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  1. - Top - End - #61
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    BardGuy

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    As most people have said - "Yes"

    I'll add that this works better if the characters value the relationship. "He's an evil git, but he's my brother"
    I love playing in a party with a couple of power-gamers, it frees me up to be Elan!


  2. - Top - End - #62
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    That's on those people then; it has nothing to do with alignment.
    Sure, sure, people wanting to know morals of others and how they act on that information has nothing to with alignment... wait, no, yes it does, when you're asking if they get along. I was describing one of the common, practical ways for it to happen, and now you're fishing for an example that falls outside those bounds... first, I don't understand why, second, your example is increasingly bad. A Good person employing a known Evil person, by the time other peoole are questioning them about it, is begging for trouble. Their "getting along" with their assassin bodyguard has a social cost that undermines that very endeavor. A reasonable Good person, when confronted by other Good people, will at least consider finding a bodyguard who is not an assassin.

  3. - Top - End - #63
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Guizonde View Post
    for what it's worth, there's an alignment test that goes around, and a few friends and i did it out of boredom. it did reflect pretty closely what we thought we were. I'm a pretty solidly chaotic good girl (don't care about laws at all, have given my shirt off my back to a needier person out of altruism), my best friend is loyal evil, being pretty selfish and willing to screw over people to make a few euros by reading the fine print. people thought we were married we are so close and work well together. another couple of best friends in my merry band are both loyal good and loyal evil. very "by the book" kinds of people with different goals, and we get along fine if my constant outside the box thinking and rule-breaking make their teeth itch sometimes, just as much as it frustrates me that they want to do things "the proper way" rather than the most expedient solution. this proves that there is a basis in real life for good and evil being friends.

    in my roleplaying experience, we've played across the charts. in 3.5 i played a radiant servant of pelor (neutral good alignment mandatory) and was on my way to sainthood. the party wizard was loyal evil bordering on neutral evil. he helped me on my road to sainthood out of loyalty and friendship, and i had his back when whatever evil faction or race inevitably tried to kill him. we both disapproved of each other's tendencies (roaming healer and mafioso, respectively), but when there was a job, we worked wonderfully together. outside of the job, we'd go about our merry business individually, and meet up at the tavern to break bread together. think of it this way: it's kind of like having someone else that disagrees with you. you can either be entrenched in your positions and be unpleasant, or you can agree to disagree. I'd like to call that the "adamant" versus "acceptant" dichotomy. you can have friendly serial killers and despicable do-gooders. the sniper in the team fortress is quite friendly despite enjoying murder, and iron man is pretty unpleasant despite literally saving the world.
    I got Lawful Good so many times on the test when I finally got to Chaotic Good.
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  4. - Top - End - #64
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Sure, sure, people wanting to know morals of others and how they act on that information has nothing to with alignment... wait, no, yes it does, when you're asking if they get along. I was describing one of the common, practical ways for it to happen, and now you're fishing for an example that falls outside those bounds... first, I don't understand why, second, your example is increasingly bad. A Good person employing a known Evil person, by the time other peoole are questioning them about it, is begging for trouble. Their "getting along" with their assassin bodyguard has a social cost that undermines that very endeavor. A reasonable Good person, when confronted by other Good people, will at least consider finding a bodyguard who is not an assassin.
    There's a difference between 'there can be a person who needs to know the morals of others around them' and 'all people without exception always prioritize declarations of moral stances over all other aspects of their relationships with other people'. A city guard asks someone to swear an oath to be against murder? Sure, that's an interaction that can happen.

    But if, say, I'm forming a gaming group with a bunch of people who are going to be my friends, I don't start with: "Okay, before we can play, I need you to outline your moral and ethical frameworks and I'm going to grill you about them for a bit to make sure you're self-consistent and that your beliefs are compatible with my world view." That's a caricature. I sit down at the table with them and play some games. I might find out that they actually have some really creepy interests or whatever - but given mature adults, even if I think they're unduly obsessed with fantasies about cannibalism or something, we can do things like reach an agreement to leave those fantasies for a different table or even that I'll tolerate them and give them some opportunities to imply that they've been eating people offscreen but I'm not going to run scenes about it or whatever.

