Neutral/Evil alignment

[Vahnavoi]

@Kardwill: it's not that simple.

First, you need to ask, why did the behaviour happen in the first place, before any alignment judgement is placed on it? At one end, highly situational acts aren't likely to be repeated, whether they're punished or not; on another, acts done for tactical benefit will almost certainly be repeated unless the game is changed to remove the benefit, such as by introducing a punishment.

If a punishment is introduced, a lot depends on how it works. Consider the aforementioned systems where gaining enough Evil points removes a character from play. As noted, that is equivalent to penalty card systems in sports. Consider: do you think an athlete is more likely to keep breaking the rules after receiving a warning, knowing each warning gets them closer to being disqualified? Or could it be that athletes only occasionally eat a penalty for tactical reasons and mostly stay within agreed-upon bounds of their game?

Again, games where playing Evil characters isn't disallowed are a different beast. In such games, the answer to "Do you really want to give this player an official Evil character?", the answer is just "Yes". Acknowledging a character for what they are is the whole point. If the message a player takes home is "well, let me be Evil then!", that's their problem. It isn't, in principle, different from someone who loses their equipment to a rust monster deciding to fight naked and bare-handed from that point. They have committed to a tactic and now suffer the consequences for it. Remember that something being allowed isn't the same as something being smart. Players are just as capable of realizing that being Evil long-term might not be in their favor, as they are capable of realizing that maybe being naked and bare-handed isn't all that hot when fighting something other than a rust monster.

[Darth Credence]

Again though. My previous point was that it's the intent behind the action that matters. A good person desires to help people. An evil person desires to harm people. That's what makes them good or evil. A neutral person does not care about either. They dont do actions because it helps or hurts someone. They also don't *not* do actions because it helps or hurts someone.

There's the part that matters, and sums up why you're wrong. If you don't care about harming others, you're evil. Trying to justify it as not their problem is evil.

A "true neutral" being may not actively help someone, letting nature take its course. They might refuse to stop an evil person, again letting nature take its course. But they won't do what you suggest, burning down farms for a paycheck. That's evil, period, even if your next paycheck is protecting a caravan of medicine.

[Satinavian]

Again though. My previous point was that it's the intent behind the action that matters. A good person desires to help people. An evil person desires to harm people. That's what makes them good or evil. A neutral person does not care about either. They dont do actions because it helps or hurts someone. They also don't *not* do actions because it helps or hurts someone.

I very much disagree.

Why a good person desires to help people and tries to do so, it is not needed to actually desire harm for being evil. Just being willing to inflict harm on others for minor or selfish goals is more than enough.
Pretty much every traditional evil villain harms people to achieve some other goal. Only the most forgettable comic book willains do bad things because they desire harm.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yeah I tend to view "Neutral" as refraining from doing good and evil things, as opposed to doing both good and evil things in equal measure. The "must maintain the balance" thing never really appealed to me.

It makes no sense. The place where Neutral makes sense in terms of balance is in the L/N/C structure, not the G/N/E structure.

The PHB paladins are implicitly, but not explicitly good aligned.

As a general case, yes, but some variation on that is in the Vengeance oath description.

There is a neutrality in dungeons and dragons that actually very much cares about good and evil, and that one of those does not outdo the other.

I find the DL treatment of alignment to be ... the authors should have known better. Won't repeat the rant.

@Kardwill: it's not that simple.

First, you need to ask, why did the behaviour happen in the first place, before any alignment judgement is placed on it? At one end, highly situational acts aren't likely to be repeated, whether they're punished or not; on another, acts done for tactical benefit will almost certainly be repeated unless the game is changed to remove the benefit, such as by introducing a punishment.

If a punishment is introduced, a lot depends on how it works. Consider the aforementioned systems where gaining enough Evil points removes a character from play. As noted, that is equivalent to penalty card systems in sports. Consider: do you think an athlete is more likely to keep breaking the rules after receiving a warning, knowing each warning gets them closer to being disqualified? Or could it be that athletes only occasionally eat a penalty for tactical reasons and mostly stay within agreed-upon bounds of their game?

Again, games where playing Evil characters isn't disallowed are a different beast. In such games, the answer to "Do you really want to give this player an official Evil character?", the answer is just "Yes". Acknowledging a character for what they are is the whole point. If the message a player takes home is "well, let me be Evil then!", that's their problem. It isn't, in principle, different from someone who loses their equipment to a rust monster deciding to fight naked and bare-handed from that point. They have committed to a tactic and now suffer the consequences for it. Remember that something being allowed isn't the same as something being smart. Players are just as capable of realizing that being Evil long-term might not be in their favor, as they are capable of realizing that maybe being naked and bare-handed isn't all that hot when fighting something other than a rust monster.

Thank you. I may borrow some of this at a later date.

There's the part that matters, and sums up why you're wrong. If you don't care about harming others, you're evil. Trying to justify it as not their problem is evil.

You have gone too far here, though, by resorting to an absolutist position like that.

[Darth Credence]

You have gone too far here, though, by resorting to an absolutist position like that.

Completely disagree. The definition of evil could be being willing to cause harm to others in order to achieve ones goals. If what you are saying is too absolute is that if someone doesn't care about harming other people is evil because someone who doesn't care but still makes sure they don't harm people because they understand the existence of society, OK, fine. But since we were clearly talking about people who were actually performing harmful acts, I did not think it needed to be spelled out that far.

If what you mean is that people who don't care and just act on whatever they want to do aren't necessarily evil, that's wrong. If you don't care about harming others and you take actions as you see fit without taking the existence of other beings into account, you are indeed evil.

[Witty Username]

You have gone too far here, though, by resorting to an absolutist position like that.

I personally find that using Evil as more narrow than this disqualifies alot of interest in the Evil space and tends to result in cartoonish evil as the only portions left.

[gbaji]

Spending your money to go on a cruise is hard to argue a moral direction for either way. Drowning your spouse so you can get the life insurance payout and use it to go on a cruise is an action towards a neutral goal rather than just being done for the evulz. I think most people will agree that murdering somebody just because you want to profit from it is pretty dang evil*. Gross indifference to harm caused to others in the pursuit of advancing one's self interest is widely seen as evil. Words in common use have definitions, and trying to claim that good and evil as universal forces mean different things than their common use is a good way to confuse people.

