When "it's what my character would do" is actually true.

[RandomPeasant]

I did.

Oh, really? Were they in some other thread?

I did. I also read the 5e PHB, specifically the sidebar on page 203.

You mean the one that specifically does not describe casting animate dead as an Evil act, thereby actively disproving the argument you are trying to make and demonstrating that your past analysis on this exact issue was exactly as bad as your present analysis is.

No, it isn't. Over reliance on rules is antithetical to what made D&D so unique and so special, since the entire concept of "the rules define the game" was discarded.

So then what the hell is the point of having established alignment in the first place. "We need these rules so we can deviate from them and do what we want" is not a particularly compelling argument for having rules.

[Mechalich]

I can't quite speak for Mechalich, but I think his point is that a villain with modest resources is capable of substantial villainy, not necessarily that the particular villains in any particular setting are modestly-resourced. You don't need a great nation of people whose hearts are devoted to capital-E Evil to summon a demon lord into the world, so postulating such a nation raises questions like "why haven't they used their nation-scale resources to do enough summoning rituals to overpower the forces of capital-G Good". It seems like a better setting-building premise to assume that nations are mostly motivated by realpolitik, as they are in the real world, and that apocalypse cultists are a marginalized fringe, rather than a full third the philosophical space.

Right. A very small number of genuine agents-of-chaos are capable of causing immense amounts of damage using fairly modest resources. For example, the animated series Arcane is all about how much damage one such agent - Jinx (who also happens to be a very good example of what chaotic neutral by way of severe mental illness looks like) - can cause to society. And it's a lot. Lawful organizations have to constantly fight against entropy simply to sustain themselves which means entropy really doesn't need that much help before you hit societal collapse. Historically, most societies are no more than one mega-drought away from oblivion.

Now, it is admittedly possible for fantasy scenarios to change the calculus, but the overwhelming majority of the time fantasy elements added to a world make things worse compared to a similar tech level Earth, not better. Often, especially when you engage with the fridge logic, they produce a grimdark hellscape from which there is no escape. D&D, for example, allows for immortal, un-killable god-wizards who can reshape the world to their will. Introduce the slightest bit of 'magic is bad' and boom, Dark Sun.

[Psyren]

You mean the one that specifically does not describe casting animate dead as an Evil act,

You have a very interesting (tortuous?) interpretation of "only evil casters cast it frequently."

For example, the animated series Arcane is all about how much damage one such agent - Jinx (who also happens to be a very good example of what chaotic neutral by way of severe mental illness looks like) - can cause to society.

I'm glad you brought up Arcane and Jinx because it proves my point. You know the criminal syndicate that absconded and corrupted her? The one that rose to prominence in the first place by meddling with evil mutating void forces? Are those the "modest resources" you mean?

[Mechalich]

I'm glad you brought up Arcane and Jinx because it proves my point. You know the criminal syndicate that absconded and corrupted her? The one that rose to prominence in the first place by meddling with evil mutating void forces? Are those the "modest resources" you mean?

What percentage of said syndicates resources does Jinx utilize? 5%? 1%? 0.1%? It's not much. The syndicate is a mostly lawful organization primarily engaged in the (mutated) narcotics business. A huge portion of its energy is expended defending the status quo.

[Psyren]

What percentage of said syndicates resources does Jinx utilize? 5%? 1%? 0.1%? It's not much.

What percentage was needed to save her life after the bridge explosion? What percentage fueled the mutant enforcers that led to her kidnapping in the first place? And how did Silco and Singed acquire it?

The evil voidstuff drives the entire plot. And even without it, Piltover was quite happy to oppress Zaun so its corrupt councillors could stay rich. Good is very much outnumbered in that setting, as in most if not all D&D ones. So again, thanks for bringing it up.

[Mastikator]

1) Eberron's cosmology/afterlife is not some kind of ideal to be aspired to. It works for their morally-ambiguous pulpy setting, but if it was the only or even the primary one for D&D, the game would be a lot worse off.

2) Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are powerful tools, but saying alignment no longer has value because they exist is a bridge too far. Alignment on your sheet represents an aspiration, and those aspirations can help you figure out how your character might act in a situation that doesn't cleanly align (natch) to your BIFTs.

2) Ideal represents aspiration, and is an order of magnitude more varied, nuanced, precise and detailed.
Alignment (if evil) can also represent drawback, but again flaw does a better job.