    In the wanderer/assassin example, the idea that the way society views the wanderer's behavior is central is a very Lawful viewpoint, but actually caving to that pressure would be indirectly responsible for people getting killed. I'd argue the Wanderer would be more of a hypocrite to fire the assassin (and thereby release them from the non-lethal part of the contract) than to keep them employed. The Wanderer has found a way to resolve the moral issue of the Assassin having no compunctions about killing people in a way that neither compromises their own morals, nor does it compromise the things the Assassin values. The idea that evil must be punished rather than just prevented is a particular social more that, in this case, the Wanderer does not share; in terms of alignment implications, it might mean that they're non-Lawful, but it has no bearing upon whether they're Good.
    Last edited by NichG; 2020-12-16 at 12:11 AM.

  5. - Top - End - #65
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Democratus View Post
    Patently untrue.

    Loving someone, no matter what they have done, and befriending them despite their failings clearly describes a Good person - with a capital "G".

    Beatific love is the very definition of Good.
    There's nothing good about failing to see the suffering someone causes other people. There's nothing good about turning a blind eye to stark raving evil. Beatific love to unremorseful rape and murder is pretty far from good. It's not even neutral.
    Last edited by Mastikator; 2020-12-16 at 12:58 AM.
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  6. - Top - End - #66
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    There's a difference between 'there can be a person who needs to know the morals of others around them' and 'all people without exception always prioritize declarations of moral stances over all other aspects of their relationships with other people'. A city guard asks someone to swear an oath to be against murder? Sure, that's an interaction that can happen.
    Nobody made the "all people" claim. In fact, the whole point of hypocrisy is that people frequently don't. You are, once again, wasting a lot of words to not even disagree with me.

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    .
    In the wanderer/assassin example, the idea that the way society views the wanderer's behavior is central is a very Lawful viewpoint, but actually caving to that pressure would be indirectly responsible for people getting killed. I'd argue the Wanderer would be more of a hypocrite to fire the assassin (and thereby release them from the non-lethal part of the contract) than to keep them employed. The Wanderer has found a way to resolve the moral issue of the Assassin having no compunctions about killing people in a way that neither compromises their own morals, nor does it compromise the things the Assassin values. The idea that evil must be punished rather than just prevented is a particular social more that, in this case, the Wanderer does not share; in terms of alignment implications, it might mean that they're non-Lawful, but it has no bearing upon whether they're Good.
    That's a rationalization a Good character could give that might hold, or it might not. But what you're missing here is that the assassin agreeing to not kill people and going around helping a known do-gooder is only dubiously Evil by alignment rules. If this arrangement persists, a case can be made the assassin has drifted over to Neutral and has functionally quit being an assassin. Your supposed solution to Good and Evil getting along presumes a specific and suspicuously agreeable Evil person. That's the other half of my hypocrisy argument: "evil" people who aren't all that evil.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2020-12-16 at 01:02 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #67
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Nobody made the "all people" claim. In fact, the whole point of hypocrisy is that people frequently don't. You are, once again, wasting a lot of words to not even disagree with me.

    That's a rationalization a Good character could give that might hold, or it might not. But what you're missing here is that the assassin agreeing to not kill people and going around helping a known do-gooder is only dubiously Evil by alignment rules. If this arrangement persists, a case can be made the assassin has drifted over to Neutral and has functionally quit being an assassin. Your supposed solution to Good and Evil getting along presumes a specific and suspicuously agreeable Evil person. That's the other half of my hypocrisy argument: "evil" people who aren't all that evil.
    I really think the error you're making is to take first Good or Evil and then assume that a person is motivated by the desire to be Good or the desire to be Evil, and that somehow when they don't act in a way that is 100% aligned with those philosophical poles they're 'being hypocrites'.

    But people are just people and are motivated as they are - alignment then describes the balance of their actions, weighed however it works in the particular cosmology you're working with. If you insist on projecting them onto those two philosophical poles, neither of which they necessarily declare for or espouse, then I don't see any hypocrisy in them. It's not someone's responsibility to fit neatly into a particular moral framework you prefer. Or to put it another way, it sounds to me that in the way you're counting actions, everyone who doesn't declare for an alignment will end up being Neutral despite whatever actions or tendencies they have over the course of their life, because you're requiring active commitment to all aspects of Evilness to be Evil and all aspects of Goodness to be Good and so on.