*(D&D tries to square this with the urge to treat this as a game of killing things and taking their stuff by having the enemies be threatening and generally evil so that violence is justified. Attempts to justify have been successful in some cases and rather unsuccessful in others, something that has drawn comment almost as long as the hobby has been around.)

We're talking about alignment calculations in a game, not in real life. In real life, we tend to set the standard at what I would consider to be well on the good side of the alignment spectrum as presented in D&D. What I'm describing as neutral alignment behavior would almost certainly also involve multiple violations of modern law. I'm just asking the question that if good is X and evil is Y, then what is neutral? Especially in a game system where adventurers regularly roam around killing things and taking their stuff.

Completely disagree. The definition of evil could be being willing to cause harm to others in order to achieve ones goals. If what you are saying is too absolute is that if someone doesn't care about harming other people is evil because someone who doesn't care but still makes sure they don't harm people because they understand the existence of society, OK, fine. But since we were clearly talking about people who were actually performing harmful acts, I did not think it needed to be spelled out that far.

If what you mean is that people who don't care and just act on whatever they want to do aren't necessarily evil, that's wrong. If you don't care about harming others and you take actions as you see fit without taking the existence of other beings into account, you are indeed evil.

I get where you are coming from. And my position on neutral is not that they don't care "at all" about causing harm, but that they don't weigh it innately in a "OMG that's wrong!" sort of way, but in a more utilitarian manner. A good person will avoid causing harm because "causing harm is bad", and will only do so if it's absolutely necessary to prevent some much greater harm from occuring. They are very much focused on "preventing harm" and otherwise creating positive outcomes, not just for themselves but for others. A neutral person will avoid causing harm because causing harm tends to create additional negative effects, which may very well impact the neutral person and those he cares about. As I said earlier, if he can achieve his goals without causing harm, he will do so. But the amount he weighs that harm in the calculation of "cost/benefit of achieving my goal with/without causing harm" is much much lower than a good person's would be.

In contrast, an evil person isn't just willing to cause harm in pursuit of their goals, they tend to prefer it and will choose to do so if at all possible. The sadistic guard who tortures his prisoners. The evil overlord who enjoys seeing those under his thumb tormented. Demons and whatnot, who literally exist in order to spread suffering and pain. Those are evil people/beings.

And yes, we might conclude that this results in nothing but stereotypical moustache twirling evil out there, but in a game where those sorts of things actually exists and are real, there's some value in differentiating that from adventurers who don't actively seek to do this kind of stuff, but maybe aren't terribly picky when it comes to what jobs they are willing to do. Or, in the case in this thread, of a character who didn't spend specific effort double checking that the "monster" he was sent to kill was actually evil (again, assuming that actual "evil monsters" as described earlier in this paragraph exists and it is "good" to kill them). I mean, the entire mission only works at all for anyone if we do assume that there are things in this world that actually are the very stereoptyical "evil" that we're talking about. Otherwise, 90% of what adventurers do would also be qualified as "evil" by your own definition.

We can't always apply our own moral judgements on alignment calculations in games like D&D. And yeah, I get that this does not match up with what some game guidelines use (though those are horribly inconsistent as well). I just find it's a more practical method to use when running games with alignment systems. And sure, it's quite possible that some players may use the neutral alignment as an excuse for muderhobo behavior as a result. But I find as a GM that the basic guideline of "did the character actually have to kill that person to achieve their objecitve" to work reasonably well for most cases. It's at least reasonably usable as an alignment methodology for player characters anyway. It's less viable as a broad social/moral thing though. But then D&D style alignment tends to run into huge problems with that anyway.


And it goes without saying that this is before we even consider the issue with "sides" and how that affects alignment. Which, yeah, is just another mess on top of the mess that is alignmment already. It's one of many reasons I prefer to play in games that just don't bother with such things.

[MoiMagnus]

I personally find that using Evil as more narrow than this disqualifies alot of interest in the Evil space and tends to result in cartoonish evil as the only portions left.

It still contains some realistic evil (peoples getting happiness from other people's misery/suffering/etc are a thing in real life too), but I agree it is much more limited.

Though it just pushes the "somewhat evil" concepts to the "Neutral" space, so they are not lost.
[Well, they are lost on species that are "always evil", but they're another can of worms]

It comes down to the question "What is the point of the Evil alignment, in term of game design and/or worldbuilding?"
Because in a universe where "cartoonish evil & similarly sadistic peoples" exists and dealing with it is the core of many stories, having a name specifically for that category has a purpose.
[Which is why in our homebrew, we often add an additional alignment for those "extra evil". We also added an alignement for the "so fixated on fighting and killing for the greater good that they're arguably evil", but that's also another can of worms.]

[Satinavian]

And yes, we might conclude that this results in nothing but stereotypical moustache twirling evil out there, but in a game where those sorts of things actually exists and are real, there's some value in differentiating that from adventurers who don't actively seek to do this kind of stuff, but maybe aren't terribly picky when it comes to what jobs they are willing to do. Or, in the case in this thread, of a character who didn't spend specific effort double checking that the "monster" he was sent to kill was actually evil (again, assuming that actual "evil monsters" as described earlier in this paragraph exists and it is "good" to kill them). I mean, the entire mission only works at all for anyone if we do assume that there are things in this world that actually are the very stereoptyical "evil" that we're talking about. Otherwise, 90% of what adventurers do would also be qualified as "evil" by your own definition.

Now you already admit that your version does not really fit the guidelines but you are using it because you find it useful. That is certainly legitimate

I however have no interest in mustache twirling villains at all. And using your version would just lead to stories about the big conflicts of good vs. neutral because evil hardly exists and all the grave injustices and wrongs are done by "neutral" people for "neutral" reasons. But that doesn't make them any less objectionable.
I don't think that is useful for me. So i stick to the version where causing harm for selfish or petty reason does qualify as evil. That is actually way more practical imho.

[Vahnavoi]

Conflicts between Neutral and Good people are underappreciated, really. As originally envisioned, Druids, the poster boys for True Neutral, occasionally abandon children in the woods or burn a few people alive to ensure good harvest. Neutral people being pretty damn awful from contemporary perspective was very much intentional... and in line with the simple observation that from a contemporary perspective, many past peoples were awful.

