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Between the recent holidays and some ongoing distractions at my day job, I haven’t had a chance to update this thread for a few weeks now. Thankfully, I’ve found time since my last post to make some progress on the book. Here’s a brief status report: I’ve changed the working title to the...

In fairness to Curse of Strahd, creating the false impression that you have agency but not actually giving you the option to leave is probably the most on-point thing a Ravenloft module could do.

The 2e Monstrous Compendium entry for maedars explained the reason for their petrification reversal powers. It was a hunting strategy. A medusa would petrify and shatter a victim, and a maedar would then turn the chunks of stone into edible chunks of meat.

Now that gnolls are Fiends, one can presumably play a tiefling of gnoll descent.

D&D slots stopped being D&D after the 2nd iteration. 3rd iteration is a video-gamey superhero slot machine with none of the gritty realism of old-school D&D slots.

We don't seem to define basic terms like "slavery" and "good neighbor" in the same way. I don't want to get into semantics, so I'll bow out of this discussion now.

If one wants a reputation for helping others, one has to help others. That isn't slavery. That's someone willfully setting a goal and actively pursuing it. One could just as easy decide the benefit of a good reputation isn't worth the effort involved in building a reputation and willingly choose...

There's no such thing as forcing someone to be altruistic. Altruism is defined by the intent of the person helping others. If someone is forced to help others without a choice, they have no agency and thus no intent, selfless or otherwise.

If Muscular Neutral is Muscular because it's trying to balance Law and Chaos, it has no reason to prefer NG or NE. If CE is dominant and its strongest non-Chaotic rival is NG, Muscular Neutral would ally with NG. If LG is dominant and its strongest non-Lawful rival is NE, Muscular Neutrals would...

It's challenging if we assume the thought experiment is talking about True Neutral, specifically. If we're asking why Lawful Neutral would oppose certain Good factions and why Chaotic Neutral would oppose certain other Good factions, it's fairly easy. Actually, if we assume True Neutral doesn't...

To recap, my current understaning of the thought experiment is this: Premise 1: Evil is harming, killing, or oppressing others. Premise 2: Good is selflessly helping others. Premise 3: It's possible for Good to win with no harmful consequences. Premise 4: If Good wins, Evil acts are prohibited...

Thanks for reposting that. I missed it the first time. I'll contemplate that premise and see if there's anything I can contribute to the thought experiment.

Okay, this sounds like a workable definition of Good winning. In a world where Good has won, all members of society chill out and help one another live their lives. The victory condition for Good is the establishment of this entirely altruistic society in perpetuity, without end. Using that...

I'd be interested in engaging with the premise of the thread, so I have a follow-up question. Since we're assuming Good (altruism and respect for others) can win and defeat Evil (harm and oppression) forever, what does a world where Evil has been defeated look like? I would need a concrete...

I don't see that premise anywhere in the OP, but I can't dispute that you do see it, so it appears we're each talking about a different thought experiment. I withdraw any arguments I made against your conclusions. My posts are unrelated to the topic you're discussing.

In my proposed thought experiment, the Neutrals aren't maintaining Evil. Some amount of Evil will always exist, without needing anyone to maintain it. And at no point was it proposed that Neutrals go about killing Good people. There's no requirement that Neutrals commit Evil acts. Nor is there...

You're quoting my post, but you don't seem to be addressing my proposed take on Neutrality. I'm proposing a Neutrality which believes the world already contains the least possible amount of Evil. According to that world view, any "Good" character who feels compelled to destroy all Evil is...

I don't believe those are the only two things that make this work. Muscular Neutral also works if Neutral believes the Balance represents the minimal amount of Evil that can exist in the world. Muscular Good must be opposed because Hell is paved with Good intentions. Any attempt to eliminate...

Quick progress update: If I organize everything into two- and four-page spreads, depending on how I size things, I'm sitting on between 550 and 600 pages of content. On the one hand, this isn't a physical book, so there's no inherent limitation on the number of pages I include. On the other...

Yin and yang. Good contains the seeds of Evil, and Evil contains the seeds of Good. If Evil wins for a moment, it eventually destroys itself in an orgy of violence, leaving the meek to inherit the world. The meek rebuild the world as a less Evil, but not necessarily Good, place. If Good wins...