    That's not totally inconsistent with how AD&D handled things, going as far as to have 'alignment languages' and to explicitly say that people in D&D-land are almost never neutral and are actively espousing their alignments. But by 3ed and 3.5ed, it had gone much more of a route of it being possible to be 'incidentally evil' even without having any personal positive commitment to a philosophy of Evil. Or even 'accidentally evil' due to things like casting Deathwatch being technically evil acts. In 4ed 'unaligned' was a thing, but that went away again in 5ed for sentient beings I guess. So since you can't 'not have an alignment' in practice, to me the vast majority of characters should be of this 'incidentally aligned' type - they don't go through life thinking 'I am going to be particularly Chaotic Neutral today', they just go through life and act. And as a result of their general tendencies and circumstances some may balance towards E or G or L or C or whatever, but that doesn't obligate them to take on other aspects of those alignments that don't happen to mesh with their actual motivations and behaviors. It just means that they're more complex people than archetypes of a 2-letter code. That's not hypocrisy, that's just the consequence of an external observer's oversimplification of the person.
    Last edited by NichG; 2020-12-16 at 01:24 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #68
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    I might find out that they actually have some really creepy interests or whatever - but given mature adults, even if I think they're unduly obsessed with fantasies about cannibalism or something, we can do things like reach an agreement to leave those fantasies for a different table or even that I'll tolerate them and give them some opportunities to imply that they've been eating people offscreen but I'm not going to run scenes about it or whatever.
    Yes, but that's just someone being creepy, not evil. What if they were an actual cannibal? Like, they literally stalk, kill, and eat people? But they promise not to eat you or any of the other players in the group. Still comfortable with having them there?

    I mean, a lot of "evil" PCs are actually just neutral. They're creepy, or edgy, or somewhat of a jerk, and if an unwanted moral dilemma comes up they can say "Hah! I don't give a ****!", but they don't do anything evil on-screen and their past evil deeds or future evil goals are kept vague enough to ignore. Sure, you can get along with them fine, because they're not really evil in a way that matters.

    But take somebody like the "My flatmate and business partner is a serial killer, and I'm ok with that" guy from earlier in the thread. Would you consider him a good person? And if anything, being in an adventuring party together is an even stronger connection than that. You're not just tolerating the evil character's presence, you're keeping them alive and helping them grow significantly more powerful.
    Last edited by icefractal; 2020-12-16 at 01:58 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #69
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    I prefer the "Evil alignment is common, and does not require extremely severe evil acts" approach that Eberron takes.

    Not every Evil character has to be a serial killer, after all - some can just be bullies.
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  10. - Top - End - #70
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordCoastTaxi View Post
    But, their interests (human dignity) are not aligned. Evil thinks only of itself, Good considers the welfare of others.
    Even if that's true, that doesn't mean their interests can never overlap in practice. After all, something that affects me personally is likely to affect the people around me as well and vice versa, so a lot of issues big and small would likely unite the Good and Evil, in a setting where such objective morality existed.

  11. - Top - End - #71
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    I really think the error you're making is to take first Good or Evil and then assume that a person is motivated by the desire to be Good or the desire to be Evil, and that somehow when they don't act in a way that is 100% aligned with those philosophical poles they're 'being hypocrites'.
    There's no error, someone not acting according to their declared motivations is what hypocrisy means. Your error is presuming I'm the one doing the declaring, when I was making a point of what people do themselves.

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG
    But people are just people and are motivated as they are - alignment then describes the balance of their actions, weighed however it works in the particular cosmology you're working with. If you insist on projecting them onto those two philosophical poles, neither of which they necessarily declare for or espouse, then I don't see any hypocrisy in them. It's not someone's responsibility to fit neatly into a particular moral framework you prefer. Or to put it another way, it sounds to me that in the way you're counting actions, everyone who doesn't declare for an alignment will end up being Neutral despite whatever actions or tendencies they have over the course of their life, because you're requiring active commitment to all aspects of Evilness to be Evil and all aspects of Goodness to be Good and so on.
    Wrong on every count. I specifically said alignment tracks action independent of declaration, so lack of declaration will not predestine Neutrality in any shape or form. I also agreed it's possible to avoid accusations of hypocrisy by not making any comment on it at all... I just also pointed that this is a crappy way to "get along" with people.

