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

[Segev]

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.

I think it safe to say that good priests preach their own gods' tenets, not "good for goodness's sake." Good can be united, but it can also fight itself. A goddess all about justice and a god all about love may unite to defeat the invading tyrant-horde, but have an honest-to-goodness holy war against each other when the god of love wants to let a reformed villain rule the kingdom he once tried to conquer "because he's been changed by his true love for the princess" while the goddess of justice will back the princess's cousin who should have inherited and has righteous cause to want the villain laid low (believing that, if he's REALLY repentant, he'd turn himself over for his just punishment).

The gods of justice and love both would correctly call themselves "Good." Their priests would identify themselves as holy.

That Tyrant Horde led by priests of Gruumsh and Yeenoghu is all about ravishing, rampaging, and celebrating destruction as an expression of personal strength and immediate gratification. Seeing your enemies running before you and hearing the lamentations of their women. Gruumsh and Yeenoghu's worshippers would as readily fight each other as anybody else, but as long as there are "anybody else"s to fight, they can also choose to work together because they both enjoy the same general things and get more of it more successfully together.

They, too, correctly identify themselves: as 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?

No, it's not confusing, any more than more cartoonish versions of the same thing (the "masters of evil" in He-Man, or the Council of Doom in Superfriends). It's not cartoonish, here, but it makes perfect sense.

You can be evil and be honest with yourself about it. You just don't care, or even are proud of it. The nature of D&D's cosmology is such that being proud of being evil is doable.

What I think is really being pointed out when someone says that nobody is the bad guy in their own mind is that nobody views their actions as unacceptable in their own mind. Whether it's a double standard of "It's okay when I do it," or it's a worldview of "there is no morality," or it's an outright cultural acceptance that "yeah, evil is awesome," the perpetrators of it view it as acceptable. May even view Goodness as unacceptable in its own right.

(The double standard and the "no morality" worldview is more likely in settings other than D&D, while D&D's objective and known moral alignments make the latter more likely.)

It's a lot clearer to have the evil people openly embracing "evil," and showing they truly understand that they are evil, than it is to have them trying to claim the word doesn't mean what it means. All you have to do is let go of the assumption that "evil" means "unacceptable." You can find evil to be unacceptable - Good people do, pretty much by definition - but once you allow that the disagreement is not over what Good and Evil are, but rather over which is the socially acceptable or personally desirable set of standards, it is perfectly clear and coherent.



Even just examining the story of Drizz't Do'ourden in this light is sensible. Drizz't felt himself to be unacceptable in his society. He was morally wrong for the merciful feelings he felt, for the way he felt empathy for others. His struggle to escape the evil ways of his people was a moral struggle not because he thought evil was good, but because he thought good was unacceptable. It was weakness and disloyalty and failure. He didn't need redemption, necessarily, but he did need to learn to view his nature and his feelings on morality as acceptable.

A half-orc who is raised by good-aligned humans and through his behavior and preferences and choices proves those who say he's a bad seed right will likely have some element of struggle with the notion that his behavior is wrong. You could tell a redemption story where he comes to understand why, and how to master himself and become a good person, but you can also have a start of darkness story where he was always a mean, bullying, cruel individual who resented and feared the judgment of his human neighbors and family. And who, in his resentment, eventually set out on his own, maybe exiled after doing something that would get him executed (murder or perhaps something involving lack of consent by a girl who rejected him) if he didn't flee.

Like Drizz't, he may eventually find a group that more matches his worldview. Who laugh with him when he beats up somebody. Who accept him when he bullys his way into their circle. And that's how the half-orc warchieftan got his start, as they don't mind that he murdered his way to the top. They think that's not only acceptable, but laudible. It's evil, of course, but they say evil is to be sought after. Evil is strength, after all!

[Satinavian]

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.

Evil is indeed inherently selfish. But that is something i would also apply to the gods themself.

While some evil gods might indeed want to achieve their evil visions for the world, others might instead prefer to just indulge in deprivacy or just following their every whim like some overall quite terrible person without having any great vision. At least not one they are willing to compromise their personal fun for. They might like to be praised and fawned over by ther followers which are basically just a clique of yes-men.


Putting in all the work and use your power to make the world like you think it should be doesn't sound particularly selfish.