Alignment tried its darndest to do every job, it's your personality, your aspiration, your flaw, your side, your afterlife. It's overburdened.

1) using ideals for planes could absolutely work for great wheel cosmology. The dirty secret is that the great wheel is already based on ideal and theme. If you remove the alignment text then nothing would be lost, really. The blood war would still happen the way it does. Mechanus would still be orderly and full of robots.

[Satinavian]

1) Eberron's cosmology/afterlife is not some kind of ideal to be aspired to. It works for their morally-ambiguous pulpy setting, but if it was the only or even the primary one for D&D, the game would be a lot worse off.

I thoroughly disagree. It is the best afterlife D&D ever had and one of several reasons i like Eberron.

If i build my own settings, they are somewhat similar.

[KorvinStarmast]

So then what the hell is the point of having established alignment in the first place.

On the campaign side, it was a world level "whose side are you on?" (or are you in between) general classification - that fits nicely into the swords and sorcery genre. See the table in Men and Magic. It was as much descriptive as it was anything, although the Paladin's introduction (you get this benefit, you must pay this price as a "balance point") it began to accrue some of what it's grown into. There is some narrative benefit to that, but as Tanarii has so often pointed out, alignment by itself is incomplete as a tool for describing a character for role play. Goals and motivations matter, which takes us back to the pre D&D (Braunstein and other) games that DA ran with player goals as an integral part of play. Those goals and motives aren't rules, they are stuff that the player brings with them.

Dave Arneson apparently discovered, in play in Blackmoor, before the game was published, a need to describe particular kinds of behavior. Some of his players started back stabbing each other, rather than working against the significant dangers of his dungeons. He labeled that behavior chaotic. That's from one of his notes years later, so it's a bit elusive how much of that was folded into the published game and how much was an EGG input based on the experiences of publishing various game rules for that niche hobby that was wargaming.

Spoiler: comment

Show

DA was notorious for being late, incomplete, or simply missing deadlines and submissions before, during and after his time with TSR.

Spoiler: excerpts from a collection of DA's notes

Show

A few of the notes ...

'You can't stab me in the back. We're on the same side!" Early Blackmoor game Introduction of the Chaotic thief. (Character Class/Alignment)

I spent the time reading CONAN novels and watching old monster movies while munching on popcorn.

Almost immediately, like during the first game, things got changed. I started making notes in a black binder and the seeds took root and germinated.

Well since there were NO rules for practically anything the players wanted to do the game was "loose" and "unstructured". The old referee got VERY good at thinking on his feet. I say I was good because the game, and I, both survived the player's onslaught. And even without a lot of rules we had rules lawyers back then too! Thank he lord for that black notebook. Even if the rules weren't all in there I was usually able to convince the players that the rule was in the black folder, or at least would be soon.

We began without the multitude of character classes and three alignments that exists today. I felt that as a team working towards common goals there would be it was all pretty straight forward. Wrong!

"Give me my sword back!" "Nah your old character is dead, it's mine now!"

We now had alignment. Spells to detect alignment, and rules forbidding actions not allowed by ones alignment. Actually not as much fun as not knowing. Chuck and John had a great time being the 'official' evil players. They would draw up adventures to trap the others (under my supervision) and otherwise make trouble.

The tension between being 'rules bound' and 'loose and unstructured' in an role playing game is never ending. Getting too rules bound gets in the way of play.

[Tanarii]

Introduce the slightest bit of 'magic is bad' and boom, Dark Sun.

This was different from "more chaotic/evil than lawful/good" though. This was caused by wide-scale permanent ecological damage that can't be reversed, by anyone using magic regardless of alignment or intention.

Agreed that if you have too many world-ending power level threats from Team Bad Guys, then Team Stop The Bad Guys will eventually let one slip through, and No More Campaign World. That's fine if you're running single group of players through a single adventure arc, and don't mind the "campaign" ending with a bang. Not so good if you're trying for a persistent campaign for many groups of players.

[Psyren]

2) Ideal represents aspiration, and is an order of magnitude more varied, nuanced, precise and detailed.

Ideals are recommended to stem from alignment and that's for a good reason. "I want to one day rise to the top of my church's hierarchy" is an ideal (PHB 127), but alignment helps you figure out how the character might go about achieving that - and what (or who) they might deem it acceptable to sacrifice along the way. Having that general signpost helps many players to flesh out their ideal.