[Bohandas]

Acting recklessly but in good faith strikes me as more chaotic than evil. (Paradoxially it could also be argued to be lawful if the same acts, still done in good faith, were instead brought about by overthinking, groupthink, and/or an overabundance of caution rather than reckless).

There's also something to be said for the possibility of acts to be merely "ungood" for lack of a better word. Ie. Acts that could push you from good to neutral but not from neutral to evil or from evil to neutral

[Anymage]

Druids used to be harshly amoral and TN back then mandated being a balance fetishist who was always compelled to side with the underdog. Also, back in those days AC progressed downward. Arguing that neutrality in the current game should be held to older standards is about as relevant as telling someone playing current D&D that they should seek to bring their AC down into negative numbers.

[gbaji]

Now you already admit that your version does not really fit the guidelines but you are using it because you find it useful. That is certainly legitimate

Guidelines that themselves have been incredibly inconsistent, change from one game version to the next, and produce a plethora of arguments all by themselves? Yeah. I feel no obligation at all to comply with those, when I can come up with something else that works better and makes more sense to me. And... actually matches up better with the definitional concept of "neutral".

I however have no interest in mustache twirling villains at all. And using your version would just lead to stories about the big conflicts of good vs. neutral because evil hardly exists and all the grave injustices and wrongs are done by "neutral" people for "neutral" reasons. But that doesn't make them any less objectionable.

But isn't that what most conflicts that will occur are anyway, if we are already excluding the "moustache twirling" type of evil? The PCs are knights of kindom A. Kingdom B is an enemy kingdom. Both sides regularly fight skirmishes, sometimes engage in border raids, and the PCs are regularly going on missions to sneak into KingdomB and do some kind of mission impossible level stuff.

Are the PCs good, neutral, or evil? Is that group of border raiders from KingdomB "evil"? What about the ones from KingdomA? Both sides are engaged in causing harm to the other for what can quite aguably be labeled "selfish reasons". And you know what? The only way to actually resolve this and make one side "good" and the other "evil" is if we add in some of that moustache twirling evil you seem to not want to have around. The ruler of kingdomB is a cruel sadist who killed the previous ruler to take the throne, rounds up and tourtures his political enemies, and has invited and actively encourages the worship of some demon lord thingie. Oh and he's a necromancer who uses those he tortures and executes in his dark magical experiments. Under his rule, the people of his land now suffer and are more or less slaves in their own kingdom.

If neither side has something like that going on, then either both sides are "evil" by your definition. Or.... we can simply conclude that lots of people fight, and they most often fight over "things" (land, money, etc), and that this is not innnately good nor evil, but merely "neutral".

I don't think that is useful for me. So i stick to the version where causing harm for selfish or petty reason does qualify as evil. That is actually way more practical imho.

Again though, the problem with this is that if we drill down enough, almost everything can be boiled down to some degree of selfish reasoning. And what is labeled as selfish is almost always extremely subjective. You think it's selfish of me to use this land to support my family, and I think it's selfish of you to use it to support yours. Who is right? Ultimately, in any world that has scarcity, almost all conflicts will involve some degree of self interest, and most will involve a significant amount of it.

I actually somewhat agree with you from a philosophical point of view. But not at all from a "practical rpg pov". As I said earlier, if we really applied that logic, then a large pecentage of what most PC groups do would be classified as "evil". Every single time a PC group goes into some dundeon for any reason other than "we're chasing a known group of evildoers who caused known harm to known people, to bring them to justice" they are technically meeting your definition of "evil". And if they run into and kill anything other than said known evildoers they are chasing? Well, that's evil. Home invasion evil.

The problem is that, as I pointed out above, the only way for adventuring PCs to *not* meet your definition of evil if if they restrict themselves solely to hunting down and killing the very moustache twirling (or "always evil" species) type of evil you don't find to be interesting.

If you don't have that kind of evil in your game, then who do your PCs ever fight? Who do they ever cause harm to, without being evil themselves? And if you do have that kind of evil in your game, then there would seem to be plenty of room for the "neutral" range as I've described it to fit in.

Druids used to be harshly amoral and TN back then mandated being a balance fetishist who was always compelled to side with the underdog. Also, back in those days AC progressed downward. Arguing that neutrality in the current game should be held to older standards is about as relevant as telling someone playing current D&D that they should seek to bring their AC down into negative numbers.

I really dislike that form of argument.

"Well. Back in the days of Hyppocrates, there was also slavery, human sacrifice, and people thought the earth was flat, so swearing the hyppocratic oath is just as bad as wanting slavery, human sacrifice, and being a flat earther".

See how that doesn't work?


The larger point is that there have historically been a number of different approaches to what "neutral" means in D&D (and other games). And at least in most of them (certainly the earlier ones), the idea that neutral people could absolutely engage in harmful actions that may very well oppose "good people", was completely supported. And the reasons for that are just as valid today as they were back then, regardless of what we may think of other rules in the game(s) at the same time period.

And honestly? As I've watched numerous editions of D&D come and go, and watched numerous writers struggle to try to redefine the alignment system, IMO they have only created more and more inconsistencies along the way. I think that a good portion of this has been driven by a desire to square alignment in a primarily fantasy setting RPG with modern concepts of good and bad, and the result has not been terribly successful. At the end of the day, you are running in a setting using old timey morality, and I think just allowing players to accept that and adjust to it works better than trying to wedge a system of morality into the setting that doesn't really work.

So yeah. Folks may engage in activities that we today would absolutely call "evil"(and certainly "illegal"), but because we are playing in a setting that actually has demons, and devils, and horrible monsters, and necromancers, and liches, and evil warlocks, and evil overlords, actually bent on (yes stereotypical) evil, we kinda have to allow for a range of person who isn't actively going around sacrificing people to their dread deity, or enslaving them, or turning them into zombies, or using them as magic power sources, or any of a number of really truely horrific kinds of things that can exist in the game setting, but who don't hold themselves to the same "do no harm" standards that we modern folks do. And, if said game system uses an alignment system, we might label those people "neutral", not because they are what we might call neutral when applying modern moral rules to them, but because if we are to examine the full range of morality within the game setting, theirs falls pretty much smack in the middle between "people who do horrible things for horrible reasons", and "people who do good things for good reasons".


