D&D General D&D doesn't need Evil

[Maxperson]

Do we really need yet another thread shut down for a discussion of the race that shall not be named?

We're not actually discussing orcs, though. This is just alignment so far.

 

[Oofta]

Roughly half of my players since I've started playing 5E have been newbies.

No one has ever raised any questions about good vs evil or alignment.

 

[Faolyn]

But to argue a term like LE provides NO context to a D&D player? I guess I just don't see it.

OK, so what's the context?

 

[Faolyn]

Can you prove that? It seems to me that I played a game with one DM who in 3e had a country of non-evil orcs.

What's the name of the kingdom? I'll look it up.

If the DM made it up, then great for them! But that's homebrew.

If you're talking about official sources, well I've already shown you multiple examples of settings with orcs that weren't evil and lived with humans, including the Forgotten Realms. So yes, it did happen.

No, you've shown me one source, of a country that hasn't been mentioned by the game in decades, with invading orcs who were civilized by other people. Not orcs who weren't evil on their own.

This is literally what I was talking about: "Which is basically saying that these groups of people are incapable of being not-evil unless a "better" people teaches them."

 

[Redwizard007]

No.

You can have evil actions and call them evil. You can have evil individuals. You can have evil groups.

But there needs to be more than just a label. Come up with motivations for them to be evil. An Always Evil race makes no sense. It wouldn't function, especially the creatures are mortal beings who need to raise young and live in a group to survive.

You can definitely have individuals or a group of creatures with an evil goal: summon destructive entities; steal and kill for personal profit; genocide another race because they don't like them for whatever reason; hurt or control a group for power. But just saying "they're evil because I need a bad guy for this adventure" is a weak reason.

I get what you are saying. Monolithic evil, at least among non-outsiders, is often poorly done. I entirely agree that the various monster manuals do a piss poor job of outlining why a whole race is largely evil. The always evil entries were even worse. The solution that seems obvious to me is larger entries for "monsters" that have a culture. It would give room for more nuance, and actually explaining how the culture functions while remaining evil (or chaotic.) There is one major problem with that. Page count. Turning the MM into MToF means less actual entries. That is a bad thing, but if it led to properly fleshed out societies AND more frequent MM supplements then it would be a win all around.

I do disagree with you about not being able to make always evil societies functional. Salvatore did a pretty solid job fleshing out the drow in his novels. It's believable, at least if you don't poke to hard. I will always hate him for making dwarves comic relief, but that's another topic. There are also real world examples that I won't touch in this thread. Suffice it to say that evil, even chaotic evil, people and societies are not bound to wantonly comit rape, murder, and arson just for the lolz. They still experience love, form friendships, and have individual and group taboos. They just have varying degrees of "I'm getting mine" as a primary motivation.

 

[BookTenTiger]

As the OP, let me try to steer this ship back on course...

Here's a revised idea:

In D&D, evil should be subjective.

Right now in D&D, evil is objective. It is in Alignment, in Spell Names, and embedded in rules such as the bite of a werewolf.

In my opinion, evil should be subjective. What is considered Good or Evil should come from the campaign lore, the perspective of the characters, and the opinions of NPCs.

The red dragon eating a sacrificed villager is definitely considered evil from the perspective of the villagers. But to the dragon, what he's doing is good (for himself). After all, if he doesn't eat a villager each year, those villagers might lose their fear and go after his hoard!

One thing that has been brought up is the idea of Evil as shorthand. Labelling the red dragon as Chaotic Evil is a quick way to describe his actions and intentions. I agree that a shorthand is useful, but I still see the shorthand of "Evil" as trying to make evil Objective instead of Subjective. Personally, I would rather a shorthand like this:

Red Dragon (Intimidating, Greedy, Pyromaniac)

With that shorthand, I can easily play the red dragon and make quick choices about how it will act. This red dragon will favor scaring people, getting gold, and will often set things on fire. Furthermore, this doesn't make the conflict any more complex. It's still a pretty black-and-white issue. The red dragon is bad for the villagers. The heroes can kill it. Or offer it gold. Or steal its gold!

So when I say that "D&D doesn't need evil," I don't mean that evil should be taken out of D&D. I mean that D&D operates just fine without Objective Evil.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Also it would be funny to have an alignment axis that went:

Objective Good
Subjective Good
Neutral
Subjective Evil
Objective Evil

 

[Redwizard007]

As the OP, let me try to steer this ship back on course...