It can also help you deal with situations that have nothing to do with your ideal. Not every adventure your party undergoes will have anything to do with your church, and they might not even learn the details of what you did or didn't do.

I thoroughly disagree. It is the best afterlife D&D ever had and one of several reasons i like Eberron.

If i build my own settings, they are somewhat similar.

Even if I agreed with you that theirs was the best thing since sliced bread (I don't), I'd still ultimately want variety. Every setting being Eberron would mean no Great Wheel, no World Tree, no Great Beyond, no Blood War, no Duat, no Valhalla etc. That's a lot of interesting stories getting set on fire for no good reason.

Even the Wall of the Faithless, as much as I dislike it as written, has potential with a few tweaks.

[LibraryOgre]

An "Oliver Twist style thieves guild" is pretty evil my dude. Whether theft is inherently evil or not (it doesn't have to be) using kids to perform criminal acts in a lawful society is setting them up for a short, miserable life. It shows a callous disregard for the well-being of the children in question and is thus an evil act. Basing "neutral" behavior on Fagin of all people shows a total lack of understanding of the character BTW. He is just as evil as Bill Sykes, he's just more clever and less willing to get his own hands dirty. Fagin is closer to neutral evil than he is to chaotic neutral. Find a better role model.

Now this is a good argument for it being evil... the effects on your "tools".

Didn't Dragonlance turn from "Good vs. Evil" to "Everyone vs. Chaos?"

Chaos as a single, individual entity, not as an axis of cosmic forces.

Interesting thing, having seen umpity different interpretations of "good", "evil", etc., in RL & games, they've become effectively meaningless words to me. And having different DMs force their sometimes wildly different personal visions of them down on players (often in annoyingly unexpected ways) has caused me to associate D&D alignment labels with arbitrary & apparently random "you must do x because <alignment>" perscriptive crap coming down a pipe. So apparently I feel the way about D&D alignment that you feel about Palladium alignment. Funny, old world eh?

Which gets back to my starting with definitions of the terms... you say what Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality mean, then you can define the specific intersections. When you get down to it, the Palladium alignments mostly map to D&D alignments... Principled is a good line for LG, Scrupulous for NG, Unprincipled for CG, Anarchist for CN/TN, Aberrant for LE, Miscreant for NE, and Diabolical for CE. If you used Palladium alignment definitions, you've pretty much got a map to D&D alignments... you might have to soften Anarchist a bit to reach TN, and LE has some parts that Aberrant wouldn't touch, but it's a not bad list.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Ogre: Please be mindful of how you argue with people in this thread. Lines in the Flaming/Trolling rules that I have seen toed, and considered infracting:

*Tell a poster that they didn't read something, whether upthread, elsewhere on the forum, or anywhere else. This is not a discussion tactic we permit here. Additionally, any statement that states or implies that the only way someone could disagree with you is because they don't understand/can't read properly is likewise not allowed.
*Comments that, while directed at another's post content, are inherently insulting to the poster, such as, "Your comment is moronic/insane/nonsensical."
*Comments that accuse other posters of lying, being deliberately obtuse, being or acting ignorant, or similar inherently insulting attacks on others’ good faith.

It is suggested that everyone review the rules, especially regarding flaming/trolling, before I have to start swinging a sword in a modly fashion.

[KorvinStarmast]

IIt seems like a better setting-building premise to assume that nations are mostly motivated by realpolitik, as they are in the real world, and that apocalypse cultists are a marginalized fringe, rather than a full third the philosophical space.

Yep. That seems to be a common theme in SF&F, and Horror, stories that D&D grew out of. (And IIRC it's also that way in Call of Cthulhu).

Right. A very small number of genuine agents-of-chaos are capable of causing immense amounts of damage using fairly modest resources.

Another nice example {1} is Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman...or any Bond villain, for that matter.

{1} = IMO a better one than in Arcane; I played too much League of Legends to take that story seriously, but I till enjoyed it

[Pex]

Yep. That seems to be a common theme in SF&F, and Horror, stories that D&D grew out of. (And IIRC it's also that way in Call of Cthulhu).
Another nice example {1} is Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman...or any Bond villain, for that matter.

{1} = IMO a better one than in Arcane; I played too much League of Legends to take that story seriously, but I till enjoyed it

I disagree about Bond villains. They have enormous wealth.

[Mechalich]

I disagree about Bond villains. They have enormous wealth.