    "Commitment to all aspects" of an alignment isn't what I've been talking about at any point. What I have talked about is that willingly turning a blind eye is an action in the alignment system. Negligence is complicity, it impacts both axes of the system. There's one alignment that's all about individual freedom and self-definition over any group responsibility, but that's Chaotic Neutral, not any Good alignment.

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG
    That's not totally inconsistent with how AD&D handled things, going as far as to have 'alignment languages' and to explicitly say that people in D&D-land are almost never neutral and are actively espousing their alignments. But by 3ed and 3.5ed, it had gone much more of a route of it being possible to be 'incidentally evil' even without having any personal positive commitment to a philosophy of Evil. Or even 'accidentally evil' due to things like casting Deathwatch being technically evil acts. In 4ed 'unaligned' was a thing, but that went away again in 5ed for sentient beings I guess. So since you can't 'not have an alignment' in practice, to me the vast majority of characters should be of this 'incidentally aligned' type - they don't go through life thinking 'I am going to be particularly Chaotic Neutral today', they just go through life and act. And as a result of their general tendencies and circumstances some may balance towards E or G or L or C or whatever, but that doesn't obligate them to take on other aspects of those alignments that don't happen to mesh with their actual motivations and behaviors. It just means that they're more complex people than archetypes of a 2-letter code. That's not hypocrisy, that's just the consequence of an external observer's oversimplification of the person.
    Of course I'd go back to 1st edition AD&D, because it's the one edition that explains the system in a way that makes sense. For one, it states verbatim that actions speak louder than words; the way you're "incidentally evil" in AD&D is by declaring you have a non-evil alignment in character creation and then failing to live up to it. This is not actually different in 2nd and 3rd editions, they merely subtly changed explanations of the alignment axes (2nd) or failed to explain them in a conscise way (3rd). 4th and 5th edition aren't even worth talking about, because alignment system is vestigial in them.

    Your point about complexity is complete nonsense. This whole "drifting within an alignment category" was pioneered by AD&D 1st edition, it outright gives you examples of how to handle that and says that a character can be "basically good in their neutralcy", etc. But it also said the above thing about turning the blind eye, so you cannot consistently "not care" about out-of-alignment actions of your associates. It furthermore said that general agreement exists within alignment categories only, so if you have two characters getting along over extended periods despite them being of nominally different, especially nominally opposed, alignments, then by the rules that calls into question whether these characters are of actually different alignment. A Wanderer who honestly doesn't care about Evil actions by their workers is probably not Good, an Assassin who essentially accepts a contractual obligation to stop being an assassin probably isn't Evil, they aren't an example of Good and Evil getting along, they're an example of basically decent Neutral person getting along with another Neutral person with a sordid past.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2020-12-16 at 05:37 AM.

  12. - Top - End - #72
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    I prefer the "Evil alignment is common, and does not require extremely severe evil acts" approach that Eberron takes.

    Not every Evil character has to be a serial killer, after all - some can just be bullies.
    Same. And I'd add that there's a difference between tolerating a bully and getting along with a bully. Tolerating because you don't have the power to improve the situation is something a good character could do. Getting along with a known bully means condoning it, which is just not good.

    I don't think good and evil characters can get along, I think they can tolerate each other if they have a shared problem AND a shared solution. (otherwise they would be natural enemies) And even then it would still depend on the problem, the problem they face would have to be bigger than the problem the evil character create (their evil actions are a problem to the good character).
    The only exception being one that was brought up: the evil character is affable and their evil deeds are unknown to the good character. But that means that as far as the good character knows the evil character isn't evil.
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  13. - Top - End - #73
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
    Yes, but that's just someone being creepy, not evil. What if they were an actual cannibal? Like, they literally stalk, kill, and eat people? But they promise not to eat you or any of the other players in the group. Still comfortable with having them there?
    Viscerally no, but if I think about it there are people who probably cause more aggregate harm than a cannibal who kills someone every so often who I would be comfortable with, just because the kind of harm they cause isn't viscerally threatening or immediately squicky. I'm not exactly sure how to count how many deaths a given investor or CEO or lawyer could be held accountable for through e.g. aggregate economic effects, but just because of the scale of operations even minor moments of disregard could starve more people than the cannibal ever would. Would I play a tabletop game with the CEO of an oil company or tobacco company or something? I think I could do. Could I play a tabletop game with a soldier who took part in some questionable things while at war or in a conflicted area? I think I could do. In neither case would I be condoning those specific parts of their life, and if they were really pushing those aspects of their life into the relationship then that would be a problem (the CEO constantly bragging about increase in sales in the 12-14 demographic would definitely not be welcome, nor would someone who was obviously trying to use my tacit approval to absolve themselves by e.g. telling stories about how other people are worse or asking me to reaffirm that what they did was okay) but just having those things as parts of who they are wouldn't make getting along into an outright impossibility for me.

