasn't expecting to get stuck on a point.

To explain the campaign, each continent that the chars visit is based on one of the alignment axis (chaos, law, good, evil, neutrality). During their journey through each continent, they face the good and the bad of each alignment and how the continent is currently in trouble due to the tendencies of its residents.

The problem is that they are going to visit the "good" continent next but I am still a bit stuck on how to make the "good" alignment look "bad" and make the players try to right this "good". So, I am hoping I can get some assistance from the great minds that lurk GitP.

[Tommy_Dude]

Good is just as subjective as anything else. A good continent that throws anyone not deemed by their own high standards as good into the prisons is a good idea for this. If the "Church of Light" imprisons anyone who is even slightly different from the norm, lest these individuals corrupt the minds and souls of the populace, doesn't scream "Good taken too far" then I'm out of ideas.

[Mono Vertigo]

The thread title invoked me!
... you had to use it after I changed my username, of course.

Okay. So Good could be intolerant. Could hold a philosophy of perfection (when perfect is the enemy of the good; perfection is not actually attainable, or the cost to achieve it seriously harms other domains).
If you consider Truth to be somewhat synonymous with Good (after all, why not, Deception might be considered Evil as well), remember that truth often hurts. The Good in Truth reveals Evil, and that's bound to tarnish many memories and opinions. It also comes with its own tyranny: if you don't accept or like the truth, you're part of the lie, and are henceforth Evil too! What, it turns out your mentor murdered innocents in his youth out of greed? That this one goblin you killed back in the day was not actually Evil at all, but got caught in the slaughter only because he was the same race as your aggressors? That the kindly old merchant you rescued wished you dead more than once because your actions embarrassed him somehow? Good doesn't care about excuses, Good wants you to fully acknowledge all this, even if the offenders have since sought redemption! See all the Evil - all of it - that the light of Good reveals. (In contrast, Evil surely doesn't care so much about the good you're doing, big or small. It doesn't matter that your love for your parents is genuine when you also violently murder random people for fun.)
Last one. Love is good, right? It brings out the best of you. It also brings out the worse of you and hurts pretty bad. Lose someone you love, and suffer. You may genuinely love every one and be perfectly compassionate, but you're only dooming yourself to be betrayed, or abandoned, or driven mad, or just hurt many times over, more than one can reasonably stand. Maybe, just maybe, you don't have to love everyone.

[Grim Portent]

One of the things about the Good is that they expect others to act like them because of course it's the correct way to live.

Good taken to it's furthest extreme would be incapable of understanding what motivates evil and neutral people to act the way they do.

Good would incorporate a lot of things into law and custom that a neutral society would leave up to individual choice because they think choosing not to act the 'proper' way is an aberration and that if the neutral and evil people would only have a chance to try being good that of course they would come around and see the light.

I would expect to see a lot of confusion or disgust at things like theft, brawling, killing (even in some justifiable circumstances), carrying weapons in peaceful situations, usage of various mind altering substances, not paying money to charitable causes, refusing to help people with problems, not participating in public events for the greater good, so on and so forth.


A good incident would be a person asking the party to give money for a good cause (making it a somewhat frivolous good cause wouldn't hurt). If they refuse the person should go glassy faced, look at them with great bewilderment and ask again and again until they do as he expected them to.

Others would be NPCs expecting them to perform in various services for free because it's the right thing to do. Killing vermin infestations (giant spiders in the sewers maybe) or clearing out a group of evil raiders.

Essentially good in it's bad sense isn't simply self sacrificing, it expects everyone who's on it's side to also be self sacrificing because it's the good thing to do and gets confused and irritated when people disagree.

[TandemChelipeds]

The opposite approach: Good is ineffectual and soft. Because they've never been exposed to real cruelty, everyone there is incredibly thin-skinned; simply expressing a negative opinion honestly is enough to make people break out into tears. The Good world is a bubble-wrapped society. Nobody wants to hurt anyone, so people carry on oblivious to their own flaws. People are also impractically polite; people have starved to death in arguments over who should go through a door first, for example. The result is that although nobody's trying to tell you what to do, you essentially have no freedom whatsoever. It's the purest hell of all: A hell without anyone to blame, a hell without anyone to hate.