Bond villains tend to have significant resources when measured on a personal scale, but absolutely nothing like the resources of the states they are attempting to overthrow. That's why they rely on doomsday devices and similar McGuffins. Additionally, the heroism of Bond is often not in stopping the villain, but in doing so in such a way that doesn't require England (and occasionally allied forces such as the US) to unleash the fullness of its military might and win the day at the cost of immense collateral damage. In fact Bond very often extracts to the midst of such forces, on standby for a strike if he had failed, at the end of his movies (ex. in Goldeneye where he's caught making out with the girl surrounded by an entire marine company).

This is a common plot, one that shows up in all sorts of things. For example, in the recent The Suicide Squad the squad makes the heroic choice to go and fight Starro after Waller orders them to stand down. Starro is not any sort of planet wide threat - it could be easily destroyed by the Justice League or just a well equipped airborne assault - but tens of thousands of people would die first, and the Suicide Squad, as the group on the spot, can therefore make a heroic stand.

[Psyren]

Another nice example {1} is Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman...or any Bond villain, for that matter.

The Joker is indeed a great example. There would have been no Batman to fascinate him in the first place without Gotham's criminal element having organized and putting the city under their collective thumb in the first place. Heroes arising in a setting where good already has the upper hand just doesn't make sense.

Similarly, Bond villains needthe ultimate secret agent to take them down because they're rolling in dough, henchmen and tech, and can't be taken down legally any other way.

[awa]

In regards to the number of evil vs good you need to remember it is not a comment on fictional worlds in general but on shared d&d worlds.

A typical d&d experience is 4 to 6 guys getting into a fight over and over again and leaving a pile of corpses in their wake. Due to the nature of the anti fortresses pcs typically adventure in a single adventure will often see them destroy many times their own combat potential.

Further the original comment was about the forgotten realms where apparently "why isn't elimister dealing with this?" became a common question. with this the answer is because he is constantly fighting other catastrophic threats. As the forgotten realms is stuffed with high level heroes that also slaughter hundreds of villains this is important for forgotten realms in a way that it isn't for bond.

On a related note while two good/ neutral people might fight they are far less likely to kill each other than two evil people. Thus if any evil group can expect to be countered by everyone around them they need to be that much stronger/numerous to still be a threat. The drow are an example of terrible world building but they also serve as a good example of this they are a bunch of chronic back stabbers embroiled in perpetual destructive infighting surrounded by hostile powers who still have enough power left over to make major incursions into a realm innately hostile to their existence and need to be faced by heroes rather than just left to the conventional capacity of the local governments.

These specific factors are not particularly applicable to other types of fiction. If arcane was a d&d game the party would be leaving dozen or even hundreds of corpses in their wake to get to jinxs who in a d&d medium would have had hundreds of henchmen at the very least. But its not a d&d game and jinxs is a protagonist not an npc which warps the entire nature of the story.

A long term investigation in which at the end you fight a single foe can make an excellent book or movie but it would be a pretty atypical d&d campaign.

The Joker is indeed a great example. There would have been no Batman to fascinate him in the first place without Gotham's criminal element having organized and putting the city under their collective thumb in the first place. Heroes arising in a setting where good already has the upper hand just doesn't make sense.

Similarly, Bond villains needthe ultimate secret agent to take them down because they're rolling in dough, henchmen and tech, and can't be taken down legally any other way.

Yes further batman beats joker and then fights bane and so on so while joker may be singular major enemies simply keep coming. Joker also doesn't go it alone he also has an army of suicidal minions, just like bane has an army of minions as will the next major enemy after that.

[RandomPeasant]

Thus if any evil group can expect to be countered by everyone around them they need to be that much stronger/numerous to still be a threat.

But the only reason this has to be true is because of alignment! If the Cult of Orcus has a cosmic "everybody stab these dudes" tag, they need to be mighty indeed to explain why they have not yet been stabbed. But if they are simply a minority religion in a necromantic state whose extremists sometimes concoct hairbrained schemes to unleash plagues of wights or summon their demonic master, nothing in particular needs to be explained.

These specific factors are not particularly applicable to other types of fiction. If arcane was a d&d game the party would be leaving dozen or even hundreds of corpses in their wake to get to jinxs who in a d&d medium would have had hundreds of henchmen at the very least. But its not a d&d game and jinxs is a protagonist not an npc which warps the entire nature of the story.