[Psyren]

An Evil person in D&D might think "I am behaving in a way that is eminently sensible given the way the world works. If some spell or faith chooses to label my sensible behavior as being 'Evil' then fine. I'd rather be 'Evil' than a sucker or a fool."

Many others would simply not be scanned/confronted with their "reading" at all.

[BRC]

Evil is indeed inherently selfish. But that is something i would also apply to the gods themself.

While some evil gods might indeed want to achieve their evil visions for the world, others might instead prefer to just indulge in deprivacy or just following their every whim like some overall quite terrible person without having any great vision. At least not one they are willing to compromise their personal fun for. They might like to be praised and fawned over by ther followers which are basically just a clique of yes-men.


Putting in all the work and use your power to make the world like you think it should be doesn't sound particularly selfish.

It depends on the degree to which you view the gods as very powerful people who just chill in their dimensions watching the material plane, or living concepts that are, in theory, capable of interacting as individuals.

Like, a god of death and slaughter doesn't really get to personally kill people from his throne in whatever chaotic hell he resides in, but he DOES get to see his servants and followers kill in his name, and he enjoys that. His "Vision of the World" is a reflection of himself. Worship is nice because it demonstrates devotion to his vision.

If you summoned an avatar of this god, a physical vessel he could pilot directly, it would go out and start killing, because, given such a powerful vessel, that is the most efficient way for it to do the killing.

But there's a question of if the god would prefer to kill 100 people personally, or have his followers kill 1000 people in his name, and it depends a lot on how you perceive the god in question and the nature of gods in your setting.

[Segev]

An Evil person in D&D might think "I am behaving in a way that is eminently sensible given the way the world works. If some spell or faith chooses to label my sensible behavior as being 'Evil' then fine. I'd rather be 'Evil' than a sucker or a fool."

Many others would simply not be scanned/confronted with their "reading" at all.

I think that most people who dwell in a society or participate in a subculture (e.g. a religion dedicated to an evil god) would recognize they are engaged in 'evil' without feeling they needed to say, "Well, fine, call it that if you want."

I think the attitude is more likely, "Of course I'm evil. It's the only sensible thing to be! Why would any rational person be good?" They could explain in more detail, perhaps, why they think that, but I'm getting at the base mental foundation: they don't view 'evil' as something to be ashamed of.

Instead, they might even view 'good' as something to be ashamed of. To claim to be 'good' is to claim to be weak, lacking in cleverness or determination, etc. Why would anybody admit to that, without justifying why it's okay in their case to have such weaknesses?

[Psyren]

I think that most people who dwell in a society or participate in a subculture (e.g. a religion dedicated to an evil god) would recognize they are engaged in 'evil' without feeling they needed to say, "Well, fine, call it that if you want."

I think the attitude is more likely, "Of course I'm evil. It's the only sensible thing to be! Why would any rational person be good?" They could explain in more detail, perhaps, why they think that, but I'm getting at the base mental foundation: they don't view 'evil' as something to be ashamed of.

Instead, they might even view 'good' as something to be ashamed of. To claim to be 'good' is to claim to be weak, lacking in cleverness or determination, etc. Why would anybody admit to that, without justifying why it's okay in their case to have such weaknesses?

I think we're in agreement here.

[Satinavian]

I think the attitude is more likely, "Of course I'm evil. It's the only sensible thing to be! Why would any rational person be good?" They could explain in more detail, perhaps, why they think that, but I'm getting at the base mental foundation: they don't view 'evil' as something to be ashamed of.

Nah, that sounds way too much like mustache-twirling villain.

I think it is more sensible to have e.g.
"Undead creating shouldn't vount as evil. I mean, it s just corpses for free labor, where is the problem" ?

"Sure, tolerance and equality are nice, but do we really have to apply those values to Kender ? I for one don't really want those thieving bastards in our nighborhood. They should be settled somewhere else, far far away, so that our good, Kenderless community can thrive undesturbed"

"It is not bad to earn easy money and if people are guillable enough to fall for those scams, it is their fault. I mean, only greedy people would do that anyway. I am not bad for wanting a good life"

"Of course i now that rape is bad and i am not proud of it at all. I am actually very ashamed. How did you even find out and what can i do that you don't tell anyone ? It would totally destroy the relations to my good friends and neighbors"

"Enslaving ogres is not evil. They are a menace and threat which is removed this way and instead replaced with a ressource that can be used for the public good. And with some luck, they can even be taught how to behave in civilized society"



Those phrases all represent very evil people. Believable evil people who are not proud to be eil at all. At worst, they disagree with their shtick being labelled as evil at all. And none of them is hostile to good. If a great war between good and evil breaks out, each single one would try to join the side of Good over Evil as if it were the most naturl thing in the world.