Sure. No definition is perfect. And I generally just prefer to not use alignment at all if I can get away with it. But... if I am going to use it, I prefer to use it in a way that works within the game system and setting I'm playing and not try to make it align with a setting and world that I'm *not* playing (ie: the "real world").

[Duff]

There's other interpretations of Evil. Last time I used alignment — and it's been a hot minute — it literally measured connection to a combination of the evil aligned outer planes and the negative material plane. Habitually using certain spells would change your detected alignment — not your actual behavior, but if you used a lot of healing spells, you would always ping Good regardless of how many puppies you kicked, and if you used Harm spells or summoned imps often to save kittens from burning buildings, you would ping Evil. Every pantheon seemingly has some personage who audits your soul after you die, and why would that role exist if it wasn't necessary to actually do the accounting and correct for the weird splash effects?

That’s a use of alignment that makes the world more interesting. I like it

snipped

I tend not to use alignment at all, but if I do use alignment then I always look at it from the point of view of in-setting beings (even if they're ineffable forces rather than specific deities) choosing how to relate to the characters on the basis of witnessing how those characters live their life.

So I shouldn't see moving someone towards evil as a way to punish something that I as DM consider a misbehavior. It shouldn't be about 'would I have preferred if you acted differently, from an out-of-character viewpoint?'. Instead, it should be e.g. 'when this cleric of Selune uses Detect Good on you, it returns false because she really likes non-evil lycanthropes and you attacked beings she liked out of the blue, and to her that matters more than your justifications; but you're still detecting as Good to clerics of Tyr. And you're shining particularly brightly to Helm's clerics for the next while because he liked how watchful and alert you were!'. Or, on killing the naiad, maybe even 'The Good deities aren't going to turn their backs on you just for that, but Bhaal really loved that and is sending a lot of Evil energies your way to reward your action. More like that! he says'

That also tends to sidestep some of the out of character 'are you calling me evil, because I thought this act was fine?!' kinds of reactions. "No, but given Selune's portfolio and interests, you've offended her." or "No, but the ineffable force that people label as Good only associates its energies with a strictly delineated category of being and behavior and, reasonable or justified or not, it considers that action outside of that category'. It's also helpful because it makes you look at the actions from the point of view of in-setting forces, rather than from your own perspective of 'do I find that action offensive according to my own moral compass?'

So I shouldn't see moving someone towards evil as a way to punish something that I as DM consider a misbehavior. It shouldn't be about 'would I have preferred if you acted differently, from an out-of-character viewpoint?'. Instead, it should be e.g. 'when this cleric of Selune uses Detect Good on you, it returns false because she really likes non-evil lycanthropes and you attacked beings she liked out of the blue, and to her that matters more than your justifications; but you're still detecting as Good to clerics of Tyr. And you're shining particularly brightly to Helm's clerics for the next while because he liked how watchful and alert you were!'. Or, on killing the naiad, maybe even 'The Good deities aren't going to turn their backs on you just for that, but Bhaal really loved that and is sending a lot of Evil energies your way to reward your action. More like that! he says'

That also tends to sidestep some of the out of character 'are you calling me evil, because I thought this act was fine?!' kinds of reactions. "No, but given Selune's portfolio and interests, you've offended her." or "No, but the ineffable force that people label as Good only associates its energies with a strictly delineated category of being and behavior and, reasonable or justified or not, it considers that action outside of that category'. It's also helpful because it makes you look at the actions from the point of view of in-setting forces, rather than from your own perspective of 'do I find that action offensive according to my own moral compass?'

Also a good game use of alignment

Re the OP

“Shoot first and ask questions later” depends a lot on context. In a situation where sus ravens are very likely to be at least one of evil or a threat, then it’s neutral behaviour.
And maybe also sensible.
In this situation, if they later find out the ravens were in fact neither evil, nor a threat, then non-evil people will feel obliged to (or even want to) make some form of reasonable amends (service, gifts, grand public apology etc).
OTOH, in a situation where the smart ravens are more likely to be just locals keeping an eye on their territory, shooting them is an evil act, and if it’s part of a pattern of behaviour, then the character is evil

Take a quest from fiends – Not good, but not evil as such.
Killing the designated target of the above quest without looking hard at what the effects would be is evil unless “Our characters are all terribly gullible” is part of the established personalities of the party.
A party with an iota of sense will accept the mission to save the orphanage and then try to find out if it’s an evil orphanage before they save it. Or if they don’t have time to do it before, do it afterward so they can undo any evil they inadvertently helped on the way through

Kill civilians among enemy combatants
1st, not really a valid comparison. Unless Colonel Puppy Kicker of the Officially Evil Army is telling you the building is a valid target, the pool situation is not an “Apples to apples” comparison. And if you think Colonel PK of the OEA gives your actions legitimacy, you should not be trusted with anything more lethal than a small blunt spoon. And the example says there are enemy combatents in the settlement, where there’s no known enemies in the raven situation described

I suggest use of metaphor or comparison to discuss morality is unlikely to be helpful. If context matters to the morality, then changing the context means discussing a different moral situation. If you consider morality absolute rather than depending on circumstance, then only the actions that were taken are important.

"What if there was a Balor in the pool?" is a terrible argument. What if there was Tiamat and 14 ancient dragons in all colours? If they have to shoot first because it might be something that is dangerous, they have to do some checking in case it's too dangerous

Last, but not least, do not put yourself in a situation where you are around this person while they are armed. Their idea of right and wrong could easily put you in a very uncomfortable position

[Witty Username]

It comes down to the question "What is the point of the Evil alignment, in term of game design and/or worldbuilding?"
Because in a universe where "cartoonish evil & similarly sadistic peoples" exists and dealing with it is the core of many stories, having a name specifically for that category has a purpose.
[Which is why in our homebrew, we often add an additional alignment for those "extra evil". We also added an alignement for the "so fixated on fighting and killing for the greater good that they're arguably evil", but that's also another can of worms.]

I mostly view alignment in its context of player utility, and I rather like characters I describe as "high-functioning evil." The kind of character that will happily sit eating lunch discussing the value of mystery fiction, then later that day assassinate 3 ish people because it accomplishes their goals in the most expedient way. Or say gets simple joy in murder, but realized people don't complain if they do it to hobgoblins and orcs.

Neutral is a fair way to describe this some, but I find personally neutral caps my comfort zone a bit much.