There are a decent number of encounters in Arcane. The real reason there aren't "dozens or hundreds" of henchmen is that in a TV show that takes a bunch of time and doesn't really add much, while in a D&D game having a sequence of combat encounters is (yes, not always) the point. That doesn't mean Jinx doesn't work as a D&D villain or that she'd need vastly more resources to do so. It doesn't really change the storyline or the relative disposition of resources if you add some filler encounters with chempunks or baboons who sell grenades or whatever Zaunite stuff you think fits Jinx's idiom.

A long term investigation in which at the end you fight a single foe can make an excellent book or movie but it would be a pretty atypical d&d campaign.

It would be a weird D&D campaign, but it wouldn't be a particularly weird D&D adventure. Lots of intrigue storylines will have much more socialization and investigation than actual combat. Certainly there'd probably be a couple of smaller encounters along the way, but D&D adventures just have more stuff in them than books and movies. A big movie like Avengers: Infinity War or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two or Top Gun Maverick has maybe a half dozen fight scenes at the high end, a D&D group could plausibly get through that in single session.

Yes further batman beats joker and then fights bane and so on so while joker may be singular major enemies simply keep coming. Joker also doesn't go it alone he also has an army of suicidal minions, just like bane has an army of minions as will the next major enemy after that.

But none of them have resources anywhere near a national government. The villains of the Nolan Batman trilogy are dangerous because destroying is easier than creating, and because they have first-mover advantage which means that if Batman were not present to address them their plans would go off before someone else had a chance to intervene. But they're still pretty small potatoes on the scale of the world. Bane orchestrates a complicated plan to incapacitate a guy, siege a city, and get a nuke. The government of the US (or, indeed, several nations) could simply do that by main force if they for some reason wished to.

Which, of course, is exactly the point. If any of those villains had the resources of even a moderately powerful nation-state, they could simply blow a bunch of stuff up in a way that Batman would be entirely powerless to stop and which would almost certainly cause vast war and destruction, if not outright civilizational collapse.

[Mechalich]

But the only reason this has to be true is because of alignment! If the Cult of Orcus has a cosmic "everybody stab these dudes" tag, they need to be mighty indeed to explain why they have not yet been stabbed. But if they are simply a minority religion in a necromantic state whose extremists sometimes concoct hairbrained schemes to unleash plagues of wights or summon their demonic master, nothing in particular needs to be explained.

It's not really a matter of alignment at all. Throughout history there have been various groups/cults/bands/etc. that are ideologically opposed to everyone or just hideously horrible in general that have managed to persist for years or decades through various expedients such as getting the local populace on their side, using ill-gotten gains to bribe corrupt officials, or just being located in a place remote enough that the state considers it prohibitively expensive to crush them outright.

The big difference is actually with regard to the nature of magic. In a magic-free world the danger represented by a bunch of bandits organized purely for self-enrichment and a group of cultists who worship the Elder Evils and wish to sacrifice all living humans to their dark gods is purely a matter of numbers and possibly gruesomeness. No matter how many people the cultists sacrifice in horrible blood-soaked rituals nothing will ever actually happen and they are ultimately just another group of violent armed irregulars. In fantasy, by contrast, the cultists might actually be able to summon their dread masters and have them eat the world, which rather obviously bumps them up the threat level.

This is one of the issues with high magic generally - it means that potentially everyone can get their hands on a WMD - all they need is to train a suitably powerful wizard. This also shows up in Wuxia, where random horrible sects of awful are periodically training cataclysmically powerful death assassins and causing hideous horrors. It's primarily a function of how the personal power distribution is changed in fantasy, not the moral one.

[RandomPeasant]

It's not really a matter of alignment at all. Throughout history there have been various groups/cults/bands/etc. that are ideologically opposed to everyone or just hideously horrible in general that have managed to persist for years or decades through various expedients such as getting the local populace on their side, using ill-gotten gains to bribe corrupt officials, or just being located in a place remote enough that the state considers it prohibitively expensive to crush them outright.

I think you assume too much when you say "ideologically opposed to everyone". After all, if they were really all-opposing, they'd have some trouble getting any locals on their side. If the Cult of Orcus talks a big game about how Orcus will come and usher forth a thousand years of night, but they spend most of their time killing grey renders and raising zombie oxen as plow teams, it's pretty easy to see how they could be locally popular while still getting a lot of flack from people who are far enough away to not really care about those particular grey renders, but nevertheless concerned about the prospect of an epoch of darkness.