It depends on the degree to which you view the gods as very powerful people who just chill in their dimensions watching the material plane, or living concepts that are, in theory, capable of interacting as individuals.

Like, a god of death and slaughter doesn't really get to personally kill people from his throne in whatever chaotic hell he resides in, but he DOES get to see his servants and followers kill in his name, and he enjoys that. His "Vision of the World" is a reflection of himself. Worship is nice because it demonstrates devotion to his vision.

For personal worldbuilding i use gods as manifestations of aspects devoid of any morality. But that is not very useful here. So let us instead look to some fine evil examples from Forgotten Realms : Umberlee and Velsharoon.

Umberlee is just a jealous, nasty and fickle person. Her worshippers just do so out of fear and to be safe when she gets moody. She has no great plan for anything. She is more like an irresposible bratty princess with too much power

Velsharoon is pretty much the opposite. He is a power-hungry opportunist. But he also sucks up to every other greater power who can get him protestion or power, no matter te alignment. He does not have any greater vision or goal for the world and is willing to join any side that gives him benefits. He also doesn't really care what his believers do as long they venerate him, spread his name and thus provide him power. I mean, some of them do like to create undead for funsies and is is thought to like that but it is not particularly central to his cult. Instead, even though he is a death and undeath god, his clerics mostly go around selling healing spells and the churchs signiture spell is a combination of word of recall, raise dead and heal.



Now i won't say that all evil dieties are this way. Some really do have a big evil vision for how the world should be. But the self-serving nature of evil is getting in the way of evil gods being proper agents for the greater Evil as well. At least if dieties have personality.

[Tanarii]

Nah, that sounds way too much like mustache-twirling villain.

Welcome to D&D. Mustache twirling villains are not only what many if not most TTRPGs but especially D&D has to offer, IMX they're also what most players want.

[Thrudd]

Evil is indeed inherently selfish. But that is something i would also apply to the gods themself.

While some evil gods might indeed want to achieve their evil visions for the world, others might instead prefer to just indulge in deprivacy or just following their every whim like some overall quite terrible person without having any great vision. At least not one they are willing to compromise their personal fun for. They might like to be praised and fawned over by ther followers which are basically just a clique of yes-men.


Putting in all the work and use your power to make the world like you think it should be doesn't sound particularly selfish.

The question is: what does "selfish" mean when applied to an immortal being with cosmic powers, if they can wish anything into existence for themselves? What do gods want or need? Depends on the setting. Maybe they are all ultimately selfish, seeking to make the world such that their own power is increased through worship (or whatever it is that gives them power). Or maybe none of them are selfish, and they do what they do because they are essentially compelled to, as created embodiments of different natural functions and principles.

It would make sense to label a god "evil" who's activity and powers act to perpetuate evil/selfishness in the world, whether or not they themselves can be considered evil/selfish. "Good" gods are those who do the opposite, encourage altruism and kindness. But it's likely the mortal beings giving out the labels and not necessarily the gods themselves.

Also, the game's labels of "Good" and "Evil" need not be adopted by the actual denizens of the world. Even if we, the players, know that one activity or another is evil, it's possible that beings in the world believe that what they are doing what is "right" (usually for themselves, primarily - sociopathy is a thing). "Might makes right" is a common belief, and some societies might not label that philosophy as wrong. It might be seen as "right" for the strongest person to take for themselves anything they can, and this society doesn't label it as "evil", it's just "common sense". They might not understand why a strong person wouldn't take everything they possibly can at the expense of the weak...that's what you're "supposed" to do, after all. If the weak were stronger, they'd do the same thing. Helping people is nice, and all, but it only makes sense once your power is so secure that nobody can possibly challenge you.
Does this society call itself or the gods who encourage this "evil"?

I'd think not...unless we insist on "rules as physics" (which isn't wrong, btw, but it is a deliberate choice).