[icefractal]

As I said earlier, if we really applied that logic, then a large pecentage of what most PC groups do would be classified as "evil". Every single time a PC group goes into some dundeon for any reason other than "we're chasing a known group of evildoers who caused known harm to known people, to bring them to justice" they are technically meeting your definition of "evil". And if they run into and kill anything other than said known evildoers they are chasing? Well, that's evil. Home invasion evil.

I mean, yeah. Adventures where the premise is "go and kill these humanoids (which have a society, children, etc), because they have loot and also the local humans / demi-humans would enjoy claiming their territory" are pretty ****ed up when you think about it. And the tropes they're based on are ... also ****ed up, usually worse in fact. So you've really got three options:

A) Don't think about it. Go full beer-n-pretzels style and just don't consider any implications or try to have moral significance to anything.
B) The PCs are bad people, problem solved.
C) Don't use those type of adventures.

And by C, I don't mean "don't use dungeon crawls", because there's still plenty of room for those. For example, dungeons full of mindless (or inherently inimical) creatures like most undead, demons, giant bugs, constructs, some types of aberrations, etc. Or dungeons which are a fortress for a known group which you're attacking because they're actively doing bad stuff, not just "they exist and we could stab them".

And of course, all the types of adventure which aren't dungeon crawls, most of which have an easy time avoiding this situation.

Importantly, none of those options require (or are even assisted by) having an alignment system that uses a different definition of "good". I've met zero people who would be disturbed by a "kill all the goblins because goblins" adventure and then suddenly be fine with it by someone saying "don't worry, the book says it's Good to kill them". Why would that even make a difference?

[Unoriginal]

Acting recklessly but in good faith strikes me as more chaotic than evil.

Doing what Fiends told them to do without question, while knowing they're Fiends, disqualifies Player A from "acting in good faith".


Also there is a point where acting recklessly outweighs any good faith. If you're regularly harming innocent people through recklessness, and refuse to do anything to avoid harming innocents, you're gonna be both chaotic and evil sooner or later. Because callous disregard for other people's well-being + reckless behavior when you know the pattern of consequences said behavior has + actively harming people.

[Vahnavoi]

Acting recklessly but in good faith strikes me as more chaotic than evil. (Paradoxially it could also be argued to be lawful if the same acts, still done in good faith, were instead brought about by overthinking, groupthink, and/or an overabundance of caution rather than reckless).

Adressing the part in parentheses, that's not an actual paradox. It is instead a mathematical result of pigeon hole theorem. If you have nine pigeons but less than nine holes, some pigeons will end up sharing space. Similarly, if you have nine alignments but a game situation only offers less than nine distinct options, you will inevitably see different trains of thought leading to the same choice. This doesn't prove a flaw in the alignment system, it instead provides justification for why alignment shouldn't change on single-action basis: you might not be able to distinquish a person acting on individual impulse (Chaotic) from a pathological groupthinker caving in to peer pressure (Lawful) based on a single incident, but you wouldn't expect these people to act the same across all situations.

Corollaries being: if you have several characters of nominally different alignments who consistently act the same way, that means either

1) players do not have enough distinct choices.

Or

2) those characters have congruent values and properly are of the same alignment.

There's also something to be said for the possibility of acts to be merely "ungood" for lack of a better word. Ie. Acts that could push you from good to neutral but not from neutral to evil or from evil to neutral

That is possible to implement, since all Neutral alignments also have extended descriptions. So you can do what another poster did earlier in this thread with 5th edition alignment and compare a character's actions to description of overall alignment, rather simply trying to figure if an act is Good/Evil or Lawful/Chaotic. It would be easy to make this explicit, rather than just implicit, part of alignment rules. If hasn't been done, it can only be chalked up to game developers not being particularly interested in making a robust alignment system.

---

Druids used to be harshly amoral and TN back then mandated being a balance fetishist who was always compelled to side with the underdog. Also, back in those days AC progressed downward. Arguing that neutrality in the current game should be held to older standards is about as relevant as telling someone playing current D&D that they should seek to bring their AC down into negative numbers.

That's a fallacy. Game development isn't a smooth upward curve where every new version is strict improvement on the previous one. It is ordinary, even common for a new version to screw something up in transition even if it improves something else. Descending versus ascending Armor Class is an entirely different subset of mechanics, either can be in play independent of how alignment is set up, so the comparison is never relevant. There is no logical inconsistency in preferring old alignment rules even if one prefers newer armor class rules.

As for the actual merit of being a "balance fetishist" who is compelled to always side with the underdog, "always side with the underdog" is a clear and conscise game strategy, both telling a player what they should do in a given situation and making it easy for a game master to check if a player is doing that. These traits make it a good candidate for a specific role (namely, Druid) who has special powers and priviliges tied to following a conduct. Contrary to modern bastardization of the concept, in AD&D True Neutral is not an everyman alignment - it is a narrow minority alignment, literally taking up less space on alignment graph than other alignments. Don't want to play a balance fetishist? Then don't pick the one role defined by it. Very simple.

[Jason]

It comes down to the question "What is the point of the Evil alignment, in term of game design and/or worldbuilding?"

Simplest version: To provide antagonists for the players to defeat.

They don't have to be stupid-evil moustache twirlers who do stuff just because it's evil - they can also be well-rounded, nuanced, and ultimately tragic worthy opponents who might have been friends if they had made different choices.

Either way, they're in the game for the players to thwart and defeat.

[KorvinStarmast]

If what you mean is that people who don't care and just act on whatever they want to do aren't necessarily evil, that's wrong.

Sorry, your opinion is not a fact.
There's a well worn adage about "all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing" that has to do with the prevention of the spread of evil. That is similar in theme to "if you see something, say something."

That isn't the same as calling those (referred to in the adage) good men evil. It is a warning to stop evil before it gets too big/hard to stop/to pervasive.

The position you have presented in your posts, (granted, we are all using a bit of brevity here) amounts to name calling along the lines of
"You are evil because I said so"

I am again reminded of why discussion about alignment quickly become tiresome.

For icefractal: some good points in your A, B, C post.

For Unoriginal:

Doing what Fiends told them to do without question, while knowing they're Fiends, disqualifies Player A from "acting in good faith".