[DaOldeWolf]

The thread title invoked me!
... you had to use it after I changed my username, of course.

Okay. So Good could be intolerant. Could hold a philosophy of perfection (when perfect is the enemy of the good; perfection is not actually attainable, or the cost to achieve it seriously harms other domains).
If you consider Truth to be somewhat synonymous with Good (after all, why not, Deception might be considered Evil as well), remember that truth often hurts. The Good in Truth reveals Evil, and that's bound to tarnish many memories and opinions. It also comes with its own tyranny: if you don't accept or like the truth, you're part of the lie, and are henceforth Evil too! What, it turns out your mentor murdered innocents in his youth out of greed? That this one goblin you killed back in the day was not actually Evil at all, but got caught in the slaughter only because he was the same race as your aggressors? That the kindly old merchant you rescued wished you dead more than once because your actions embarrassed him somehow? Good doesn't care about excuses, Good wants you to fully acknowledge all this, even if the offenders have since sought redemption! See all the Evil - all of it - that the light of Good reveals. (In contrast, Evil surely doesn't care so much about the good you're doing, big or small. It doesn't matter that your love for your parents is genuine when you also violently murder random people for fun.)
Last one. Love is good, right? It brings out the best of you. It also brings out the worse of you and hurts pretty bad. Lose someone you love, and suffer. You may genuinely love every one and be perfectly compassionate, but you're only dooming yourself to be betrayed, or abandoned, or driven mad, or just hurt many times over, more than one can reasonably stand. Maybe, just maybe, you don't have to love everyone.

Well, the title was mostly just for fun and reference (don't take it too seriously) but thanks for liking it. Still, there is some good material here. Thank you for the advice.

Good is just as subjective as anything else. A good continent that throws anyone not deemed by their own high standards as good into the prisons is a good idea for this. If the "Church of Light" imprisons anyone who is even slightly different from the norm, lest these individuals corrupt the minds and souls of the populace, doesn't scream "Good taken too far" then I'm out of ideas.

Mmmh....this gives me an idea of vampire/werewolves eradication program regardless on how the vampire/werewolf is. Not sure if it will be enough though. My players usually need the "Elan treatment" to see that what a character is doing is wrong. Thanks for the advice.

Hopefully, some more ideas will be delivered.

NInja´d: @Grim Portent, that is certainly true. i hadn't thought about that. Annoying good, its such a good idea. Thanks!

@TandemChelipeds: True, there is so many ways to see the good alignment that i really haven't though about. Thanks you!

[Honest Tiefling]

Could be complete pacifists that refuse to take a life, no matter what the person has done. While there is some weight that reformation is a viable method of dealing with criminals in our world, we don't tend to have people devoted to evil and human sacrifice, either. Taking care and guarding these people will also take a lot of resources that our modern world has, but this one might not.

They could also choose to be completely ignorant of evil, and therefore don't know what to do when confronted with undeath. They might not even be able to comprehend that others would wish to do evil and be incredibly gullible as a culture or in their body of law. They might not have protocols in place to confront sneak attacks, sabotage or betrayal. Maybe it isn't a choice, since their continent is so goodly, its hard to protect against something you haven't seen in a few centuries.

[Traab]

Could be complete pacifists that refuse to take a life, no matter what the person has done. While there is some weight that reformation is a viable method of dealing with criminals in our world, we don't tend to have people devoted to evil and human sacrifice, either. Taking care and guarding these people will also take a lot of resources that our modern world has, but this one might not.

They could also choose to be completely ignorant of evil, and therefore don't know what to do when confronted with undeath. They might not even be able to comprehend that others would wish to do evil and be incredibly gullible as a culture or in their body of law. They might not have protocols in place to confront sneak attacks, sabotage or betrayal. Maybe it isn't a choice, since their continent is so goodly, its hard to protect against something you haven't seen in a few centuries.

The problem with that is the country would only exist until anyone not a total pacifist came along and took it over without a struggle (because its a kingdom of pacifists) I got one.

