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

[Baldurs_Underdark]

I am always amused at the length of threads here. Sorry if I did not read all 200 posts.

For me, alignment is a tool to create a good game. I spend time observing my players and their PCs.

• Are they relatively lawful? Good, then my BBEG and his minions will be chaotic.
• Are they good? Then I will play evil.
• Are they chaotic-neutral? Then maybe the best opponent will be an overly lawful good bureaucratic government that employs mindless automatons.

Alignment allows you to create natural enemies, which makes for easy and fun roleplay. All you have to do is make an NPC that is opposite of what your players are. So, do you need evil? No. Is it practical for the story? Hell, yes.

 

[Lanefan]

So, I want to dive into this a little further. I recognize that many people find the label of “evil” useful (I’m not going to get into big E vs. little E here, I don’t think it’s really relevant to the point). But I struggle to understand why. Maybe you can help me make sense of it.

Let’s look at a more specific example, instead of talking in broad, abstract terms. And let’s use an example that’s less loaded than always-evil races. Let’s say instead we’ve got a villain. Call him Stroud Van Shmarovich. Now, Stroud is clearly a bad guy, who does lots of bad things. He’s a tyrant who rules over the duchy of Blargovia, oppressing its people and menacing one woman in particular - Aileen - who he wants to force to become his bride. And imagine also that he’s a vampire, so he literally feeds on the blood of Blargovians to sustain himself, and he will theoretically rule forever if someone doesn’t kill him. So, the adventurers have to track down a magic spear (cause it’s like a big stake!) and kill him to save Aileen and free Blargovia.

What does it matter whether we describe Stroud as evil or not? Does it change the adventure in any way?

All you're asking here is a semantic question - does it matter if the word "evil" shows up in the description or not - as your description clearly paints him as evil (and Evil) without using the actual word.

In the bit I bolded you could swap out the word "bad" for "evil" and it wouldn't change a thing.

 

[Aldarc]

Maybe in your experience. Personally I haven't used Devils very much over the years (I really should give them another look someday); in my games LE more often comes up under the Black Knight concept, or the Evil heirarchical bureaucracy, or the Evil-but-competent ruler of a place, etc.

What I find more often comes into play is the difference between LG (or even NG) and CG, mostly among PCs.

Naturally I can only speak for my experience, though in that experience I think Good vs. Evil tends to greatly overshadow other alignment conflicts and render them fairly pointless. That's why I actually think that adding Good and Evil to D&D decreased nuance and the variability of interesting alignment dynamics rather than increase it. It's not as if thought had not occurred to Michael Moorcock to use Good vs. Evil, but he didn't. He posited that there was a more interesting and less morally clear cut conflict that existed in Law vs. Chaos. Does adding Good and Evil add anything to that? I'm skeptical that it does.

Imagine, if you will, that we were not speaking of Good and Evil, but only of Law and Chaos. Is Chaos evil? Sure, there may be demons on the side of Chaos, but so are Elves and Fey. And without Good vs. Evil to be convenient labels that are projected onto them, the lines between demon and fey blur.

 

[John R Davis]

With Moorcock though both the folk of Law and Chaos, could do evil and good.

 

[Quartz]

D&D doesn't need evil.

You're absolutely right. If you want to do away with it in your game that's great. Look at the world of Xoth, for instance, or Empire of the Petal Throne.

But having evil works for a lot of people, so why deny them their fun?

 

[John R Davis]

But having evil works for a lot of people, so why deny them their fun?

This person is most wise. You can remove the big E from a game but if wotc corporate removed it that would be rubbish, IMO

 

[grimslade]