Here's a revised idea:

In D&D, evil should be subjective.

Right now in D&D, evil is objective. It is in Alignment, in Spell Names, and embedded in rules such as the bite of a werewolf.

In my opinion, evil should be subjective. What is considered Good or Evil should come from the campaign lore, the perspective of the characters, and the opinions of NPCs.

The red dragon eating a sacrificed villager is definitely considered evil from the perspective of the villagers. But to the dragon, what he's doing is good (for himself). After all, if he doesn't eat a villager each year, those villagers might lose their fear and go after his hoard!

One thing that has been brought up is the idea of Evil as shorthand. Labelling the red dragon as Chaotic Evil is a quick way to describe his actions and intentions. I agree that a shorthand is useful, but I still see the shorthand of "Evil" as trying to make evil Objective instead of Subjective. Personally, I would rather a shorthand like this:

Red Dragon (Intimidating, Greedy, Pyromaniac)

With that shorthand, I can easily play the red dragon and make quick choices about how it will act. This red dragon will favor scaring people, getting gold, and will often set things on fire. Furthermore, this doesn't make the conflict any more complex. It's still a pretty black-and-white issue. The red dragon is bad for the villagers. The heroes can kill it. Or offer it gold. Or steal its gold!

So when I say that "D&D doesn't need evil," I don't mean that evil should be taken out of D&D. I mean that D&D operates just fine without Objective Evil.

This is a very different argument to me. One I can 100% get behind. In fact, it's how I've been playing for the last couple decades. Well, except for Planescape, but that is a very different campaign setting.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

As the OP, let me try to steer this ship back on course...

Here's a revised idea:

In D&D, evil should be subjective.

Right now in D&D, evil is objective. It is in Alignment, in Spell Names, and embedded in rules such as the bite of a werewolf.

In my opinion, evil should be subjective. What is considered Good or Evil should come from the campaign lore, the perspective of the characters, and the opinions of NPCs.

The red dragon eating a sacrificed villager is definitely considered evil from the perspective of the villagers. But to the dragon, what he's doing is good (for himself). After all, if he doesn't eat a villager each year, those villagers might lose their fear and go after his hoard!

One thing that has been brought up is the idea of Evil as shorthand. Labelling the red dragon as Chaotic Evil is a quick way to describe his actions and intentions. I agree that a shorthand is useful, but I still see the shorthand of "Evil" as trying to make evil Objective instead of Subjective. Personally, I would rather a shorthand like this:

Red Dragon (Intimidating, Greedy, Pyromaniac)

With that shorthand, I can easily play the red dragon and make quick choices about how it will act. This red dragon will favor scaring people, getting gold, and will often set things on fire. Furthermore, this doesn't make the conflict any more complex. It's still a pretty black-and-white issue. The red dragon is bad for the villagers. The heroes can kill it. Or offer it gold. Or steal its gold!

So when I say that "D&D doesn't need evil," I don't mean that evil should be taken out of D&D. I mean that D&D operates just fine without Objective Evil.

This is a fine description and the terms are useful.

it seems though that other editions with “evil” had these too.

alignment is not necessary for all sorts of games but I would argue it’s needed for some.

it’s funny to me that this whole thread is about avoidance of absolutes and objective truth but proponents of that cannot see that the answer is conditional!

kind of funny…

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Protection/detect evil and good is really mislabeled in 5E. That gives more flexibility for different campaign settings but can be confusing.

In my campaign world, necromancy and undead are evil because the soul of the dead person is tied to the animated body and unable to move on. But my take on it means little or nothing for other campaigns.

Sidebar but I'm curious how a concept I like to explore would work in your campaign.

I'm a struggling farmer. I have to work all day to tend the farm and support my wife and 12 young kids. I will do anything to protect my family. My buddy Steve, who happens to have powers involving life and death self me a death I durance policy. When I die, Steve will raise my body and allow my wife to use me on the farm to keep the family cared for. We all think it's a practical solution.

Is this evil?

I use a lot of "did it for the cause" undead in my campaigns. Guardians in mummy tombs aren't there because some evil guy forced them to. They gave their lives to eternally guard their leaders resting place willingly.

3e used to have non-evil undead (I believe they were instead called undying???) and I always felt like that was something that would happen in a world with pragmatists populating it.