While knowing that they are fiends - and if we underwrite that knowledge with the boiler plate definition of fiend as a being formed from that which is (X_Evil) based on the setting's cosmology - certainly puts that choice into question.
It would take a bit more context to arrive at "made a deal with fiends" (for some positive purpose?) be otherwise characterized.

The "without question" layer could apply to a variety of bad choices made regardless of the source being fiends, or others.

[Darth Credence]

Sorry, your opinion is not a fact.
There's a well worn adage about "all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing" that has to do with the prevention of the spread of evil. That is similar in theme to "if you see something, say something."

That isn't the same as calling those (referred to in the adage) good men evil. It is a warning to stop evil before it gets too big/hard to stop/to pervasive.

The position you have presented in your posts, (granted, we are all using a bit of brevity here) amounts to name calling along the lines of
"You are evil because I said so"

I am again reminded of why discussion about alignment quickly become tiresome.

I am perfectly OK with making a call on what is evil, and if that is reduced to "because I say so", I'm fine with that, too. Opinions are not fact, true, but opinions can be wrong - like the one that says that people not caring about harming others and just doing what they want is not evil.

While we're at it, that aphorism is a load of crap. It requires much more than that - like the evil people trying to execute a plan. But if we want to take it for what it's worth, it is as much a statement on "good" men as anything, with a pretty clear implication that standing by doing nothing would make one not "good".

[KorvinStarmast]

I am perfectly OK with making a call on what is evil, and if that is reduced to "because I say so", I'm fine with that, too. Opinions are not fact, true, but opinions can be wrong - like the one that says that people not caring about harming others and just doing what they want is not evil.

Back to your opinion not being a fact. Have a nice day.

[Errorname]

In contrast, an evil person isn't just willing to cause harm in pursuit of their goals, they tend to prefer it and will choose to do so if at all possible. The sadistic guard who tortures his prisoners. The evil overlord who enjoys seeing those under his thumb tormented. Demons and whatnot, who literally exist in order to spread suffering and pain. Those are evil people/beings.

So does the Evil Overlord stop being evil if their torment and tyranny is cold and passionless, simple self interest? Does torturing my prisoners stop being evil because the pain is merely a byproduct of gathering information?

Simple sadism is a really common form of evil, a lot more common than anyone wants to admit, but it's not the only form of evil. Evil done because of indifference to the suffering you cause is still evil, evil done for some nebulous greater good is still evil.

Or dungeons which are a fortress for a known group which you're attacking because they're actively doing bad stuff, not just "they exist and we could stab them".

For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

Simplest version: To provide antagonists for the players to defeat

I mean, that's not the simplest version, because the players can be evil. But it's also not a useful version either, because we can easily imagine neutral or even good characters who play an antagonist role.

[Unoriginal]

S
For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

Indeed. Which is why 5e managed to do that for all of its adventures.

[Dr.Samurai]

For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

Yes, like I can imagine a society of evil creatures with an evil culture that worship evil deities and values evil things, and wherever they are they terrorize the other people around them. And any adventurers would know if they come across an invading army or cavern stronghold of these evil creatures, they would be obviously justified in attacking them.

We could call them like... orcs, or goblins, or something like that.

[Jason]

I mean, that's not the simplest version, because the players can be evil. But it's also not a useful version either, because we can easily imagine neutral or even good characters who play an antagonist role.

Evil player characters are an option, but are not the standard default. Most of the game is written with Good player characters in mind.

Therefore allowing your player characters to be Evil is not the simplest version. Neither is making your antagonists Neutral or Good.

Original D&D and the BECMI line was even more simple: there were only 3 alignments rather than nine: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic.

The simplest version of D&D is Good player characters, Evil antagonists.

[gbaji]

I mean, yeah. Adventures where the premise is "go and kill these humanoids (which have a society, children, etc), because they have loot and also the local humans / demi-humans would enjoy claiming their territory" are pretty ****ed up when you think about it. And the tropes they're based on are ... also ****ed up, usually worse in fact.

Welcome to 10th century Scotland. And 11th century, and 12th, and...

To be fair to the Scotts, that's also pretty much every place in the world prior to maybe the last century or two (and some places still, which often causes confusion in those who've too much adapted to modern world moral assumptions). If you are roleplaying in a setting like that, then this is something that said RPers have to also adapt to and accept. As I said earlier, most of the problems and inconsistencies in most modern RPG alignment systems are the result of attempting to wedge in modern concepts of good and evil into settings in which they really don't work well.

A) Don't think about it. Go full beer-n-pretzels style and just don't consider any implications or try to have moral significance to anything.
B) The PCs are bad people, problem solved.
C) Don't use those type of adventures.

Or... D) Accept that you are RPing in a game setting in which this kind of "my side versus yours" morality is the norm and not the exception. Accept that the people living in this setting don't have the very modern luxury of worrying themselves over whether their actions, taken to improve their own condition (often making a difference between living and dying) may also cause harm or death to someone else as a result. Accept that in this world, killing someone because "he's from the enemy clan", is not only perfectly acceptable, failing to do so when one has the opportunity may be considered a betrayal and "evil".

Yes. There are easier ways to manage this, and I'm being a bit extreme (but not as much as I could be) with my examples. And certainly, this is subject to the comfort level of the players at the table. But I am just trying to showcase some basic concepts here and show how it's not as simple as just sayng "doing harm for self centered reasons is evil". I was also specifically showing that, in the abesence of actual moustache twirling evil in the game setting, pretty much all conflicts are going to be the result of some degree of selfish motivations, so that ceases to be a viable means to make alignment determinations.

And of course, all the types of adventure which aren't dungeon crawls, most of which have an easy time avoiding this situation.

Which ones? The ones where you are asked by the local ruler to go do something that will benefit his area? Presumably to the detriment of someone else, right? Again, unless all the adventures involve evil demons, or hags, or other magical/evil creatures doing evil things which require them to be fought, at some point, you are engaged in conflicts in which there is going to be a heck of a lot of self interest involved. Even if it's just "my king commands this", that's ultiimately a self interested motivation. There is no "greater good" going on here. You're going to the enemy stonghold and stealing their whatsit and killing their head priest before he can do the ceremony to summon some creature to help them defeat your kings army, not directly because "that summoned creature is evil", or even "that head priest is evil", but ultimately because "I'm on my side and want to win". If the same characters were on the other side, they would be the ones protecting the head priest while he summoned something to help their side win the battle, and they would just as equally view the "assassins trying to kill the head priest" as the enemy for whom it was right and just to kill.