[LibraryOgre]

So, something I thought about when writing Corpses and Caches... as mentioned above, "Evil" is not "Bad" to people who are evil. When you get down to it, alignment is a point of view, a spiritual conviction, about how the world REALLY works.

A chaotic evil person may be told the definition of chaotic evil and say "Well, yes, the world works when the strong dominate the weak and take what they want; everything else is just window dressing to make you feel better... until I punch you in the face and take the **** you're too weak to protect." A Lawful Good person thinks that the world is about the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and that may mean the occasional suppression of individual choice in the pursuit of the Greater Good (the greater good).

These are convictions about how the world does or should work (I think the CE person is more likely to see this as how the world DOES work, while the LG is more likely to see it as how the world SHOULD work). They're philosophies, but those are mostly articulations of belief and conviction.

[Satinavian]

So, something I thought about when writing Corpses and Caches... as mentioned above, "Evil" is not "Bad" to people who are evil. When you get down to it, alignment is a point of view, a spiritual conviction, about how the world REALLY works.

I disagree.

Their very personal brand of evil might not be bad (or might at least be excusable) to evil people. But they probably consider all the countless other varieties of evil as bad as everyone else of their culture does and might even be more willing to fight those evils than a similar good person because they might be less merciful or understanding or tolerant.



Evil is a huge box full of different atrocities and transgressions. But evil people general don't embrace the whole box and find it instead full of utterly distasteful things. It might be cosmic moral realities deciding that all this stuff if similar enough, but that is certainly not a view shared by mortals.

Welcome to D&D. Mustache twirling villains are not only what many if not most TTRPGs but especially D&D has to offer, IMX they're also what most players want.

Most of the players i know don't. Which is why they hardly ever show up.

[Segev]

Nah, that sounds way too much like mustache-twirling villain.

Only if you think "mustache-twirling" is somehow inconsistent. A serious, played straight villain could easily literally twirl his mustache as a character trait. (So could an honest-to-goodness hero, but still.) He could, in a setting based more on a "realistic Earth" notion, have all sorts of justifications for why he's not evil.

Now, what I think you mean is, "cartoonishly evil," as in, "evil for the sake of playing the bad guy so the good guys have a designated punching bag."

That's simply not true. To wit:

I think it is more sensible to have e.g.
"Undead creating shouldn't vount as evil. I mean, it s just corpses for free labor, where is the problem" ?

This may or may not be viable as an argument about the way the game rules are set up, but that's more because D&D doesn't do anything but arbitrarily staple "evil" to the act. There are other things that actually meet a real-world definition of evil that are better examples. (For the record, I want the rampant use of undead to be inherently evil in my D&D, but the efforts to figure out how to make it actually fit the definition, rather than having a specific exception that includes it as part of the definition by arbitrary labeling, is several threads' worth of conversation of its own.)

"Sure, tolerance and equality are nice, but do we really have to apply those values to Kender ? I for one don't really want those thieving bastards in our nighborhood. They should be settled somewhere else, far far away, so that our good, Kenderless community can thrive undesturbed"

Why does he need to think "tolerance and equality are nice?" He thinks both are stupid ideas promoted by swindlers who want to take what they can't otherwise have. And while he may or may not have any problem with swindling, he does think that it's stupid to fall for it, and he's too smart, clever, and strong to fall for it. Sure, he's evil. Evil means smart. Good means dumb, gullible, and pathetic. It's disgusting to be Good. So why would he want to taint himself with that label, let alone do anything to earn it?

"It is not bad to earn easy money and if people are guillable enough to fall for those scams, it is their fault. I mean, only greedy people would do that anyway. I am not bad for wanting a good life"

"I'm smart for wanting a good life." Why does he need to object to the label of his actions being 'evil?' He doesn't see anything wrong with being evil.

I mean, sure, he may or may not use language that says "it's not bad." He certainly wouldn't say, "It's not evil to earn easy money..." etc., because it objectively is. And he's fine with that. In fact, he might find foregoing it for anything but highly optimal reasons to be morally repugnant. He might view NOT scamming that widow out of her last penny the same way a good person might feel about reporting a widow to the police for having killed a man when all she wanted was to feed her starving family with the provisions he had. Sure, she did something wrong, but the good-aligned person might feel like there's no winning here: let her off the hook and he condones murder, but punish her and he punishes a victim of circumstance who is highly sympathetic.