    But take somebody like the "My flatmate and business partner is a serial killer, and I'm ok with that" guy from earlier in the thread. Would you consider him a good person? And if anything, being in an adventuring party together is an even stronger connection than that. You're not just tolerating the evil character's presence, you're keeping them alive and helping them grow significantly more powerful.
    I would not hold it against them as to whether they're a good person or not. Business partner probably pushes things for me, and the specific phrase 'I'm ok with that' pushes things for me, the former because its increasing the serial killer's ability to kill and the latter because that is direct approval of the action rather than recognizing a separation between the relationship the person has with their flatmate and the serial killer activities. But it wouldn't take much to find an okay variant. A psychologist who treats a serial killer and has a cordial relationship with them and helps them have what they need to be comfortable and in a mentally good place would unequivocably be a good person to me, despite the fact that they're on persistent friendly footing with someone I think is a bad person, and is not so hard to imagine.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    There's no error, someone not acting according to their declared motivations is what hypocrisy means. Your error is presuming I'm the one doing the declaring, when I was making a point of what people do themselves.

    Wrong on every count. I specifically said alignment tracks action independent of declaration, so lack of declaration will not predestine Neutrality in any shape or form. I also agreed it's possible to avoid accusations of hypocrisy by not making any comment on it at all... I just also pointed that this is a crappy way to "get along" with people.

    "Commitment to all aspects" of an alignment isn't what I've been talking about at any point. What I have talked about is that willingly turning a blind eye is an action in the alignment system. Negligence is complicity, it impacts both axes of the system. There's one alignment that's all about individual freedom and self-definition over any group responsibility, but that's Chaotic Neutral, not any Good alignment.

    Of course I'd go back to 1st edition AD&D, because it's the one edition that explains the system in a way that makes sense. For one, it states verbatim that actions speak louder than words; the way you're "incidentally evil" in AD&D is by declaring you have a non-evil alignment in character creation and then failing to live up to it. This is not actually different in 2nd and 3rd editions, they merely subtly changed explanations of the alignment axes (2nd) or failed to explain them in a conscise way (3rd). 4th and 5th edition aren't even worth talking about, because alignment system is vestigial in them.

    Your point about complexity is complete nonsense. This whole "difting within an alignment category" was pioneered by AD&D 1st edition, it outright gives you examples of how to handle and says that a character can be "basically good in their neutralcy", etc. But it also said the above thing about turning the blind eye, so you cannot consistently "not care" about out-of-alignment of your associates. It furthermore said that general agreement exists within alignment categories, so if you have two characters getting along over extended periods despite them being of nominally different, especially nominally opposed, alignments, then by the rules that calls into question whether these characters are of actually different alignment. A Wanderer who honestly doesn't care about Evil actions by their workers is probably not Good, an Assassin who essentially accepts a contractual obligation to stop being an assassin probabbly isn't Evil, they aren't an example of Good and Evil getting along, they're an example of basically decent Neutral person getting along with another Neutral person with a sordid past.
    This last thing is why I'm getting a read from you that you'd probably consider nearly 100% of people Neutral, outside of really extreme caricatures.

    Lets say you have someone whose only defining trait, for sake of argument, is that they get along with literally everyone who will let them. Happy to call an angel or a demon lord friend, murderer, saint, or king. I think the rule of 'if two people get long over extended periods they're the same alignment' would mean that there can be no non-neutral entities in a world in which this character exists and manages to survive and sustain those interactions. The fact that they get along persistently with both the angel and demon would mean that the angel and demon must both be the same alignment as the character, so they all must be the same as each-other.

    And implicitly deleting alignment by projecting everything to Neutral does I suppose resolve the question of whether Good and Evil can get along: they can't get along if there are no Good or Evil characters to get along with.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Such thought exercise has no practical meaning for any game, nor my opinions of alignment, because such a character is neither psychologically nor pragmatically plausible, and flatly inadmissible under any sane reading of system rules.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Can a vegetarian hang out with a non-Vegetarian or even be his friend?