And yeah. Most GMs "simplify" these types of scenarios by making said head priest a worshipper of an objectively evil deity, and the creature an objectively evil creature, and the ruler of the other kingdom an objectively evil ruler, just to make it easier on the players. But it could just as easily be an objectively good deity being worshiped, and some kind of holy deva thing being summoned for the battle, and the players must protect this process for their good king to win, and it's the other side that has objectively evil deities being worshiped, and the attackers are members of the evil assassins order or something, and it's their king who is super "evil" or something.

It's literally a matter of perspective in a lot of those cases. And yeah, makes the whole "Ok, so what is neutral"" a not so easily answered question.

Doing what Fiends told them to do without question, while knowing they're Fiends, disqualifies Player A from "acting in good faith".

Well, which is why I pointed out that there's massive gaps in the story we were told.

This is not all on player A. Somehow, the entire party travelled from where they were given the mission to the other building, with the basement, with the murky pool in it. Somehow, they found themselves there, presumably having made a decision to do so, and that decision was not just made by player A. If the entire party decided to go there, they must have had a reason to do so. Unfortunately, we don't know that reason, because it wasn't relayed to us. So we can't say whether player A actually acted in "good faith" or not. If he believed that the entire party (made up of 4 paladins with him being the only non-paladin in the group) had decided to go here, after receiving the mission, and he believed that the reason the party went there was to kill "the creature in the murky pool", then by doing just that, he's absolutely "acting in good faith".

Now, if the party knew the fiends were evil, knew they wanted them to kill the creature in the pool, suspected this was something nefarious and went there with the intention of disovering what was really in the pool and why the fiends wanted to kill it, then yeah... player A did not act in good faith. That would actually qualify as an evil act. But not because "killing the naiad is evil", but because "you intentionally killed something the rest of your party was there to investigate and talk to".

If the party actually went there with the intention of killing whatever was in the pool, and then arrived and stood around debating how to go about doing it, or maybe just now having second thoughts, or whatever, I could totally see the CN ranger going "f this!" and just killing the creature in the pool, just to bypass whatever analysis paralysis was going on with the rest of the group. And yeah. That would absolutely be a CN thing to do. We came here to kill this creature. It's what we agreed to do. Now you guys are standing around debating your navel lint, so I'm just going to move things along, seems to absolultely fall well and firmly into the chaotic neutral mindset.

Also there is a point where acting recklessly outweighs any good faith. If you're regularly harming innocent people through recklessness, and refuse to do anything to avoid harming innocents, you're gonna be both chaotic and evil sooner or later. Because callous disregard for other people's well-being + reckless behavior when you know the pattern of consequences said behavior has + actively harming people.

Sure. Which ties into something several people have pointed out (including me). One action should not an alignment change make. It should be about the pattern of behavior over time. If this is the kiind of thing this character does frequently, and consistently falls to the side of "just kill it" whenever there's some question as to how to proceed, then this would indicate more of a personalit trait, rather than a specific "what I did in this one situation". Someone mentioned the whole pidgeon hole concept. I think that applies here. They may have had only a few courses of action here. And the Ranger may have had only like two: "kill it before it waks up/attacks/whatever" or "wait for it to wake up/attack/whatever first and then decide what to do".

We don't have enough information about what discsussion or decisions were made prior to that point, or what options and choices were being discussed by the other PCs at the time, to be able to make a good determination here. And yeah, we don't have enough information about the longer term habitual actions of this character either. It may very well be that an alignment change was warranted. But it should be more of a "straw that broke the camel's back" than "this one act was just soooo evil, that your alignment must change".

Sorry, your opinion is not a fact.
There's a well worn adage about "all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing" that has to do with the prevention of the spread of evil. That is similar in theme to "if you see something, say something."

That isn't the same as calling those (referred to in the adage) good men evil. It is a warning to stop evil before it gets too big/hard to stop/to pervasive.

Yup. It's also an interesting observation to make that this adage is also a call to self interest. Don't oppose the evil because it's evil, but because if you don't, one day it'll be doing its evil to you.

It's literally a way to motivate people who fall into the "neutral" category (as I've defined it), to "do good". Not because they're motivated to help the people the evil is currentlly harming, nor to hurt the evil because it's evil and thus must be fought (both actual "good" alignment positions), but purely because "if you don't, it'll be on your door step someday, killing you or people you care about".

For Unoriginal: While knowing that they are fiends - and if we underwrite that knowledge with the boiler plate definition of fiend as a being formed from that which is (X_Evil) based on the setting's cosmology - certainly puts that choice into question.
It would take a bit more context to arrive at "made a deal with fiends" (for some positive purpose?) be otherwise characterized.

The "without question" layer could apply to a variety of bad choices made regardless of the source being fiends, or others.

Yup. This too. Goes back to my earlier point that "we really don't know enough about what went on".

And valid point about the source. At the end of the day, I keep circling back to "the entire party went to the murky pool. Why?'.

So does the Evil Overlord stop being evil if their torment and tyranny is cold and passionless, simple self interest? Does torturing my prisoners stop being evil because the pain is merely a byproduct of gathering information?

It's all relative, isn't it? That was kind my point. There is some point at which we may clearly objectively idenfity someone in a game as "evil" (ie: the moustache twirling type). Somewhere along the way (often quite a bit prior to that point), we may still decide that we want to oppose what that person is doing. But does that make the other person "evil" or just "an enemy"? And are we evil, good, or neutral when opposing that person?

But.. Interesting thought experiment. Is a terminator "evil"? If we take the "what is the motivation/emotion/objective?" behind the act completely out of the equation (just a machine following its programming), is that creature "evil". Can we disconnect the action itself (which is clearly about causing harm), from the alignment of the person/creature performing the act? The point of the experiment is to explore the concept that there can be "evil/harmful acts" without "evil hamful motivation" behind them.

