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

[Maxperson]

Personally, I still don't see a need for objective Evil in D&D. I recognize that many posters like objective evil. And yet I still think it's something of a straightjacket.

Not a straightjacket. Perhaps a building. Those have a limited number of rooms, but you can still have fun exploring one. Like the limitations of linear, the limitations of objective evil are fantastic if that's what you are into, and not so much if you aren't.

For me I can go either direction on this. I like black and white objective good and evil, heroes against the evil hordes to save the day. I also like moral challenges and grey areas where I can explore my character and the world in that manner.

I wonder if part of my issue is that the PHB and Monster Manual are written as if they are setting agnostic, and yet certain monsters are labeled as Evil when that would be totally dependent on a setting!

There needs to be a default for players who don't want to have to build everything from scratch. Better to have vampires be evil or mostly evil or whatever as the default, and let DMs change that if they want when homebrewing a setting. If you make it too much work to build your own setting, it's going to turn people off to the game which is a bad thing.

 

[Maxperson]

Better for you, perhaps. Not better for everyone. My players like being the heroes, but they don't require pure villains to do so.

Then ignore it

 

[Maxperson]

Blasphemy! You will immediately report to the Department of Redundancy Department for you (or it is me?) have been made redundant!

I'm here to inform you that the Department of Redundancy Department has been replaced by the new Redundancy Department of Redundancy. You will have to re-file the paperwork.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

I'm here to inform you that the Department of Redundancy Department has been replaced by the new Redundancy Department of Redundancy. You will have to re-file the paperwork.

Hmm... Apparently a redundancy can make another redundancy redundant!

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Aside #2: A Strawberry Daiquiri doesn't need strawberries, but it's sure better with them!

 

[Oofta]

I'm here to inform you that the Department of Redundancy Department has been replaced by the new Redundancy Department of Redundancy. You will have to re-file the paperwork.

Just be sure to make duplicates of the duplicates. In triplicate of course.

 

[Lanefan]

I still stand by the idea that enemies don't need to be labeled as evil by the rules in order for characters to use their tools (swords, spells, etc) against them.

As long as the enemy opposed their intentions, that's enough.

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.

If the guardian is an obviously-Good angel and the PCs kill it and take the chest anyway, there'll still be an "evil" label getting applied...but not to the guardian.

In the bigger picture, I'm sure part of why Evil exists is so that when it's the opposition the players can justify their PCs as being Good even when - as is often the case - the actions of said PCs clearly are not.

 

[Mind of tempest]

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.

only because we are in the early years of necrosphere development.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

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 did not describe evil as a purely Christian/Western concept, I wrote that the kind of good and evil D&D portrays is rooted in this tradition. Look, for example, at the 1E alignment graph from Deities and Demigods: "saintly," "beatific," "diabolic," "demoniac." Given that you co-authored this book, it surprises me that you would take issue with this assertion.

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;

The point of my post was that the D&D conception of "good" and "evil" is poorly-equipped to deal with real-life phenomena, and is best confined to idealized or fantastic notions, so I'm not sure why you're invoking real-life phenomena and trying to insinuate otherwise.

and who would be brazen enough to deny such life experiences as evil

Not me, for sure. I'm not sure why you're trying to insinuate otherwise.

I can only assume that I have not been communicating clearly. I will do my best to remedy this in the future.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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?

This is the context in which I often find alignment distasteful. Some people want to play murderhobos, but insist that their characters are good murderhobos, and their victims totally deserved it because they were evil. I have nothing against characters being scoundrels with somewhat loose morals, but then let's not try to recast robbery and murder as a noble causes.