    Does that mean he risks losing his status as 'vegetaian' for doing so ?

    Does it mean, it would be an apt description to characterize that vegetarian as "being ok with eating meat" ?



    That is the proper analogy.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Not proper analogy at all; diet choice doesn't impact on alignment.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Can a vegetarian hang out with a non-Vegetarian or even be his friend?

    Does that mean he risks losing his status as 'vegetaian' for doing so ?

    Does it mean, it would be an apt description to characterize that vegetarian as "being ok with eating meat" ?



    That is the proper analogy.
    A proper analogy would be to replace "hang out" with "have over for dinner". Can a vegetarian cook non-vegetarian food for their non-vegetarian friend and still call themselves vegetarian in good faith? I would say "no".

    Even if we accept the definition of vegetarian as "being ok with eating meat", a vegetarian has almost no power to stop others from eating meat. They can choose to tolerate it without condoning it, but to cook meat for someone else IS to condone it and then you are okay with eating meat.
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    OP, you might want a preliminary read of The Righteous Mind. Essentially a psychologist whose body of research is in the psychology of human morality examines why it is that people who are fundamentally “good” can be bitterly, viciously divided over most political and religious concepts. And that often being on their side in one or two categories they consider most important is more than enough to justify any other exigencies or failings.

    Basically, yes, you can have good and evil people getting along and even liking each other, if they are in pursuit of goals that aren’t just mutually serving (tolerance), but that one or both sides believe is morally fundamental.

    And otherwise good people will learn to hate each other passionately if they believe some moral basis is being disregarded by the other party.

    And heavens forbid you trip over some one else’s idea of “fair”, which is almost guaranteed to redeem any action or condemn any other regardless of what we would like to believe is our moral grounding.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    I don't think good and evil characters can get along, I think they can tolerate each other if they have a shared problem AND a shared solution. (otherwise they would be natural enemies) And even then it would still depend on the problem, the problem they face would have to be bigger than the problem the evil character create (their evil actions are a problem to the good character).
    Sounds very much like we agree. Toleration is possible with a shared short-term goal. Long-term co-existence in an adventuring party is not unless one party or the other starts shifting their alignment towards neutral.
    Edit: And in part that is because adventuring parties allow characters to pursue their goals and become more powerful while defending each other. Allowing evil to pursue it's goals and become more powerful while defending it is by definition not a good action.
    Last edited by Jason; 2020-12-16 at 08:54 AM.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    Sounds very much like we agree. Toleration is possible with a shared short-term goal. Long-term co-existence in an adventuring party is not unless one party or the other starts shifting their alignment towards neutral.
    A long term situation might exist, for example "a god killing snarl is threatening to annihilate the world and kill us all, we must stop an epic powerful lich and his evil cleric right hand from acquiring his power, so I the good and righteous fighter will put up with this despicable evil ranger since he's very useful for this goal".

    I've heard some games campaigns revolve around thwarting long term Armageddon level threat. So you could have a good and an evil character in the party then. Over time I think you're right that one of them is going to have to give in a bit, if nothing else but because tolerance is work that can get tiring.
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Can a vegetarian hang out with a non-Vegetarian or even be his friend?

    Does that mean he risks losing his status as 'vegetarian' for doing so?

    Does it mean, it would be an apt description to characterize that vegetarian as "being ok with eating meat"?



    That is the proper analogy.
    I have a few vegan friends and they accept me for who I am for eating meat and I accept them for who they are and we get along very well.
    It's time to get my Magikarp on!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    A long term situation might exist, for example "a god killing snarl is threatening to annihilate the world and kill us all, we must stop an epic powerful lich and his evil cleric right hand from acquiring his power, so I the good and righteous fighter will put up with this despicable evil ranger since he's very useful for this goal".

    I've heard some games campaigns revolve around thwarting long term Armageddon level threat. So you could have a good and an evil character in the party then. Over time I think you're right that one of them is going to have to give in a bit, if nothing else but because tolerance is work that can get tiring.
    Which illustrates my point. They could tolerate the difference short-term. But one or the other side in the Order had to shift alignment in order for them to continue working together over a long campaign, and Belkar has shifted towards neutral.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Debatable. Such an act probably is enough to prevent you ever being regarded as good-aligned, but a single extremely evil act followed by a lifetime of good acts will shift you at least to neutral, dont you think?