This thread didn't have much of a rail to begin with, so it is not surprising it has wandered off into the weeds a bit.
Evil is not necessary to run a D&D campaign, but neither is combat or magic. The majority of campaigns are going to have them though.
Alignment has been used as a straightjacket for much of D&D. It is supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive, but we still have the Awful Good Paladin as the poster boy for the extremes of alignment.
We sometimes twist ourselves into knots to avoid labeling something Evil. We consider it a loaded term, but it is a great descriptor. Demon and Devil are loaded terms too. Reskinning them as Tanaari and Baatezu didn't change what they were in 2nd Edition. Switching evil to 'bad guy' is the same.
The 9 point alignment system was a rigid relic of AD&D. It lives on today as a shadow of itself and only really comes into play in the Great Wheel Cosmology. The funny thing is the Great Wheel is and has always been more granular than alignment, 17 outer realms versus the 9 alignments.
You can have shades of grey campaigns. You can build a deep and thorough backstory for each antagonist, showing the internal motivations of each of their choices. Not Count Vlad Dracula of not Bavaria has a full and deep story of how he came to be in Ravenloft. He is a narcissistic jerk, a bad guy, and ultimately, evil. Now, you can also have a campaign where one cultures Sun god is trying to convert other cultures Sun god worshippers, say Pholtus vs. Pelor in Greyhawk. To the Oeridian Pholtans the unconverted Old Faith, Pelor-worshipping Fflan are heretical and 'evil'. They are blinding their flock from seeing the One True Path. This is mislabeling evil for an antagonist. The Pholtan Inquisitors who wage war with the demonic hordes of Iuz can pretty safely use evil for their enemies that stream out of portals from the Abyss.
There is a place for evil and good in most campaigns. It doesn't need to be there, but the cosmology and some monsters strongly suggest it is there. It just doesn't have a subsystem to recognize levels of morality or a scale of order/entropy. Whether those would help are up to individual DMs and tables.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

If I would remove Evil from the game, my players would fill the power vacuum.

 

[Mort]

So, I want to dive into this a little further. I recognize that many people find the label of “evil” useful (I’m not going to get into big E vs. little E here, I don’t think it’s really relevant to the point). But I struggle to understand why. Maybe you can help me make sense of it.

Let’s look at a more specific example, instead of talking in broad, abstract terms. And let’s use an example that’s less loaded than always-evil races. Let’s say instead we’ve got a villain. Call him Stroud Van Shmarovich. Now, Stroud is clearly a bad guy, who does lots of bad things. He’s a tyrant who rules over the duchy of Blargovia, oppressing its people and menacing one woman in particular - Aileen - who he wants to force to become his bride. And imagine also that he’s a vampire, so he literally feeds on the blood of Blargovians to sustain himself, and he will theoretically rule forever if someone doesn’t kill him. So, the adventurers have to track down a magic spear (cause it’s like a big stake!) and kill him to save Aileen and free Blargovia.

What does it matter whether we describe Stroud as evil or not? Does it change the adventure in any way?

But you HAVE described Stroud as evil. You even use the synonym "bad" right in the first sentence to set the tone. You then proceed with a full paragraph description as to what "bad" means, here, in case there is any doubt. Using the word "evil" is ONLY unnecessary because you've made it superfluous.

Assume you don't have a paragraph, say it's just an initially quick NPC named Ned. An alignment descriptor can be a useful 2 word (or even 2 letter) shortcut to help portray the NPC and how he fits into the scheme of the adventure.

 

[Oofta]

So, I want to dive into this a little further. I recognize that many people find the label of “evil” useful (I’m not going to get into big E vs. little E here, I don’t think it’s really relevant to the point). But I struggle to understand why. Maybe you can help me make sense of it.

Let’s look at a more specific example, instead of talking in broad, abstract terms. And let’s use an example that’s less loaded than always-evil races. Let’s say instead we’ve got a villain. Call him Stroud Van Shmarovich. Now, Stroud is clearly a bad guy, who does lots of bad things. He’s a tyrant who rules over the duchy of Blargovia, oppressing its people and menacing one woman in particular - Aileen - who he wants to force to become his bride. And imagine also that he’s a vampire, so he literally feeds on the blood of Blargovians to sustain himself, and he will theoretically rule forever if someone doesn’t kill him. So, the adventurers have to track down a magic spear (cause it’s like a big stake!) and kill him to save Aileen and free Blargovia.

What does it matter whether we describe Stroud as evil or not? Does it change the adventure in any way?

A rose by any other name and all that. What does it hurt if we label Stroud evil? It doesn't mean he can't be complex or have some redeeming qualities. But I don't see "evil" as being much different from any other descriptor. As others have said, using a bunch of words that will get interpreted as evil doesn't change anything, it's just wordier. Not inherently a bad thing, but doesn't really change the description in the end either.