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

[BookTenTiger]

But it still goes back to general theme of the game of being wish fulfillment and being heroes vs villains. If the villains are just the opposition, they're no longer villains. They're just the opposition and there are no heroes, no villains.

What is the difference between a villain and opposition to you?

Generally curious, I don't have an answer yet. I'll mull it over and post my idea too.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Okay, here's my thought:

The difference between a villain and opposition is stakes.

An opponent wants to prevent the characters from achieving one or two goals, such as accessing an area, or surviving a battle.

A villain is an opponent who threatens greater stakes. If a villain gets their way, characters lose more than GP or XP. A villain has the potential to change truths about the world: they may kill beloved NPCs, change the laws of the land, or tarnish the reputation of the characters.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I tend to agree with @Aldarc that the Law/Chaos axis can provide a more nuanced and morally complex conflict than the Good/Evil one, but I'm not - on balance (forgive the pun) - against the inclusion of Good and Evil as fundamental elements in the D&D game.

D&D deals primarily with caricature and cliché and does not weather the postmodern critique terribly well. Evil is Evil because it is Evil; it is the evil of fairy tales (the evil witch; the evil troll; the evil demon), not the evil of Adolf Eichmann or Jeffrey Dahmer - or, rather D&D lacks the mechanisms to adequately deal with (actual, human) evil and deals instead with the idealized; the fantastic. It is the evil which is vile and blasphemous; it profanes and violates and desecrates; it is an abomination.

Likewise, Good is Good because it is Good. It's the good of angels and good fairies and chivalric ideals. It is sacred, and holy; it sanctifies and consecrates and heals.

If these definitions seem tautologous, well, that's kind of my point. And I'm not saying that you can't have fun challenging, subverting, inverting and generally messing with these expectations - far from it. But I think if you cut out good and evil, you are also excising some of the mythic power of D&D to tell certain stories. Stories which are - necessarily - rooted in a particular (Westernized/Christianized) vision of the world, but powerful stories nonetheless.

 

[Aldarc]

Ironically, I do like the inclusion of Good and Evil in 4e, but its thematic purpose says more about the nature of Cosmic Law and Chaos in the chaoskampf mythos of the Dawn War: i.e., goodness leads to cosmic order while wickedness degrades that cosmic order, moving the pendulum towards chaos.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

I tend to agree with @Aldarc that the Law/Chaos axis can provide a more nuanced and morally complex conflict than the Good/Evil one, but I'm not - on balance (forgive the pun) - against the inclusion of Good and Evil as fundamental elements in the D&D game.

D&D deals primarily with caricature and cliché and does not weather the postmodern critique terribly well. Evil is Evil because it is Evil; it is the evil of fairy tales (the evil witch; the evil troll; the evil demon), not the evil of Adolf Eichmann or Jeffrey Dahmer - or, rather D&D lacks the mechanisms to adequately deal with (actual, human) evil and deals instead with the idealized; the fantastic. It is the evil which is vile and blasphemous; it profanes and violates and desecrates; it is an abomination.

Likewise, Good is Good because it is Good. It's the good of angels and good fairies and chivalric ideals. It is sacred, and holy; it sanctifies and consecrates and heals.

If these definitions seem tautologous, well, that's kind of my point. And I'm not saying that you can't have fun challenging, subverting, inverting and generally messing with these expectations - far from it. But I think if you cut out good and evil, you are also excising some of the mythic power of D&D to tell certain stories. Stories which are - necessarily - rooted in a particular (Westernized/Christianized) vision of the world, but powerful stories nonetheless.

You know, very simply, mixing the two extremes--life and fictional representations thereof--is not a good premise to begin with, let alone describing evil as solely a Christian/Westernized concept. I am sure that the Poles when invaded by The Mongols or Huns, slaughtered and taken prisoner, saw that as an evil event in whatever available parlance they expressed it as; and so too did the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civs consider the Spanish extermination and subjugation of them as some "evil" event, however expressed by kind; and who would be brazen enough to deny such life experiences as evil, these being fraught with blood and torture and slavery, tautological definitions aside...

 

[Vaalingrade]

So what about that time some sword swinging psycho-killers buzz-sawed their way through Thay or the Underdark for money? Or the time they broke into that guy's tomb and killed all the guardians despite all the booby traps clearly displaying they aren't welcome?

Can we talk about the futility of objective evil in a game about home invasion, murder and grave robbery? ESPECIALLY in the iterations of the game where alignment was most heavily pushed as a thing?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If there's a room with a treasure chest an a _____ guarding it, it doesn't matter if the rules say the ______ is evil. The fact that it is stopping the characters from getting what they want is all the game needs to justify battle, spellcasting, etc.

Evil is unnecessary.

But if I’m playing a character that only needs “I can’t get what I want while this ogre lives” in order to go murder the ogre, then I’m playing a garbage person, which I don’t find enjoyable, even casually.

Which is one way in which Evil is absolutely useful (whether it’s strictly necessary is a moot point, as nothing in the game is). If we want to play beer and pretzels hack n slash, we can do so without having to play evil characters.

“The Cult of Elemental Evil has encroached on the area, using propaganda that positions our trade outposts as a colonizing invasion to attract new adherents and gain greater influence. Go kill them. Anyone loyal to the cult has embraced Elemental Evil in order to gain power from it.” Is a perfectly good way to start a variation on the keep on the borderlands without making the PCs into evil colonialist murder hobos. Evil is a cosmic force, and very much Black Hat, so there is no need to think about the cultists. They’re stormtroopers.

 

[Faolyn]

Okay, here's my thought:

The difference between a villain and opposition is stakes.

An opponent wants to prevent the characters from achieving one or two goals, such as accessing an area, or surviving a battle.

A villain is an opponent who threatens greater stakes. If a villain gets their way, characters lose more than GP or XP. A villain has the potential to change truths about the world: they may kill beloved NPCs, change the laws of the land, or tarnish the reputation of the characters.

I'd say the difference can be simplified as this: The opposition wants to succeed. The villain wants you to fail.

 

[Redwizard007]

that is still nearly identical to a goat who eats life and spits out entropy and some walk on their hind leg chillingly.

Sorry for the late reply. I've been insanely busy.

A goat is part of the life cycle. They consume life, but they also produce life, both through birth and decomposition. Even their excrement serves to fertilize. At no time do they take more energy from the life cycle than they replace. My guess would be that the designers (and most laypeople) feel that undead exclusively take. They consume life and create either death or more undeath. That and the wanton slaughtering of sentient beings.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'd say the difference can be simplified as this: The opposition wants to succeed. The villain wants you to fail

That seems less like a simplification and more like an entirely different idea.

Either can be focused on either motivation, and both will often want both. Opposition is just an antagonist that isn't important enough to be called the villain. Another way to look at it is that there are villains and Villains, but really the term "villain" mostly works when the protagonists are heroes. Otherwise, the antagonist hardly need be a villain at all.