Good generally means you follow a specific moral code. In a united kingdom, this would likely take the form of "This action is right, every other action is wrong" It would fossilize the nation into one where every interaction is basically a ritual exchange of lines and actions. If you read the somewhat odious eragon series, its like the elves where each conversation starts off with the same ritual opening and gesture, only the entire interaction is like that. If you deviate from that ritual exchange, you are doing something wrong, and that triggers an automatic aggressive response. I foresee a lot of confrontations and battles as the party tries to assemble the proper phrases and actions needed to avoid getting into trouble. Spending lots of time spying and observing and keeping track of how everyone deals with each other so they can blend in long enough to do what they came there to do and leave. For example, say they want to sell some vendor trash and look for gear. If they walk right up to the merchant, there will be a big battle because they wont know the right way to talk to him. If they hang back and quietly observe a random npc talk to the merchant, they will see what they have to do.

[Vva70]

Before you can accurately assess this issue, you have to define what "good" and "evil" mean in the context of your game world.

In real life, we generally take "good" to mean acting in a manner that is morally right, given all relevant circumstances. By this definition, there is no moral flaw in taking it to the extreme. Any example a person could give of a "good" society doing bad things under this definition is not an inherent flaw to "good," but rather a flaw of the society not living up to their own "good" standards. There is, however, a practical limitation to this brand of "good." In a situation where a good person is constrained to take only morally licit options, a person who is not so constrained has all of the morally licit options and all of the morally illicit options. Thus, a neutral or evil person is able to take easier, less dangerous, and more efficient paths through life.

Other definitions of "good" are possible in a fantasy setting, but are going to be less intuitive for many players. Subjective good is commonly attempted, as is "good" and "evil" being morally equivalent extremes with the ideal being "balance." Mostly, though, I tend to find that these don't usually hold up under scrutiny.

[OldTrees1]

A Trope for pitting Mortals against Angels:
Righteousness without Empathy. Justice without Mercy. The Purifying Flame that eradicates any imperfection, any immorality no matter how small.


For double the fun combine this with the sheltered good mentioned above.
Any failure to behave above the call of duty is deemed an inconceivable crime. The society wants to enforce an extremely harsh penalty but is ineffective about capturing and punishing the criminal.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I've got a "good" policy that needs reforming...

An old D&D setting I played in / helped run had a kingdom founded in the wilderness by a LG church. The church then had a very tight immigration policy - using Detect Evil spells and the like.
Any time a criminal was caught, they'd use Detect Evil on them, and eject them from the country if they pinged as evil.
There were no attempts at reform, just deportation into big evil refugee camps on the borders.

[Demon Prince]

The problem with that is the country would only exist until anyone not a total pacifist came along and took it over without a struggle (because its a kingdom of pacifists) I got one.

Well, it's its own continent. It could've gone on in isolation for some time.

Good generally means you follow a specific moral code. In a united kingdom, this would likely take the form of "This action is right, every other action is wrong" It would fossilize the nation into one where every interaction is basically a ritual exchange of lines and actions. If you read the somewhat odious eragon series, its like the elves where each conversation starts off with the same ritual opening and gesture, only the entire interaction is like that. If you deviate from that ritual exchange, you are doing something wrong, and that triggers an automatic aggressive response. I foresee a lot of confrontations and battles as the party tries to assemble the proper phrases and actions needed to avoid getting into trouble. Spending lots of time spying and observing and keeping track of how everyone deals with each other so they can blend in long enough to do what they came there to do and leave. For example, say they want to sell some vendor trash and look for gear. If they walk right up to the merchant, there will be a big battle because they wont know the right way to talk to him. If they hang back and quietly observe a random npc talk to the merchant, they will see what they have to do.

This sounds specifically Lawful rather than just Good, though.

[Grim Portent]

I'd advise not having the Good nation engage in genocide, purges or any other violent form of dealing with evil on a regular basis. It tends to imply 'Evil pretending to be Good' rather than 'Good doesn't mean correct'.

One of the qualities of good is the belief that people can change for the better, the problem is that sometimes this belief becomes an expectation that most people won't live up to or will actively reject. This can cause an adverse reaction from the good.

It may also help to think of sins/vices/flaws that Good can possess as an inherent aspect of itself.

The 'vices' (if such they may be called) of good could probably be summed up as: Self-Righteousness, Invasive Curiosity, Tactless Honesty, Unconditional Love, Preconceptions, Community Spirit and Benevolent Interference.