The evil man instead views not taking her last bit of coin in a scam as letting this parasite leech more from society, and even if he feels empathy for THIS parasite, he might feel morally icky for such inclinations.

That's only one possible way to look at it, but remember: evil in D&D is a morality. It isn't merely "actively not caring about being good." It is something that has its own positions and moral codes. You can be good or evil to a degree without deliberately signing on to such codes, but those codes exist and people can have moral convictions about them. Without being cartoonish.

"Of course i now that rape is bad and i am not proud of it at all. I am actually very ashamed. How did you even find out and what can i do that you don't tell anyone ? It would totally destroy the relations to my good friends and neighbors"

Sure, some evil people might view it as wrong. Others will view it as laudable when done for the right reasons (and fine even if there's no reason at all). They'll still agree it's evil. Why wouldn't they? There's nothing wrong with being evil! In fact, being evil is RIGHT, and being good is wrong. Wrong-headed, wrong morally, wrong in the same way anything disgusting is wrong. This person, in this quote, though, is obviously viewing things from a Good cultural perspective. He may well feel bad about what he's done. He may feel shame. He may view it as evil and think that's a negative thing. But that means he's not embraced evil as a morality. He's evil, certainly, but easier to redeem than somebody who views evil as right. You can at least appeal to his sense of right - which aligns with Good - to convince him to stop his behavior and seek redemption.

"Enslaving ogres is not evil. They are a menace and threat which is removed this way and instead replaced with a ressource that can be used for the public good. And with some luck, they can even be taught how to behave in civilized society"

Taking this statement's unspoken premise as fact for the sake of argument, this person would be evil who feels a need to justify his actions and excuse them because he is, again, operating from a culturally Good perspective.

These people can exist. So, too, can the man who says, "Of course enslaving ogres is evil. It's also very profitable! Win-win!" For the same reason that the man who says, "Of course hiring from the poorest to give them a living wage and a warm place to live and eat is good. It's also making me and them quite the tidy profit! Win-win!" can exist. The first can be legitimately evil. The second can be legitimately good. The evil man may not care specifically about "doing evil" by enslaving the ogres, but he certainly isn't bothered by the fact that it's evil. Being evil is culturally comfortable to him.

Those phrases all represent very evil people. Believable evil people who are not proud to be eil at all. At worst, they disagree with their shtick being labelled as evil at all. And none of them is hostile to good. If a great war between good and evil breaks out, each single one would try to join the side of Good over Evil as if it were the most naturl thing in the world.

You're looking at it from a culturally Good perspective. In an objective morality setting like D&D, you can have culturally evil people who will not feel a shred of shame for being termed "evil." And no, if a war between good and evil broke out, you wouldn't have every evil person believe himself to be good. Heck, you wouldn't have every good person believe himself to be on the side of good! You'd have people like Drizz't (pre-absconding) who would fight on the side of Lolth and the drow in such a war. He might even rise high and become as valued a warrior as a male can be, fighting competently and well for his homeland. He would view his good impulses as shameful, sinful urges he must resist, his mercies as indulgences he must justify or cover up. "It's not mercy that I let this wood elf amazon warrior live. I'm taking her as my personal servant as a symbol of my power over her, and for my own amusement. It's not because I'm a good person that I haven't forced myself on her; it's because I want to prove my social dominance by making HER fall for ME, first. I don't have a weak-hearted crush; I'm just that confident in my suaveness! I haven't killed her brother because it'll be leverage on her. And, er, he might have useful intel. I'm not torturing him for it because I think buddying up to him will get him to let things slip more easily! Yeah!"

For personal worldbuilding i use gods as manifestations of aspects devoid of any morality. But that is not very useful here. So let us instead look to some fine evil examples from Forgotten Realms : Umberlee and Velsharoon.

Umberlee is just a jealous, nasty and fickle person. Her worshippers just do so out of fear and to be safe when she gets moody. She has no great plan for anything. She is more like an irresposible bratty princess with too much power

Velsharoon is pretty much the opposite. He is a power-hungry opportunist. But he also sucks up to every other greater power who can get him protestion or power, no matter te alignment. He does not have any greater vision or goal for the world and is willing to join any side that gives him benefits. He also doesn't really care what his believers do as long they venerate him, spread his name and thus provide him power. I mean, some of them do like to create undead for funsies and is is thought to like that but it is not particularly central to his cult. Instead, even though he is a death and undeath god, his clerics mostly go around selling healing spells and the churchs signiture spell is a combination of word of recall, raise dead and heal.