This is one of the issues with high magic generally - it means that potentially everyone can get their hands on a WMD - all they need is to train a suitably powerful wizard. This also shows up in Wuxia, where random horrible sects of awful are periodically training cataclysmically powerful death assassins and causing hideous horrors. It's primarily a function of how the personal power distribution is changed in fantasy, not the moral one.

But that's true in the real world too. Anyone who wants one can get their hands on a WMD. All they need to do is build a nuclear bomb. The trouble is building nuclear bombs is hard and there are all sorts of people who are opposed to omnicidal maniacs having nuclear bombs who will use their prodigious resources to ensure whatever omnicidal maniac happens to be enriching uranium gets blown up.

Similarly, it's not that hard to get a mostly stable equilibrium in D&Dland (or Wuxia/Xianxia settings). Civilization is genuinely nice, and unless someone has an alignment of "I would like to destroy civilization", even fairly selfish people aren't going to blow it up. Hell, the high priest of Orcus might not even want to summon Orcus into the world. He got where he is by ruthless temple politics, and he's sober-minded enough to realize that chilling in his temple with his tithed riches and the protection of a state that has a use for Orcusite necromancers is a way better deal than being turned into an undead servant of his god. It's the Orcus fundamentalists out in the boonies who hatch schemes like pouring a whole town's blood into a summoning circle to bootstrap the Orcus process you need to worry about. But if you assert that the high priest of Orcus is not a relatively normal person who happens to lead a religion with some questionable theology and a generally unpleasant set of sacraments, but someone devoted to doing Evil that you run into problems. Because it's much harder to explain why that sort of person isn't dedicating everything in his power to immanentizing his particular eschaton.

[Easy e]

Unless the game is "argue about it on the Internet".

Isn't that the true "game" of D&D?

[Segev]

I want to disagree about "Nobody considers themselves evil." In the D&D cosmology, I think you can absolutely have well-written characters who know full well what their alignment is. They have access to the detection spells. They study their gods' philosophies. They understand what "evil" means. They just find "evil" to be superior. They see nothing pejorative about it. In fact, to them, "good" is a word to be said with a sneer, because it's an unrealistic philosophy of weakness for weaklings. Or it's a crutch for those too unintelligent to reason out optimal acts, and who need a shorthand to spell out a baby's first rulebook on how to act, even when nuance would reveal that that only works most of the time.

An evil priest of Mammon certainly knows who and what he worships, what the nature of their relationship is, and what detect evil and detect law are telling him when he directs them at himself. But he views greed as a virtue, not a vice. Or he thinks it a vice that he controls others with, and that he is "in control" of it. He can be perfectly comfortable with the idea that he's wicked. He isn't cartoonish; evil empowers him, and he needs no justification beyond his own avarice for what he does. We tend in the real world to assume that every villain is a hero to his own inner monologue, and that nobody thinks of themselves as evil, I think, because we live in a world where we generally agree that good is desirable and being a bad guy is a bad thing. If you recognize what you're doing is wicked, you should stop, and even the bad guys of our world tend to think along those lines (thus, they justify to themselves what they do as "okay" so they don't have to stop).

If you actually have an objective knowledge that, yes, what you're doing is evil, but you're being told, "That's not just okay, that's excellent behavior," the need to justify what you're doing goes away: it IS justified. Evil is strength! Evil is cunning! Evil is success! Good is weakness and lies and for the pathetic who can't do anything for themselves!

Such people might even feel shame if they can't justify their more empathic, benevolent tendencies in some Evil-approved light. After all, to them, Good behavior is pathetic, shameful, and undesirable.

[RandomPeasant]

I want to disagree about "Nobody considers themselves evil." In the D&D cosmology, I think you can absolutely have well-written characters who know full well what their alignment is. They have access to the detection spells. They study their gods' philosophies. They understand what "evil" means. They just find "evil" to be superior.

Nobody in the real world does, and as a result dictionaries give definitions of "evil" like "something which is harmful or undesirable". You can postulate that in D&Dland there are people for whom "evil" means "something helpful and desirable", but all you're doing at that point is making terminology confusing. Just stop insisting on objective answers to subjective questions and then moral debates can be only as interminable as they are in the real world, rather than that interminable but with people using words which are antonyms to expressive the same subjective value judgement.

[Pauly]

There is a big problem with discussing what “alignment” means in D&D compared to other games. Generally speaking in other games the world came first then the rules are designed to fit the world. In D&D the rules came first then various worlds were shoehorned into the rules.