[Joe the Rat]

One of the qualities of good is the belief that people can change for the better, the problem is that sometimes this belief becomes an expectation that most people won't live up to or will actively reject. This can cause an adverse reaction from the good.

This is one of those pieces that you can use to make Good downright creepy. A Good society may not believe in punishment, but rather reform. Which means that any "criminals" will be taken to some sort of reformatory to correct their behavior. They'll make them good, whether they like it or not. Forcing alignment changes isn't inherently evil so long as you aren't trying to make them Evil, apparently.

This does bring up a fun facet to play with. You have an entire continent to play with. You could really have fun with exploring excess of the various elements. Protection. Liberty. Charity. Preservation. Nurturing. Your local empire is run by the Benevolent Big Brother - monitoring everything and everyone to make sure the greatest sum goodness is achieved, as uniformly as possible, but some may suffer in order to improve the greater whole.

Or perhaps you've got a Post Zeroth Law Rebellion society - Those charged with protecting the people have determined that the best way to do that is to take people out of harm's way. Any harm. The "civilian" populace living a life of absolute and enforced leisure. Traditionally this is done with mechanical servitors (imagine an army of Warforged Paladins doing everything in the society, and capable of smiting (and Laying Hands on) anyone who tries to do something potentially self-injurious like explore or use sharp tools), but a fanatical servant base could fill this role. Or some sort of self-aware, self-sustaining magic.

Of course, then you have your nest of Counterproductive Crusaders, each acting towards What Is Best For All without necessarily considering the collateral damage of their quests. Good Intentions Paving Company.

And then you have these in conflict. The monolithic protector state clashing with hordes of righteous self-thinkers of the most noble caliber, with the conflict zone being threatened by those that would see no harm wrought by conflict, putting everyone involved into suspended animation.

[DaOldeWolf]

Before you can accurately assess this issue, you have to define what "good" and "evil" mean in the context of your game world.

Well, I am assessing it on three areas:

+Good Spells are "good". Spamming them will eventually "taint" your alignment and bring it a step closer to good.
+Actions that bring power to the abstract concept of good or that will rebalance the alignment axis in favor of the forces of "good". Ex: killing/destroying/redeeming a foul evil being, promoting/assisting the churches of good gods, increasing the army of good, etc.
+Actions about helping/assisting others without expecting a reward. Ex: creating justice and equality to people, promoting love for everybody and forgiving others, make a better life for other people to live in.

That is basically, how i have been playing good in the campaign. Hope it helps.

Now, I would like to thank everyone for their contributions. After reading all of the new comments about bringing others towards good and forced redemption, I remembered about the Sanctify the wicked spell (don't know if there is a Pathfinder counterpart) but i don't think there will be any objections about adding the spell to the campaign from the players (still gonna inform them about that).

[Werephilosopher]

Before you can accurately assess this issue, you have to define what "good" and "evil" mean in the context of your game world.

In real life, we generally take "good" to mean acting in a manner that is morally right, given all relevant circumstances. By this definition, there is no moral flaw in taking it to the extreme. Any example a person could give of a "good" society doing bad things under this definition is not an inherent flaw to "good," but rather a flaw of the society not living up to their own "good" standards. There is, however, a practical limitation to this brand of "good." In a situation where a good person is constrained to take only morally licit options, a person who is not so constrained has all of the morally licit options and all of the morally illicit options. Thus, a neutral or evil person is able to take easier, less dangerous, and more efficient paths through life.

Other definitions of "good" are possible in a fantasy setting, but are going to be less intuitive for many players. Subjective good is commonly attempted, as is "good" and "evil" being morally equivalent extremes with the ideal being "balance." Mostly, though, I tend to find that these don't usually hold up under scrutiny.

^This. Taking Good to extreme levels cannot, by definition, create moral flaws. Far better to show flaws in understanding, like the whole "Good cannot comprehend Evil" thing.

[Delusion]

How about a system that assumes everyone in there to be good and selfless and thus lacks the checks and balances on power that individual can field? For example justice system would be formed around resolving disputes between people who are willing to cooperate and are willing to see the other side of the issue? In other words, the system would work as long as everyone is good and self sacrificing ,but falls apart as soon as you include an evil person in it.