And both are evil. Unashamedly so. Both view what they do as perfectly right and acceptable. They know it's evil. They also think that it being evil is a plus. Because they're evil, which means they're smart and powerful and unafraid to use their power. Only weaklings feel the need to curtail their power for simpering emotions like :spits: empathy.

Now i won't say that all evil dieties are this way. Some really do have a big evil vision for how the world should be. But the self-serving nature of evil is getting in the way of evil gods being proper agents for the greater Evil as well. At least if dieties have personality.

In no way is "a big vision" important to being evil, and being shamelessly so, or even proud of it. All it takes is there being an objective definition of "good" and "evil" that makes you factually wrong if you call one the other, and a moral system that enables you to say, "I think good is icky and evil is the bees' knees."

Which is perfectly doable when everyone agrees that, say, indiscriminate killing is evil, but not everybody agrees that that makes it wrong.

[Satinavian]

This may or may not be viable as an argument about the way the game rules are set up, but that's more because D&D doesn't do anything but arbitrarily staple "evil" to the act. There are other things that actually meet a real-world definition of evil that are better examples. (For the record, I want the rampant use of undead to be inherently evil in my D&D, but the efforts to figure out how to make it actually fit the definition, rather than having a specific exception that includes it as part of the definition by arbitrary labeling, is several threads' worth of conversation of its own.)

Yes, some elements of what counts as good or evil seem pretty arbitrary with undead and poison being the most obvious. But i don't think that need fxing by attaching unpreasant consequences to necromancy. If you really play with cosmic alignments, it is enough to say those are evil just because. Because cosmic alignment is kinda arbitrary. If it bothers people so much that they need it fixed, i would rather declare it not evil instead of making it harmful.

Why does he need to think "tolerance and equality are nice?" He thinks both are stupid ideas promoted by swindlers who want to take what they can't otherwise have. And while he may or may not have any problem with swindling, he does think that it's stupid to fall for it, and he's too smart, clever, and strong to fall for it. Sure, he's evil. Evil means smart. Good means dumb, gullible, and pathetic. It's disgusting to be Good. So why would he want to taint himself with that label, let alone do anything to earn it?

No, he doesnt subscribe to the philosophy of evil. Only to Kender based racism. He genuinely values tolerance and equality between all non-Kender and wants to be a good, reliable, helpful member of the non-Kender community. He probably thinks of himself as tolerant and helpful and even good (if not confronted with alignment detection) because Kender don't really count in his mind. He is still totally evil but you wouldn't know it if you never see him interacting with Kender or talking about them.

"I'm smart for wanting a good life." Why does he need to object to the label of his actions being 'evil?' He doesn't see anything wrong with being evil.

He doesn't see anything wrong with swindling people. He might still see lots of things wrong with all other kinds of evil. The grouping of things into evil and non evil is just not particular useful to describe his autlook.

That's only one possible way to look at it, but remember: evil in D&D is a morality. It isn't merely "actively not caring about being good." It is something that has its own positions and moral codes. You can be good or evil to a degree without deliberately signing on to such codes, but those codes exist and people can have moral convictions about them. Without being cartoonish.

Yes, that is the core of it. Being evil is about doing evil things. It is not about subscribing to the moral philosophy of evil at all. Sure, some people do follow some philosophy of evil. But most people, even evil people don't. And most philosophes don't fit particularly neatly into the 9 alignment boxes anyway, so yeah.

Why wouldn't they? There's nothing wrong with being evil! In fact, being evil is RIGHT, and being good is wrong.

Because most evil people are not happy about the evil others do and quite comfortable with the good others do. Because evil tends to come at a cost to others or society and good comes with altruism and benefitting others or society. There is no question whatsoever what the typical evil person wants to experience and that is not different from what a good person wants to experience. It is only when it comes to reciprocity, when the difference show themself. That is why you will find very few people believing evil is right, if that includes evil that they have no intent to do themself and might be exposed to.

You're looking at it from a culturally Good perspective.