Spells like “Detect Evil” and “Protection from Evil” came into existence because they were cool abilities to have in a game. They were not created from any concrete lore building, they were dragged from real world folk beliefs like hand gestures to ward off the evil eye.

D&D is using post hoc rationalization to justify spells and game mechanics, which is an inadequate basis to discuss something like “what does evil mean in D&D”.

[Segev]

Nobody in the real world does, and as a result dictionaries give definitions of "evil" like "something which is harmful or undesirable". You can postulate that in D&Dland there are people for whom "evil" means "something helpful and desirable", but all you're doing at that point is making terminology confusing. Just stop insisting on objective answers to subjective questions and then moral debates can be only as interminable as they are in the real world, rather than that interminable but with people using words which are antonyms to expressive the same subjective value judgement.

I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

[Satinavian]

I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

I don't think even evil priests of evil gods preach Evil as such. Those evil gods have tenets and either some of those are very much not nice or the god in question is just a terrible person.

Evil priests of specific gods might preach :

"Our lord controls dangerous natural phenomenon X. Pray and sacrifice to stay on their good side so no harm comes to you"

or

"Undead are cool"

or

"Revenge is a viturtue. If you are harmed, don't restrict yourself, act out retribution. It is also ok to escalate while doing so"

or

"Life is short. Enjoy it as best as possible. Don't feel bad for debauchery, revel in it like in a neverending orgy"

or

"Strength is what counts. The weak are to serve the strong "


There is no preching

"Go out and do Evil".



That is the main problem with the great fight beween good and evil. Having good work together for a greater good is easy. But different evil group would not care for the common evil at all. Each of them would probably prefer to work with good groups than with other, unrelated evil groups because they think they share more with those. Everyone wants nice friends, not selfish ones.

[Mechalich]

I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

A lot of them probably believe that the extant construction of the cosmos is BS though. They may understand that they are labeled as evil, but that's because the Great Wheel was established by a bunch of sniveling compromises that conceals the greater truth and eventually, when their side wins things will be rewritten. And Planescape established that as explicitly possible - if the armies of the Lower Planes managed to conquer the Upper Planes the nature of the universe's morality would change to reflect the new Fiend-controlled multiversal order.

There's also the consideration that the structure of the afterlife for evil beings in D&D is itself a powerful incentive to be more evil. Garden variety evil doers - ex. a cruel soldier of a tyrannical regime who indulges in rape and murder while on campaign whenever he can get away with it - become larvae and suffer 10,000 years of endless horrible torment. Meanwhile high priests of dark deities who sacrifice thousands of innocents on bloodstained altars and spread the name of their god far and wide get pulled out of the queue and given special treatment. Humility may be a virtue if your good in D&D, but not if you're evil. If you're going to break bad, break bad spectacularly.

Is this weird and counterintuitive? Oh yeah.

[RandomPeasant]

I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

But if they say to themselves things that we would express as "actually, I'm a good person", what does it benefit us to require them to use a word that is the opposite of "Good" to describe themselves? Isn't that just confusing?

A lot of them probably believe that the extant construction of the cosmos is BS though. They may understand that they are labeled as evil, but that's because the Great Wheel was established by a bunch of sniveling compromises that conceals the greater truth and eventually, when their side wins things will be rewritten. And Planescape established that as explicitly possible - if the armies of the Lower Planes managed to conquer the Upper Planes the nature of the universe's morality would change to reflect the new Fiend-controlled multiversal order.

It should be pointed out that this makes the cosmos's morality not objective. If who's in charge decides the moral system, you don't have "objective morality", you have someone who is extremely powerful telling you how you ought to behave and punishing you if you don't do as they tell you. Rebelling against such a system is the right thing to do in many moral systems, though offering to impose an alternative designed by the gods of Torture, Murder, and Cannibalism makes your cause somewhat less noble.

[KorvinStarmast]

There is a big problem with discussing what “alignment” means in D&D compared to other games. Generally speaking in other games the world came first then the rules are designed to fit the world. In D&D the rules came first then various worlds were shoehorned into the rules.

That's an interesting way to frame it, and I think it fits pretty well...but...Blackmoor (the world and game) came before the D&D game; alignment was in that game a matter of "in play I {DA} found this so I'll make this a piece of game structure" (yes, related to 'whose side are you on' existential Law/Chaos from pulps and Chainmail); Blackmoor's close cousin Tekumel (Empire of the Petal Throne) had a world long before there was a game, and in that game (EPT) the alignments and deities of Good / Evil felt very organic but there was also a lot of room to work with it since. (Won't digress into deities and their cohorts).