No safe guards towards abuse, because no one good would abuse another person and that sort of thing.

[Dasgovernator]

I think the "Utopia utterly unable to cope with external danger" approach would work well, especially if you're looking for a reason why this idea could ruin the world. Think a city with no walls, no town guards, not even locks on their doors (They are a sign of distrust of the community), and what happens to that once a marauding band of CE Orcs show up. Depending on how much of a caricature you want to make it, you could even have something where high-level Good Clerics spend their rounds trying to explain to the orcs that are swinging axes at them that what they're doing is wrong, right up until the clerics all get killed (Because violence is never the answer).

If you're willing to be a bit more cruel to your players, put them on trial for a 100% clear cut case of self defense (You killed the Orcs that were attacking you!). Better yet, require them to pay a penance of some kind for every living creature they kill (So instead of a reward, they come back to a bill), and to donate any loot they would have picked off the corpses (identified by the town officials via divination magic). That would probably make them just try to leave though.

Charity-shaming is an interesting idea as well, though it could also make the society seem Xenophic if not done right.

[illyahr]

Think VIKI from the I, Robot movie. Her entire intention was to prevent humanity from destroying itself. She tried to protect all humans with as little violence as possible. Everything she tried to do was for the greater Good of mankind, as she saw it.

[The_Werebear]

Of course, then you have your nest of Counterproductive Crusaders, each acting towards What Is Best For All without necessarily considering the collateral damage of their quests. Good Intentions Paving Company.

Can I steal that? You have just summed up three of my last five characters.

[PendragonSpirit]

If you do not mind borrowing (heavily. Very heavily...) from a literary work, there is a concept from Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" I found intriguing.

Spoiler

Show

One possible world woven toward the end of the series is a world without evil - without the "Dark One" (the BBEG of the series.) On the surface, it seems idyllic, until it is inspected more closely and considered that to have a world without evil, you would have to remove someone's capacity to CHOOSE evil. In essence, robbing them of their humanity (or dwarf-ity, elf-ity, whatever..) by removing the power to make their own decisions for good or evil. Limited to a single continent, I can imagine some form of powerful magic stripping the knowledge of evil from its inhabitants, forcing them to be little more than automatons.

[Geostationary]

I suppose the society presented in the anime Psycho-pass could be considered "good". The basic conceit of the series is that criminality and psychological health can be objectively and accurately measured in a person, which is compiled into this thing called a psychopass (represented as a numeric score and a color). Once your score is above a certain point, you become a target for law enforcement. Depending on your score and circumstances, people are then taken for therapy or confined away from the populace in relatively comfortable institutions as "latent criminals". Next, society is controlled by a thing called the Sibyl System, which is best described as an aggressively utilitarian computer program that basically manages most aspects of society while optimizing for physical and psychological well-being as primarily measured through low psychopasses (low is good). It gets around the problem of evil people/outside influence through 1) pervasive surveillance and control over the populace and 2) being aggressively isolationist. The advanced robots also help.

Anyways, more lawful good than good per se, but I think it's a better alternative than easily misled people incapable of understanding evil. As you may imagine, the show itself is all about how this is not an ideal system.

[Hyooz]

I agree with the plot in theory, but have to echo other posters that say it doesn't really work with the traditional DnD alignment axis.

Don't get me wrong, this kind of virtue-twisting is a favorite conceit of mine, the Ultima series is one of my favorites in all of gaming-dom, and every game since the fourth took a perverse pleasure in twisting the Virtue system in some new way.

For DnD, though, Good and Evil aren't sets of laws or philosophies, but literal, primal concepts. There is no Good-taken-too-far-acting-evil because that's just straight Evil at that point. Good, in DnD, is primal good-ness, seeking the welfare of others above the welfare of self (and in that could be an interesting hook - say a small tribe or group so dedicated to others over self that they are actively dying off out of refusal to take action for self preservation.)

So Good can be an excuse, or even a motivator for evil acts like "reformation" camps or strict adherence to the Laws of society or what-have-you, but that simply makes it DnD Evil disguised as Good.

So you'll need to define what the alignments mean in your world more fully to really develop this idea entirely.

[Esprit15]

I would say look around on TVTropes, starting on the pages Good is not Nice and Good is not Soft for ideas on how to run scary Good.