    Without at the very least feel atrocious remorse about the deed? No.

    If a person feel nothing except smug satisfaction thinking about how he got away with that horrible deed, he'll stay Evil even after 50 years of behaving civilized.

    In my opinion, the thing that defines more the Evil alignment is ( lack of ) remorse.

    That's why I never considered my character Shazuko ( drow, rogue, True Neutral ) evil, even if he killed civilians: because not only he stopped as soon as he could get away from drow society, he was tortured by those memories for decades.



    Belkar has shifted towards neutral.
    He murdered a gnome in cold blood just to take his donkey.
    Unless he starts feeling remorse, he'll stay Evil forever.
    Last edited by Conradine; 2020-12-16 at 09:35 AM.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Conradine View Post
    Without at the very least feel atrocious remorse about the deed? No.

    If a person feel nothing except smug satisfaction thinking about how he got away with that horrible deed, he'll stay Evil even after 50 years of behaving civilized.

    In my opinion, the thing that defines more the Evil alignment is ( lack of ) remorse.
    So the person who kills fifty people and feel really bad about it is less Evil than the person who kills fifty people and don't feel remorse? I don't see why. Remorse might stop someone from doing what caused it again, but on its own I don't think it makes someone morally better.
    Last edited by Batcathat; 2020-12-16 at 09:26 AM.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Not proper analogy at all; diet choice doesn't impact on alignment.
    I’ve encountered vegans that would beg to differ, but their zeal might disqualify the discussion from this forum for bordering on religious.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
    I have a few vegan friends and they accept me for who I am for eating meat and I accept them for who they are and we get along very well.
    Vegan vs. omnivore is not really a good vs. evil analogy. More like good vs. neutral, and that's assuming it's a vegan who geniuinely wishes to reduce animal suffering and not someone who is vegan because it's trendy or they expect health benefits (neutral) or because they want to virtue signal to everyone else how morally superior they are (at least selfish, possiby evil).
    A Vegan good vs. evil analogy would be like a Vegan who genuinely wants to relieve animal suffering working together with, defending, and supporting someone who owns and works in something like an abbattoir or a mink farm, and does so because they enjoy their work.

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    So the person who kills fifty people and feel really bad about it is less Evil than the person who kills fifty people and don't feel remorse? I

    Yes, he's less evil.

    If he feels so bad, chances are he was forced to act under duress or extreme circumstances. Also if he truly feels so bad, he will probably never do that again.

    That does not means he should be pardoned or trusted.



    Remorse might stop someone from doing what caused it again, but on its own I don't think it makes someone morally better.
    All morality is subjective, but IMO the grey zone begins with remorse.
    I can't tell who is Neutral or Good but I can tell with no doubt that those who do Evil without remorse are Evil themselves.
    Even if they did it in the past.
    Last edited by Conradine; 2020-12-16 at 09:44 AM.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    Vegan vs. omnivore is not really a good vs. evil analogy. More like good vs. neutral, and that's assuming it's a vegan who geniuinely wishes to reduce animal suffering and not someone who is vegan because it's trendy or they expect health benefits (neutral) or because they want to virtue signal to everyone else how morally superior they are (at least selfish, possiby evil).
    A Vegan good vs. evil analogy would be like a Vegan who genuinely wants to relieve animal suffering working together with, defending, and supporting someone who owns and works in something like an abbattoir or a mink farm, and does so because they enjoy their work.
    I never said it was a good vs. evil analogy and I think vegan vs. omnivore is a neutral vs. neutral analogy.
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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    Quote Originally Posted by Conradine View Post
    Yes, he's less evil.

    If he feels so bad, chances are he was forced to act under duress or extreme circumstances. Also if he truly feels so bad, he will probably never do that again.
    Yes, having acted under extreme circumstances and not doing it again would both make it better but feeling bad isn't a guarantee of either. It's entirely possible that the person who did something horrible because they thought they had no choice feels much better about it than the person who knows they did it for a bad reason.

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    Default Re: Can Good And Evil Characters Get Along?

    As I said, there are shades of grey...

    the only thing I'm sure about is that the complete ( or almost complete ) lack of remorse is a clear symphtom of Evil.

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