I also think the problem is you are going from my statement about self interested motivations, but absent the direct "intent to do harm for the sake of doing harm", and kinda go to "psychopathic torturer" as an example. But what about less extreme cases? My team of adventurers fought our way through the dungeon and arrive at the mighty chalice of power, only to find another group of adventurers has arrived at the same room, from the opposite direction. Both have an equal right to the reward. How do we resolve this? If we fight, does that make one side "good" and one "evil". Or are both evil?

I would argue that the two sides could negotiate something, but if negotiations break down and they end up fighting eachother for the prize, that's a neutral act. Both claim the prize. Both have equal claim. There's no third party arbiter around, so...

That's the sort of "causing harm for self interested reasons" I was speaking of.

For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

What if the outlaws are actually freedom fighters opposed to a tyranical ruler? What if the "evil cult" is really just a group of peaceful worshipers of a deity that is unknown to this area, but not evil in any way, but the local temples don't want the competition, so you've been told to wipe them out? And I already touched on the whole "invading army" thing. Is your "side" any more justified to "win the battle" than the other? Is the current person ruling this land actually a better ruler than the guy who's army is showing up?

How do you suppose the folks on the other side of those scenarios might see the PCs actions?

[Satinavian]

Guidelines that themselves have been incredibly inconsistent

Granted, but we work with what we have.

But isn't that what most conflicts that will occur are anyway, if we are already excluding the "moustache twirling" type of evil? The PCs are knights of kindom A. Kingdom B is an enemy kingdom. Both sides regularly fight skirmishes, sometimes engage in border raids, and the PCs are regularly going on missions to sneak into KingdomB and do some kind of mission impossible level stuff.

For example, yes. That would not be a good vs evil conflict though.

Are the PCs good, neutral, or evil?

How do they fight ? When they are foraging, do they try to limit the damage ? Ot just use it as a pretext to steal everything of value from every village they come across ? Are they poisoning springs ? Are they tactically sacrificing their allies to save their own hide or for prestige ? Do they show mercy ? It is extremely easy to behave good or evil even in relatively mundane conflicts.

Is that group of border raiders from KingdomB "evil"? What about the ones from KingdomA? Both sides are engaged in causing harm to the other for what can quite aguably be labeled "selfish reasons".

Fighting for your kingdom in what is a just war as far as you know is certainly not "causing harm for selfish reasons". Considering it is risking your life for what you consider a good cause, it is pretty much the opposite of selfish.

And you know what? The only way to actually resolve this and make one side "good" and the other "evil" is if we add in some of that moustache twirling evil you seem to not want to have around. The ruler of kingdomB is a cruel sadist who killed the previous ruler to take the throne, rounds up and tourtures his political enemies, and has invited and actively encourages the worship of some demon lord thingie.

I think that a ruler who has killed the previous ruler, rounded up his political enemies to torture or kill them and follows some demon deity is plenty evil even if he is not a sadist doing it for the funsies and instead just does it for power or other reasons. In fact he is probably still evil enough if he does only one of those things just for power. And way more believable, making overall for a better received story.

I actually somewhat agree with you from a philosophical point of view. But not at all from a "practical rpg pov". As I said earlier, if we really applied that logic, then a large pecentage of what most PC groups do would be classified as "evil". Every single time a PC group goes into some dundeon for any reason other than "we're chasing a known group of evildoers who caused known harm to known people, to bring them to justice" they are technically meeting your definition of "evil". And if they run into and kill anything other than said known evildoers they are chasing? Well, that's evil. Home invasion evil.

Well, yes.
If a group does not want to be labeled evil, they should not enter a dungeon and kill the local humanoids to take their stuff without proper cause. I don't see any problem here.

The problem is that, as I pointed out above, the only way for adventuring PCs to *not* meet your definition of evil if if they restrict themselves solely to hunting down and killing the very moustache twirling (or "always evil" species) type of evil you don't find to be interesting.

Or just normal criminals or other enemies they have just cause against. Or monsters who can't be reasoned with. Or people who attack them.
I don't use mustache twirling villains and still have no lack of enemies for goodish PCs to fight.

Sure. No definition is perfect. And I generally just prefer to not use alignment at all if I can get away with it. But... if I am going to use it, I prefer to use it in a way that works within the game system and setting I'm playing and not try to make it align with a setting and world that I'm *not* playing (ie: the "real world").

Well, sure. I think similar and that is why use the other definition as it seems way more pracical. If Alignments aside from neutral are only really used for literal demons, devils, angels and similars being and maybe some over the top carricatures, i certainly don't need any alignment system for mortal PCs and NPCs.

[Duff]

Snip the bits I agree with

Importantly, none of those options require (or are even assisted by) having an alignment system that uses a different definition of "good". I've met zero people who would be disturbed by a "kill all the goblins because goblins" adventure and then suddenly be fine with it by someone saying "don't worry, the book says it's Good to kill them". Why would that even make a difference?

Answer the question - It could make a difference to me, and at least some others I've played with as part of the mindset "Accept the premise of the game"

[Jason]

Sure. Which ties into something several people have pointed out (including me). One action should not an alignment change make. It should be about the pattern of behavior over time.

This is why 1st edition AD&D featured an alignment graph, with zones for each of the alignments. Movement on the graph is almost never directly from one pole to another, but by degrees. Moving into Evil territory takes either a single very seriously Evil act that "pegs the needle" into Evil immediately, or a smaller Evil action when you are already close to the edge of your alignment close to the Evil zone.

But.. Interesting thought experiment. Is a terminator "evil"?...If we take the "what is the motivation/emotion/objective?" behind the act completely out of the equation (just a machine following its programming), is that creature "evil".

Someone programmed the machine, and determined what goals it would attempt to accomplish. A terminator that is incapable of violating its programming is an extension of the will of its programmer, and therefore has the same alignment. Skynet was Evil, and the goals it set for its terminators were evil, so the terminators it programmed were Evil.

However, a terminator, which is incapable of violating its programming, is not asEvil as its creator. It takes merely changing its programming to change its alignment completely. There is little to no "alignment inertia" because its actions were completely involuntary in the first place. A creature like a terminator, with pre-programmed goals that do have an alignment and enough intelligence to be considered sentient but no free will, is as close to True Neutral as you can get without actually being True Neutral.

In D&D 3.5, creatures without intelligence are either True Neutral (like Golems) or Neutral Evil (like non-sentient undead). Non-sentient undead like skeletons and zombies are Neutral Evil only because it is an Evil action to create them.