The thing about DnD alignment not reflecting real world morals is that that makes it perfect for comparisons. Things that we would see as bad can still be totally consistent with a Good alignment. And remember, there are still the Lawful and Chaotic axis to consider. If the party just came from an Evil land, have the paladins in the LG land ask them why they smell of Evil, and bring them in for questioning. Good in its extreme is not tolerant of Evil. Why were they in such a fowl place? Why did they come here so soon after? Why did they even leave the land alive while it was still standing. "All fall short of glory" should practically be the motto. Better to have died trying to destroy such a place than to turn and run. Self sacrifice is a given, and anything less is insufficient.

[Joe the Rat]

Can I steal that? You have just summed up three of my last five characters.

Go for it. I'm sure I stole it from somewhere in the first place.

[Frozen_Feet]

When the players get to the Continent of Good, they find it to be a completely barren desert. The only creatures they meet there are Celestials or Constructs, beings that don't need to eat, sleep or even physically interact with anything on the whole continent. The reason is that life, itself, necessitates evil and breeds suffering. Benefit of one is the detriment of another. Even plants, which superficially only rely on sunlight, water and minerals, compete for living space and smother each other. The only way to escape this is to transcend life, to abandon it alltogether. The continent isn't a desert due to their actions; it always was so. People moved there precisely because there was no-one to hurt, and no-one to hurt them there and meditated until the heat and drought made their physical bodies perish. The Celestials are their enlightened spirits while the Constructs are their "offspring" of sorts.

[Sith_Happens]

For DnD, though, Good and Evil aren't sets of laws or philosophies, but literal, primal concepts. There is no Good-taken-too-far-acting-evil because that's just straight Evil at that point.

On the other hand, there's definitely such thing as Good-taken-so-far-that-99%-of-PCs-will-want-nothing-to-do-with-the-place.

[Friv]

When the players get to the Continent of Good, they find it to be a completely barren desert. The only creatures they meet there are Celestials or Constructs, beings that don't need to eat, sleep or even physically interact with anything on the whole continent. The reason is that life, itself, necessitates evil and breeds suffering. Benefit of one is the detriment of another. Even plants, which superficially only rely on sunlight, water and minerals, compete for living space and smother each other. The only way to escape this is to transcend life, to abandon it alltogether. The continent isn't a desert due to their actions; it always was so. People moved there precisely because there was no-one to hurt, and no-one to hurt them there and meditated until the heat and drought made their physical bodies perish. The Celestials are their enlightened spirits while the Constructs are their "offspring" of sorts.

Hell, yes. This is beautiful.

You can add some kind-of-creepy hermits that are slowly starving to death if you want conflicts for the players to engage in.

[Admiral Squish]

I'm sorry, but the title line is driving me crazy as long as it remains unfinished. I just... have to do the whole thing.

Spoiler: the thing

Show

To protect the world from devastation!
To unite all people within out nation!
To denounce the evils of truth and love!
to extend our reach to the stars above!
Jessie!
James!
Team rocket, blast off at the speed of light!
Surrender now, or prepare to fight!
Meowth, that's right!

God, that's deeply programmed, isn't it?

[DaOldeWolf]

First of all, i would like to thank everyone for their contributions and feedback. Now to address the posts:

@PendragonSpirit & Geostationary. Those are a pretty nice concepts of "scary good".

@Esprit15: yeah, that is certainly true, with that i have the base for the main "good" antagonist.

@Frozen_Feet/Friv: While the idea of a desolated continent would be a nice twist to the usual good environment, my aim is to show the good and bad of each alignment.

Like with chaos, they got to enjoy the freedom of doing whatever they wanted without much consequences, commoners feared adventurers and would even give tokens to try to get on their good side and got to enjoy aspects like the praising of individuality and having to only worry about themselves.but they also, had to deal with merchants selling overpriced products because there were no regulations, with bandits and criminals trying to take their stuff and having to deal with the fact that there no authorities regulate criminals and thus no place to send them after they captured them.

The whole thematic of the campaign is to show how none of the alignments are better than the others (with all having their nice and disgusting traits) and how if one of the alignments dominated them all, the world would be a big mess.

@Admiral Squish: well, as long as it helps you get it out of your system.