If you're going to break bad, break bad spectacularly.

Yes. RPG's aren't reality, they are a game that includes a story element; a spectacular villain is desirable, in a story, much more so than a dozen small time hoods.

Is this weird and counterintuitive?

No. To the extent that any RPG is simulationist it is only ever partly simulationist. Genre and narrative fit are also factors in whether it is 'intuitive' to any extent. A key tension is between creation and destruction (Order aka Law/Chaos aka Disorder) in the D&D family of games.

In a sharp contrast to that, Blades in the Dark assumes that while there are some forces of Law and Order in the world (there are in Doskvol at the very least) the measure of success isn't measured in how much one can create or how many dangerous or evil forces/organizations one can neutralize or defeat. Success in the story of the PC's adventures as a part of a crew is measured by pulling of a score (with a variety of intentions) to the extent that "crime does pay, sometimes" becomes something like a narrative imperative.

[BRC]

That is the main problem with the great fight beween good and evil. Having good work together for a greater good is easy. But different evil group would not care for the common evil at all. Each of them would probably prefer to work with good groups than with other, unrelated evil groups because they think they share more with those. Everyone wants nice friends, not selfish ones.

While I don't mind the idea of a cosmic conflict between good and evil, I always dislike that it's as simple as a big scoreboard where Good is trying to make the world a nice place and Evil gets points by making it a bad place to live.

Evil is, I feel, inherently Selfish, and degrees of evil are mostly the degree to which one is willing to make others suffer for ones own benefit. The Guy Who Kills 100 Innocent People Because He Enjoys The Sensation Of Killing is as evil as The Guy Who Kills 100 Innocent People Because Somebody Paid Them To.The first guy is just more likely to go kill more people on his own.

Various Dark Forces Of Evil should be defined by "How much are they willing to ruin the world for everybody else in order to make it good for themselves". One Dark God wants a world of decay and undeath, another wants a dark cabal of priest-kings to rule over a terrified population.

Meanwhile, it's not that the Forces of Good share a unified vision of the world, it's that good must be inherently empathetic, and so even if the LG gods want to see the whole world ruled by benevolent theocracies, you can't be both Good and Willing To Force Your Vision Onto Everybody Else.


I feel like the only way things really work is to have Evil Worship take out the whole Empathy bit, and view the whole thing as a simple power struggle.

Like, okay, three goods
LG: Bob. Bob's vision for the world is an ordered society protected by paladins and led by benevolent philosopher-priests who rule with compassion and wisdom.
CG: Alice. Alice's vision for the world is everybody lives in harmony with nature, and everybody is kind enough to help their neighbors in times of trouble, knowing that their neighbors would do the same.
LE: Chris. Chris's vision for the world is one where all-powerful tyrants rule over the land, and where all people unquestionably obey their superiors or else are punished.
CE: Danny: Danny's vision for the world is a place where might makes right, where the strongest individuals takes what they want and the weak either get strong or suffer.

All four of these gods believe that their vision for the world is Objectively Correct. Danny doesn't think it's "Good" when raiders sack a village, but she thinks it's Correct, it's the way the world should be.
The difference between Good and Evil is that Good has a higher goal, one rooted in empathy. Their vision of "Correct" is just "What is the best way to achieve this goal". The Good Gods all think that if they took turns, each aligning the world according to their vision and judging it according to some objective scale of Goodness, that their vision would win.

The Evil Gods don't have that empathy. They see it all as a big game of football. They don't see a difference between Paladins of Bob protecting innocents and cultists of Danny pillaging the countryside, just two teams following their god's vision. The idea that the various forces of Good are all aligned towards some theoretical goal doesn't really come to mind. It's just teams, and if any team is going to Win, it might as well be theirs.

Of course, one interesting take is to make it so that the Evil Gods Are Right. Good and Evil are mortal concepts, The Gods of Good are not dedicated to any greater ideal of goodness, their visions of the world just happen to involve empathy and compassion. If you cast Commune, Bob will fine Alice's vision of the world just as nightmarish as Chris's. The Cooperation between good is entirely on the part of mortals. The Gods don't have minds like we do, they're incarnations of an ideal.