I actually aimed for neutral, but yes, society influences morals and creeds far more than personal alignment. I also rarely use evil cultures as over the top as the Drow because those tend to be utterly unsustainable if one thinks a couple of minutes about them. The evil cultures i do use have usually only one or a few established evil practices or traditions. There might be a tyranny cracking down hard on dissent at the expense of justice, there might be extreme stratification and certain classes treated quite ****ty, there might be widespread corruption, there might be established slavery, there might be a culture accepting of raiding glorifying successful raiders and of course there might be one making heavy use of undead. But i tend to not mix those and am generally carefully with the backstabbbing and other destructive tendencies. If people at the table ask themself "How has this not imploded years ago ?", i have done something wrong.
So even evil cultures don't really have a philosophy of evil. If chosing what fits them more and shown the box with all evil ideals and one with good ideals, they would probably complain a lot about nothing fitting but eventually choosing the good one because the evil one just contains way to much destructive stuff they can't tolerate.

And both are evil. Unashamedly so. Both view what they do as perfectly right and acceptable. They know it's evil. They also think that it being evil is a plus. Because they're evil, which means they're smart and powerful and unafraid to use their power. Only weaklings feel the need to curtail their power for simpering emotions like :spits: empathy.

Of course both are very evil. That is why i chose them as examples of evil gods. But both do not champion the cause of cosmic evil at all and both don't care about the conflict of cosmic good and cosmic evil.
And that makes them good examples to the strand of argumentation i responded to here where evil gods were presented as champions of Evil.

Which is perfectly doable when everyone agrees that, say, indiscriminate killing is evil, but not everybody agrees that that makes it wrong.

But the vast majority of evil people agree that indiscriminate killing is quite wrong.

[Kraynic]

No, he doesnt subscribe to the philosophy of evil. Only to Kender based racism. He genuinely values tolerance and equality between all non-Kender and wants to be a good, reliable, helpful member of the non-Kender community. He probably thinks of himself as tolerant and helpful and even good (if not confronted with alignment detection) because Kender don't really count in his mind. He is still totally evil but you wouldn't know it if you never see him interacting with Kender or talking about them.
He doesn't see anything wrong with swindling people. He might still see lots of things wrong with all other kinds of evil. The grouping of things into evil and non evil is just not particular useful to describe his autlook.

I find this an incredibly interesting take. If someone has been victimized throughout their life by kender behavior (especially the "it's what my character would do" variety), it makes them evil that they don't want to be around kender.

You know, the community should include vampires. At least when the vampires show up to steal something from you (your blood, life force, or whatever), they don't pretend to be innocent and sometimes offer eternal life in exchange. Obviously they would be a superior choice for inclusion than kender.

[Tanarii]

I find this an incredibly interesting take. If someone has been victimized throughout their life by kender behavior (especially the "it's what my character would do" variety), it makes them evil that they don't want to be around kender.

You know, the community should include vampires. At least when the vampires show up to steal something from you (your blood, life force, or whatever), they don't pretend to be innocent and sometimes offer eternal life in exchange. Obviously they would be a superior choice for inclusion than kender.

Personally I was a little shocked the example wasn't Orcs or Drow.

[Keltest]

Personally I was a little shocked the example wasn't Orcs or Drow.

A good honest brutal war is nothing compared to what PCs are forced to do the moment they write "kender" in the race section of their character sheet.

[KorvinStarmast]

So, something I thought about when writing Corpses and Caches... as mentioned above, "Evil" is not "Bad" to people who are evil. When you get down to it, alignment is a point of view, a spiritual conviction, about how the world REALLY works.

A chaotic evil person may be told the definition of chaotic evil and say "Well, yes, the world works when the strong dominate the weak and take what they want; everything else is just window dressing to make you feel better... until I punch you in the face and take the **** you're too weak to protect." A Lawful Good person thinks that the world is about the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and that may mean the occasional suppression of individual choice in the pursuit of the Greater Good (the greater good).

These are convictions about how the world does or should work (I think the CE person is more likely to see this as how the world DOES work, while the LG is more likely to see it as how the world SHOULD work). They're philosophies, but those are mostly articulations of belief and conviction.

Yes, that's where alignment comes from as described by its creator as a game thing. It's also one of the most useful models of how to describe it for someone coming fresh into the D&D game. I am stealing/borrowing this, thank you.